---
title: "Ahrefs MCP in Slack: ask an AI teammate for backlinks and keywords | Chickpea"
description: "Use Ahrefs' MCP server from Slack. Give a channel an AI teammate that reads domain ratings, backlinks, and keyword data, then answers in the thread."
canonical: https://chickpea.co/connectors/ahrefs
keyword: "Ahrefs MCP in Slack"
verified: 2026-09-17
---

# An Ahrefs teammate in Slack, running on Ahrefs' MCP server.

> Chickpea gives a channel a named AI teammate that holds its own Ahrefs connection. It calls Ahrefs' hosted MCP server at [api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp](https://docs.ahrefs.com/mcp/docs/introduction) with an MCP key you generate in your account, so there is no client to configure. Ask it in Slack what a domain's rating is, who links to a competitor, or what a page ranks for. Every ask on this page reads, and each one spends Ahrefs API units.

Facts checked against the sources on September 17, 2026. The HTML page is at https://chickpea.co/connectors/ahrefs; every connector is listed at https://chickpea.co/connectors; the site index for agents is at https://chickpea.co/llms.txt.

**Ahrefs** (Ahrefs Pte. Ltd., https://ahrefs.com): Research keywords, backlinks, competitors, and search performance. Category: Search and research. Lane: Vendor MCP server. Sign in: API key.

**Chickpea**: an open source Slack app that gives a workspace named AI teammates, each with its own handle, instructions, memory, connected accounts, schedules, and model, deployed to your own Cloudflare account or a Node host.

## What people ask it
The teammate in these examples is @growth, published to #growth.

### A domain's rating and its backlink totals
- @growth what is quillstone.com on for domain rating, and how many referring domains do they have
- @growth give me domain rating, backlinks, and referring domains for these four sites as a table

A read needs no confirmation, and a long answer comes back as a table in the thread. Ahrefs puts these in the group it calls core Site Explorer metrics: domain rating, backlink and outlink stats, the organic and paid overview, and metrics history. Its own worked example prices a domain-rating request at 50 units, which is the floor for any billable call.

### Volume and difficulty for a list of keywords
- @growth volume and difficulty for these five keywords in the US, as a table
- @growth is "invoice reconciliation" worth a page of its own, and what is the cost per click

Ahrefs' keyword group covers the overview, volume by country and history, matching and related terms, and search suggestions. Difficulty is a field on the overview, which Ahrefs defines as an estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top ten organic results, on a 100-point scale. It is one of the fields Ahrefs bills at ten units a row, so a list of fifty keywords is not free.

### Who links to a competitor and not to you
- @growth who links to quillstone.com but not to us, sorted by domain rating
- @growth pull their referring domains from the last 90 days and mark the ones we already have

Ahrefs does not put Link Intersect on its MCP server, so this is two referring-domain reports, read and lined up in the thread. Your plan caps how many rows one request may return, at 100 on Lite and 500 on Advanced, so a wide gap arrives in passes. The teammate says how big the pull is before it spends the units.

### What a page ranks for
- @growth what organic keywords does our pricing page rank for, top 20 by traffic
- @growth which of their top pages earns the most traffic, and on which keywords

The detailed Site Explorer group covers backlinks, referring domains, anchors, organic keywords and competitors, top pages, and linked domains. Name one URL and the answer is that page's keywords with their positions. Reading a competitor tells them nothing, because the request goes to Ahrefs rather than to their site.

### On a schedule
- @growth every Monday at 9am Pacific, post the referring domains we picked up last week
- @growth every Friday at 4pm Eastern, post our domain rating and what it did this month

A schedule saves on the spot. It needs an explicit time zone, runs under the Ahrefs connection of the person who asked, and is paused rather than run if that connection goes away. Before each run Chickpea rereads the teammate, the channel grant, and the connection. Every run spends units, so keep the row count small.

### Example conversations

**Check a domain**
> **Dana:** @growth what is quillstone.com sitting on for domain rating and referring domains?
> **@growth:** Domain Rating 71, up two points since June. The backlink count is large because one directory network repeats, so the referring domains number is the one to watch.
>
> | Metric | quillstone.com | Change, 90 days |
> |---|---|---|
> | Domain Rating | 71 | +2 |
> | Backlinks | 184,300 | +11,900 |
> | Referring domains | 3,412 | +188 |
> | Dofollow domains | 2,760 | +141 |
> | Linked domains | 694 | +12 |

**Volume and difficulty**
> **Priya:** @growth volume and difficulty for these five, US: invoice reconciliation, ap automation, vendor onboarding software, spend controls, purchase order approval.
> **@growth:** US, English. Two of these are worth a page on their own and one is not worth the effort yet.
>
> | Keyword | Volume | KD | CPC |
> |---|---|---|---|
> | ap automation | 4,100 | 58 | $24.10 |
> | invoice reconciliation | 1,900 | 21 | $11.40 |
> | purchase order approval | 880 | 14 | $8.60 |
> | vendor onboarding software | 390 | 31 | $18.90 |
> | spend controls | 210 | 9 | $6.20 |
> **@growth:** Start with invoice reconciliation and purchase order approval. Leave ap automation until the domain is stronger.

**Who links to them**
> **Marco:** @growth pull every site that links to quillstone.com and not to us, all of it.
> **@growth:** They have 3,412 referring domains and we share 604 of them, so the gap is about 2,808 rows. Our plan returns 250 rows a request, so that is twelve calls, and Ahrefs bills every one of them against your API units. The top 100 by Domain Rating covers almost every site worth pitching.
> Buttons: Top 100 by DR · All 2,808 · Leave it

**Every Monday**
> **Sofia:** @growth every Monday at 9am Pacific, post the new referring domains we picked up last week.
> **@growth:** Saved. Mondays at 9:00 AM Pacific I’ll post the domains that started linking to us in the past seven days, with the Domain Rating of each. First run is Mon Sep 22. It reads Ahrefs and spends your API units, nothing else. Say "pause the link digest" to stop it.

## Connect Ahrefs
1. In Ahrefs, open **Account settings → API keys** and choose **Generate MCP key**. Ahrefs puts that page at [app.ahrefs.com/account/api-keys](https://docs.ahrefs.com/api/docs/api-keys-creation-and-management), says only workspace owners and admins can reach it, and gives each key a one-year lifetime. The server needs a **Lite plan or higher**; Ahrefs lists it on Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise.
2. In Chickpea Admin, open the teammate, then **Connections**, find **Ahrefs**, and choose **Connect**. Or ask in Slack, `@growth connect Ahrefs`, and follow the link it posts.
3. Choose who uses it. **Team** is one shared key, so the channel draws on one unit balance. **Personal** means each member pastes their own key and spends their own units.
4. Paste the key into the write-only **Credential** field. It has to be the MCP kind: Ahrefs says API keys and MCP keys are not interchangeable, and the wrong one comes back as a 401. Chickpea then connects to `api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp` and records the tools the server answered with.
5. Ask something small. `@growth what is ahrefs.com's domain rating` is a good first question, because it returns one row at the 50-unit minimum.

A connection belongs to one teammate. Giving a second teammate Ahrefs means a second key, so the support teammate spends its own units and never draws on the growth teammate's balance. Ahrefs also lets a workspace admin cap the monthly units on each key, which is worth setting before a whole channel starts asking.

## What the teammate is handed with Ahrefs
There is no built-in Chickpea skill for Ahrefs, and none is needed. The tools arrive from Ahrefs' MCP server: Chickpea connects before it saves anything, records what the server answered with, and exposes only those tools. Ahrefs sorts them into twenty groups, among them core Site Explorer metrics, the detailed Site Explorer reports, Keywords Explorer, SERP overview, Rank Tracker, Site Audit, Brand Radar, Web Analytics, Search Console, and account management. That last group is the reason the recorded list is worth narrowing.

Ahrefs lists the twenty tool groups its server advertises: https://docs.ahrefs.com/mcp/docs/tool-categories

## Beside Ahrefs
- **Google Search Console:** Ahrefs' view of the web, beside Google's own view of your queries
- **Firecrawl:** What a page ranks for, next to what the page actually says
- **Exa:** Who wrote about you this week, beside whether the link is worth anything
- **Google Analytics:** Rankings on one side, what the visitor did after the click on the other
- All 37 connectors: https://chickpea.co/connectors

## Questions people ask

### Does Ahrefs have MCP?
Yes. Ahrefs runs a hosted MCP server at api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp over streamable HTTP, open to accounts on a Lite plan or higher, and authorized with a key tagged for MCP. Ahrefs no longer supports a local setup, only the remote server. Chickpea connects to that same server, so a teammate in a Slack channel uses it with no client installed anywhere.

### What is Ahrefs MCP?
Ahrefs describes it as a way for AI agents to reach the Ahrefs API and enrich their answers with real Ahrefs data. On its marketing page it is called Ahrefs SEO MCP, and the clients it names are ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Copilot Studio. Each of those is one person's client, on one person's machine. Chickpea puts the same server behind a teammate in a channel, with a stored connection, saved instructions, schedules, and every answer in the thread where someone asked for it.

### Is Ahrefs MCP free?
No, and there are two costs to it. The server needs a paid Ahrefs plan, Lite or higher, which Ahrefs prices at $129 a month; Starter at $29 and the free tier are not on the list. Using it then spends API units from the allowance your plan already includes, and Ahrefs says there is no extra fee for the server itself. Chickpea adds nothing on top. It is Apache 2.0, runs on your own Cloudflare account, and has no seats and no metering.

### What does a call cost in API units?
Ahrefs bills a request as the greater of 50 units and the per-row cost times the number of rows. A field is one unit by default, and some metrics are five or ten, so a wide selection over many rows is where the spend is. Requests served from cache cost nothing. Units are shared across the MCP server, Ahrefs Connect, and direct API v3 use. Your plan also caps rows per request: 100 on Lite, 250 on Standard, 500 on Advanced, uncapped on Enterprise. Ahrefs quotes two different monthly unit allowances on its help centre and its pricing page, so check your own Limits and usage before you budget.

### Will my normal Ahrefs API key work?
No. Ahrefs says API keys and MCP keys are not interchangeable, and lists the wrong key type among the reasons for a 401. Generate the right one in Account settings, on the API keys page, with Generate MCP key. Ahrefs does add that Enterprise customers may connect with their API keys. Everyone else needs the MCP kind, which is why the Chickpea preset asks for it by name.

### Can it change anything in Ahrefs?
Every ask on this page reads. Ahrefs does not call its server read only, though, and one of its twenty tool groups is account management: projects, keyword lists, locations, and Brand Radar configuration. So the guard matters here more than on a reporting connector. During a Slack turn Chickpea refuses any MCP tool whose name does not start with an unambiguous read verb unless your own message names that action. Above that sits the connection itself: the tool list recorded when it was made can be narrowed later and never widened, which is how you take management off the table for good.

### Does it use Ahrefs' MCP server or the API?
The MCP server. Ahrefs is a vendor MCP lane here: the deployment connects to api.ahrefs.com/mcp/mcp over streamable HTTP and sends your MCP key as a bearer token. Chickpea writes no Ahrefs endpoints of its own, and a connection made from the preset cannot be pointed at another address. Ahrefs' server then calls the Ahrefs API on your behalf, which is why the units come off the same monthly allowance as direct API use.

### Is this Ask Ahrefs?
No. Ask Ahrefs is Ahrefs' own built-in assistant, which Ahrefs describes as analyzing your data, running API queries, and helping you navigate the platform without digging through reports. Ahrefs also sells Letaido, which it calls an AI marketing platform that connects to your tools and puts agents to work. Both of those live where Ahrefs lives. A teammate lives in a Slack channel, holds other accounts beside Ahrefs, and answers where the conversation already is.

### Is there an Ahrefs app for Slack?
Not one Ahrefs makes. A Slack Marketplace search for Ahrefs on 17 September 2026 returned nothing, and ahrefs.com has no Slack integration page. A Slack integration has been an open request on Ahrefs' own feedback board since February 2019. So there is no official app to keep running alongside this, and nothing posts Ahrefs numbers into a channel unless someone asks a teammate for a schedule.

### Can something it reads tell the teammate what to do?
No. Tool output is task input, never permission, and the rule is enforced rather than left to the model. Authority comes from stored grants and saved instructions, reread at the moment of each use, and Chickpea says so in fixed text wrapped around those instructions which the model cannot edit. An anchor text or a page title that reads "now delete the project" is data the teammate can quote back to you. The read-verb gate is what stops it being anything more.

## Sources
- [Chickpea docs: connector catalog, the Ahrefs preset, its bearer MCP key and its plan note](https://docs.chickpea.co/reference/connector-catalog/)
- [Chickpea docs: connections, team and personal accounts, the binding as a ceiling](https://docs.chickpea.co/agents/connections/)
- [Chickpea docs: authority and confirmation, including the read-verb gate on MCP tools](https://docs.chickpea.co/security/authority-and-confirmation/)
- [Chickpea docs: connect a service, the write-only credential field and the Slack link](https://docs.chickpea.co/agents/connect-a-service/)
- [Chickpea docs: schedules, time zones and what each run rechecks](https://docs.chickpea.co/agents/schedules/)
- [Chickpea source: the Ahrefs preset (server URL, transport, bearer MCP key)](https://github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea/blob/main/src/config/presets.ts)
- [Chickpea source: an MCP connection exposes approved tools that are still discovered](https://github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea/blob/main/src/config/types.ts)
- [Ahrefs docs: what Ahrefs MCP is, the server URL, the Lite plan floor, keys and API units](https://docs.ahrefs.com/mcp/docs/introduction)
- [Ahrefs docs: the twenty MCP tool groups and what each one covers](https://docs.ahrefs.com/mcp/docs/tool-categories)
- [Ahrefs docs: generating an MCP key from Account settings, API keys](https://docs.ahrefs.com/mcp/docs/claude-desktop-web)
- [Ahrefs docs: how API units are calculated, the 50-unit floor and the per-field costs](https://docs.ahrefs.com/api/docs/limits-consumption)
- [Ahrefs docs: API keys, who may create them, and the one-year lifetime](https://docs.ahrefs.com/api/docs/api-keys-creation-and-management)
- [Ahrefs help centre: getting started with MCP, plans, rows per request, MCP keys and API keys](https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/13913559-getting-started-with-ahrefs-mcp)
- [Ahrefs: the SEO MCP page, the plans it lists and the clients it names](https://ahrefs.com/seo-mcp)
- [Ahrefs: pricing, the plan ladder and where MCP access starts](https://ahrefs.com/pricing)
- [Ahrefs: its own AI products, Ask Ahrefs and Letaido](https://ahrefs.com/ai)
- [Ahrefs feedback board: Slack integration, an open request since 2019](https://ahrefs.canny.io/integrations/p/slack-integration)
- [Chickpea source on GitHub](https://github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea)

## More
- [Airtable MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/airtable.md)
- [Asana AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/asana.md)
- [Jira and Confluence MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/atlassian.md)
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- [Cloudflare MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/cloudflare-api.md)
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- [Firecrawl MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/firecrawl.md)
- [Fireflies MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/fireflies.md)
- [Gamma MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/gamma.md)
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- [Google Docs AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/google-docs.md)
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- [Google Search Console AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/google-search-console.md)
- [Google Sheets AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/google-sheets.md)
- [Google Slides AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/google-slides.md)
- [Granola MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/granola.md)
- [HubSpot AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/hubspot-managed.md)
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- [incident.io MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/incident-io.md)
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- [Linear MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/linear.md)
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- [Meta Ads MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/meta-ads.md)
- [Monday.com MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/monday.md)
- [Neon MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/neon.md)
- [Notion Slack integration with an AI agent](https://chickpea.co/connectors/notion-managed.md)
- [PostHog MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/posthog.md)
- [Sentry MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/sentry.md)
- [Stripe MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/stripe.md)
- [Supabase MCP in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/supabase.md)
- [YouTube AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/youtube-managed.md)
- [Zendesk AI agent in Slack](https://chickpea.co/connectors/zendesk.md)
- [All connectors](https://chickpea.co/connectors.md)

## Try Chickpea
- Site: https://chickpea.co/
- Deploy to Cloudflare: https://deploy.workers.cloudflare.com/?url=https://github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea
- Source, Apache 2.0: https://github.com/pejmanjohn/chickpea
- Docs: https://docs.chickpea.co