Ahrefs, founded in 2010, has grown steadily into one of the leading SEO tool providers globally. As of now, the company maintains a team of around 171 full‑time employees, supports more than 49,000 domains as customers, and generates roughly $149.1 million in annual revenue. This growth has major implications, from driving product innovation and AI‑search tools to shaping how small businesses leverage SEO at scale. In this article, we’ll explore not just how many people work at Ahrefs, but how the team has expanded, where they work, how fast growth has been, and how Ahrefs compares to other SEO platforms.

How Many People Work At Ahrefs?

  • Ahrefs has 171 total employees across all roles and functions.
  • Engineering makes up about 15% of the team (≈ 25 engineers), while about 11% are in marketing (≈ 19 employees).
  • Annual revenue reached $149.1 million in 2024.
  • As of recent estimates, a significant portion of Fortune 500 companies, potentially over 40%, have interacted with Ahrefs’ tools.
  • Ahrefs operates with a distributed team, 151 teammates across 27 locations globally.
  • The company remains fully bootstrapped; Ahrefs has had $0 in external funding.
  • Its headquarters are in Singapore, but the team spans multiple countries.

Recent Developments

  • In its 2024 Roundup, Ahrefs introduced new AI features like AI Content Helper, Content Grader, and improvements to Site Audit, signaling a push deeper into AI‑assisted SEO tools.
  • Ahrefs continues to build out its data infrastructure, and servers, indexing, and crawling metrics have been significantly expanded.
  • New product features emphasize real‑time auditing, more languages in translation tools, and improved reporting and automation in toolsets.
  • The company increased its indexed pages, as of March 2025, 456.5 billion pages indexed, up ~12.94% from early 2025.
  • External backlink tracking surged, from 3.3 trillion in 2022 to ~35 trillion by 2025, a ~960% increase.
  • The domain index also jumped, 267.6 million domains indexed by March 2025, up ~24.87% from late 2024.
  • Ahrefs improved rating scores, 4.7/5 on Capterra, 4.5/5 on G2.

Ahrefs’ Current Team (Key People)

  • Dmytro (Dmitry) Gerasymenko – CEO and Founder, guiding Ahrefs’ long‑term strategy, product vision, and overall leadership.
  • Igor Pikovets – Chief Technology Officer, responsible for engineering direction, infrastructure, and technical systems.
  • Tim Soulo – Chief Marketing Officer & Product Advisor, leading marketing, brand, and product narrative, and helping shape the product roadmap through customer insight.
  • Leadership includes a General Counsel (Byron Karuppiah), who oversees legal and compliance functions.
  • Heads of Product Marketing, Partnerships, PR & Event Marketing, and International Marketing & Localization are part of the leadership team, managing domain‑specific strategy and execution.
  • Sam Oh – VP of Marketing, especially known for oversight of video content and channels such as YouTube, contributing to content‑driven growth.
  • Key individuals also include the leadership behind content, enterprise sales, and localization, ensuring global reach and relevance.

Ahrefs Traffic by Channel

  • Search traffic drives the majority, with 43.8% of total site visits.
  • Direct traffic closely follows at 42.3%, showing strong brand recognition and return visitors.
  • Social media contributes 13.1%, highlighting its role in discovery and engagement.
  • Paid traffic accounts for only 0.5%, indicating minimal reliance on ads across surveyed sites.
  • Email traffic is extremely low at just 0.2%, suggesting limited newsletter or campaign impact.
  • LLM (Large Language Model) traffic is emerging but still negligible at 0.1%, reflecting the early-stage influence of AI-generated search or referrals.
Ahrefs Traffic By Channel
(Reference: Ahrefs)

Employee Count Overview

  • Total employees: 171 full‑time employees as of 2025.
  • Engineering team, ~ 25 engineers (~15% of total).
  • Marketing team, ~ 19 employees (~11% of total).
  • Ahrefs has 151 teammates working across 27 locations globally.
  • No external funding, Ahrefs remains bootstrapped, which influences hiring pace, salary structure, and growth incentives.
  • There’s no publicly available official figure for the full distribution of roles beyond engineering and marketing.
  • Ahrefs’ leadership structure is distributed, and the company emphasizes a flat, lean structure.
  • Job postings and “Meet the team” info show job titles across product, engineering, marketing, and data, but exact headcounts per function beyond engineering and marketing are less visible.

Team Growth Trends

  • Ahrefs crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark around 2021, and by 2024, ARR had reached $149.1 million.
  • The company’s team size is about 171 full‑time employees as of 2025.
  • Although revenue has grown strongly year‑over‑year, data on the employee growth rate is less transparent. Ahrefs has maintained a relatively lean team while scaling infrastructure and data volumes.
  • As new features (AI Content Helper, Content Grader, etc.) have rolled out, there’s evidence that Ahrefs has increased hiring in product, engineering, and data roles.
  • In parallel, the infrastructure behind Ahrefs has expanded, with data indexing, servers, and page‑crawling capacities all showing sharp increases, implying growth in backend teams.
  • The ratio revenue‑per‑employee has remained high, indicating that Ahrefs has not ballooned headcount in direct proportion to revenue.
  • The company’s culture and public statements suggest prioritizing efficiency and careful scaling over rapid hires.
  • Ahrefs has reliably increased its data volumes (backlinks, domains, pages indexed) while keeping its employee count modest relative to competitors.

AI Assistant vs Google Rankings: Overlap Insights (Ahrefs Study)

  • Perplexity shows the highest Google Top 10 overlap at 28.6%, with only 7.3% beyond the top 10 and 64.1% not ranking at all.
  • ChatGPT (in-text citations) aligns with Google Top 10 results 8.0% of the time, 8.8% beyond Top 10, and 83.2% of its sources are not ranked.
  • ChatGPT (references) performs similarly with 6.1% in the Top 10, 9.2% beyond Top 10, and 84.7% not ranking on Google.
  • Gemini matches Top 10 results in 8.6% of cases, 6.5% beyond Top 10, and 84.9% of sources not ranking.
  • Copilot has the lowest overlap, with only 8.2% in the Top 10 and a high 86.7% of sources not ranked on Google.
AI Assistant vs Google Rankings: Overlap Insights (Ahrefs Study)
(Reference: Ahrefs)

Ahrefs Employee Growth Rate

  • Revenue growth (from ~$100 million in 2021 to $149.1 million by 2024) suggests strong scaling pressures that likely pushed gradual hiring growth in supporting roles.
  • The infrastructure metrics (indexed pages, number of domains, external backlinks), which have been growing quickly, imply backend team growth to handle that load.
  • Customer growth segments (not employee metrics but useful as a proxy), especially in small businesses and startups, have expanded, meaning support, marketing, and customer success roles may have scaled.
  • Because Ahrefs remains bootstrapped and does not have external venture funding, hiring tends to be more measured, tied to cash flow, and ROI.
  • It is likely the annual employee growth rate is single‑digit to low‑double‑digit percentage, given revenue grew ~50% between 2021‑2024, but employee count did not multiply similarly.
  • As of 2025, the ratio of revenue per employee remains among the strongest figures in SaaS. (Revenue ÷ headcount suggests high efficiency.)

Comparison: Ahrefs vs Other SEO Platforms Employee Size

  • Semrush, a major competitor, has about 1,600 employees worldwide.
  • Ahrefs, with ~171 employees, is much smaller in headcount compared to Semrush, but has a strong margin between revenue and employees, suggesting higher revenue per employee.
Competitor Comparison
  • Moz, Majestic, SpyFu, etc., do not publish recent, reliable headcount data, so direct comparisons are limited.
  • In terms of infrastructure and data scale (pages crawled, domains indexed, backlinks tracked), Ahrefs often competes well with larger platforms despite fewer employees.
  • Feature‑wise, while Semrush has broader toolsets (including PPC, reputation management, etc.), Ahrefs focuses on backlink analysis, keyword research, and site audits. That specialization allows learner teams.
  • The greater employee size at Semrush and others reflects a wider product scope and possibly greater customer support demands.
  • Ahrefs’ lean model is often cited in analyses as a strength, making large data infrastructure and product improvements with relatively smaller teams.
  • It’s likely that for similar infrastructure‑heavy tasks, Ahrefs spreads responsibilities across specialized engineers rather than larger teams of generalists.

Employee Diversity at Ahrefs

  • Ahrefs’ public “About” page does not publish detailed diversity breakdowns by gender, race, or other protected classes.
  • We know the company has 151 teammates working across 27 locations worldwide. That suggests some geographic diversity.
  • The leadership is fairly global; founder Dmitry Gerasymenko is Ukrainian‑born, the company is headquartered in Singapore, and many roles are remote or dispersed.
  • Ahrefs emphasizes hiring multi‑skilled individuals who often wear multiple hats, which can lead to more mixed and hybrid roles.
  • There is no public data (as of mid‑2025) showing the percentage of women vs men among its employees.
  • Similarly, there is no published data showing racial or ethnic representation among Ahrefs staff.
  • The company does not appear to publish a formal Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) report.
  • Based on job listings and “Meet the team” material, employees appear to come from a mix of regions, but no solid numbers confirm diversity in seniority or underrepresented groups.

Ahrefs Traffic Overview

  • Ahrefs received 23.8 million visits in April 2025, confirming its strong global user base.
  • Global rank: Ahrefs holds the 2,065th position worldwide, although this reflects a slight drop in global visibility.
  • Country rank in India: Improved to #584, signaling rising popularity in a key growth market.
  • Category rank in Advertising and Marketing: Climbed to #12, placing Ahrefs among the top-tier SEO platforms globally.
  • Authority score: A solid 76, indicating strong domain credibility and a robust backlink profile.
  • Primary categories: Listed under Advertising and Marketing, Computer Software and Development, and Online Services.
  • Traffic cost and ad spend metrics are locked, but their presence signals value for paid traffic analysis.
Ahrefs Traffic Overview
(Reference: Inblog)

Ahrefs Hiring Statistics

  • The total team size is 171 employees as of 2025.
  • Engineering team, 25 people (~15% of the overall team).
  • Marketing team, 19 people (~11% of the overall team).
  • Number of locations (where employees are based): 27.
  • Headquarters, Singapore.
  • Ahrefs has no external funding; it remains bootstrapped. That affects hiring pace and scale.
  • Hiring is selective. Ahrefs reportedly only expands its team when needed, favoring multi‑skilled individuals.
  • There is no dedicated sales team; revenue comes via inbound/self-serve channels. That likely reduces hiring in some roles that competitors have.
  • Employee benefit reported, in December 2024, the company paid a bonus equal to ≈43% of the year‑to‑date salary to its employees.
  • The company structure is fairly flat; roles like recruiting and onboarding are handled by team leads rather than the full HR department.

Key Employee Milestones and Achievements

  • Ahrefs achieved $149.1 million in annual revenue by 2024.
  • The team has grown to 171 full‑time employees in diverse roles.
  • Engineering has ~25 people, marketing ~19.
  • Ahrefs has invested heavily in infrastructure since 2017, spending $122 million on on‑premise infrastructure (servers, colocation, etc.).
  • Company retains its bootstrapped status (i.e. $0 in external funding).
  • Paid a significant employee bonus (~43% of YTD salary) in December 2024.
  • Ahrefs has expanded its global presence, 27 locations for teammates.
  • The “About” page states “Teammates: 151” as of some point, which is slightly different from some external sources (171), reflecting perhaps growth or counting methods.

Ahrefs Headquarters and Global Offices

  • Ahrefs is headquartered in Singapore.
  • The official address is listed as 7 Straits View #08‑02, Singapore, Singapore.
  • The team operates across 27 locations globally (remote + office‑based).
  • They maintain a distributed team model, and many employees work remotely or in satellite cities.
  • Infrastructure investments include multiple data centers/colocation facilities to support indexing, crawling, and data storage.
  • The HQ location in Singapore acts as a hub for leadership, product, and operations.
  • The global team includes teammates across many countries, and job postings indicate the capacity to hire in multiple regions.
  • No detailed public map of all office or co‑working spaces; the About page simply mentions “locations,” which likely mixes formal offices and remote clusters.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How many full‑time employees does Ahrefs have in 2025?

Ahrefs has 171 full‑time employees as of 2025.

What is the size of Ahrefs’ engineering and marketing teams (in number and share)?

The engineering team is about 25 people (≈ 15% of the total staff), and the marketing team is about 19 people (≈ 11%).

By what percentage has Ahrefs’ employee count increased over the past 3 years, from 2022 to 2025?

Ahrefs’ employee count grew by approximately 58.43% from 89 people in 2022 to its current number.

What bonus did Ahrefs employees receive, expressed as a percentage of their year‑to‑date salary?

Employees received an annual bonus equivalent to approximately 43% of their year‑to‑date salary.

Conclusion

Ahrefs stands out not just for its revenue, but also for how lean and efficient the team is. The company remains bootstrapped, keeps decision‑making centralized, and avoids rapid expansion for its own sake. While public data on diversity is notably thin, geographic distribution is broad, and many roles operate in a multi‑skilled, cross‑functional mode.

For readers interested in how Ahrefs manages that level of output with relatively modest headcount, or how it stacks up against competitors in terms of employee size, hiring practices, and global footprint, the full breakdown ahead offers deeper insights into trends, comparisons, and what might come next.

References

  • Statista
  • Statista
  • Ahrefs
  • Ahrefs
  • Growjo
  • Jonathan Rintala
  • Marketer Milk
  • Robert A. Lee

    Robert A. Lee

    Senior Editor


    Robert A. Lee is a journalist at SQ Magazine who unpacks the fast-moving worlds of gaming and internet trends. He tracks everything from major game launches to the viral trends shaping how we connect, play, and share online. With a keen eye for the intersections of technology, entertainment, and community, Robert translates the noise of digital life into stories that spark curiosity and insight.
    Disclaimer: Content on SQ Magazine is for informational and educational purposes only. Please verify details independently before making any important decisions based on our content.

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