Surfer SEO vs Ahrefs: The In-Depth Comparison SEOs Actually Need (2026)

If you are an SEO professional, content marketer, agency owner, or someone spending $100 to $500 per month on tools and still unsure whether you are picking the right ones, this article is for you. We are going to break down Surfer SEO and Ahrefs across every dimension that actually matters: what they do, what they do not do, what they cost, what real users say, and which one wins in each category.

One thing to establish upfront: these two tools are not direct competitors in the traditional sense. They solve fundamentally different problems. Treating them as direct substitutes is one of the most common mistakes SEOs make when evaluating toolstacks. That said, budget is real, and most teams pick one over the other. This article will help you make that decision intelligently.

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Quick Context: Who Built These Tools and Where They Stand Today

Ahrefs was founded in 2011 by Dmitry Gerasimenko in Singapore as a backlink analysis tool. It has since evolved into one of the two dominant all-in-one SEO platforms globally, alongside Semrush. The platform operates the world’s second-most-active web crawler after Googlebot, scanning over 8 billion pages every 24 hours. Max Productive AI It crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue as a bootstrapped company with roughly 50 employees, a remarkable figure in the SaaS world. Ahrefs is used by 44% of Fortune 500 companies and serves over 49,000 customers worldwide. Max Productive AI

Surfer SEO was founded in Wroclaw, Poland by Lucjan Suski and Michal Suski as a side project. It grew into a full content optimization platform. By 2025, Surfer had reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue, with 12,000 customers worldwide and more than 300,000 monthly visitors, with active users totaling 150,000. They Got Acquired In October 2025, the company was acquired. Surfer SEO was acquired by Positive Group, a European SaaS company focused on marketing automation and digital growth tools that expanded through acquisitions. Rankability The sale price was not disclosed. Surfer was one of three companies Positive acquired in 2025. They Got Acquired

The acquisition matters to potential buyers. Acquisitions often bring changes in roadmap, packaging, and pricing, and publicly disclosed terms of the acquisition do not include detailed pricing changes. Rankability Teams evaluating Surfer for long-term toolstack integration should factor this uncertainty into their decision.

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The Core Philosophical Difference

Before comparing features line by line, understand this: Ahrefs is a research and intelligence platform. Surfer is an execution and content optimization platform. Surfer SEO focuses on what happens after you have identified a keyword. It helps you write content that search engines actually want to rank. Ahrefs focuses on what happens before you write a single word. It helps you figure out what to write, who you are up against, and whether your site has the authority to compete. Brandonleuangpaseuth

This distinction matters enormously for budget allocation. You use Ahrefs to build strategy. You use Surfer to execute content. The teams getting the best results typically use both, treating them as sequential workflow tools rather than alternatives.

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The Database Numbers: Where Ahrefs Plays in a Different League

Any honest comparison needs to anchor itself in scale. Ahrefs operates at a data scale that very few tools can match.

Ahrefs’ external backlink index expanded from 3.3 trillion in 2022 to 35 trillion in 2025, a reported 960% increase in scope. The total keyword database expanded to 28.7 billion keywords in March 2025, up 37.98% from the previous year. Pages indexed reached 456.5 billion, up 12.94% since early 2025. SQ Magazine

Ahrefs’ infrastructure comprises 3,600 servers with 691,000 CPU cores, 4 petabytes of RAM, and nearly 500 petabytes of SSD. It crawls approximately 10 million new pages daily, up 233% from 2022’s 3 million, and updates metrics for 300 million pages every 24 hours. SQ Magazine

The platform’s backlink database updates every 15 to 30 minutes, making it the most frequently refreshed link index commercially available. Electro IQ

According to Aira’s State of Link Building Report, 64% of SEO professionals trust Ahrefs’ link data over its competitors, and 44% of SEO professionals use Ahrefs’ Domain Rating as their SEO metric of choice. My Codeless Website

Surfer operates no comparable database infrastructure. It analyzes SERPs in real time, pulling data from top-ranking pages for a given keyword. This is a fundamentally different architecture. Surfer does not store or index the web. It reads the web for the purpose of optimizing specific content documents.

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Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

Content Optimization

This is Surfer’s primary reason for existing, and it does it better than anyone.

Surfer’s Content Editor tool analyzes the top 20 to 50 search results for your target keyword and provides real-time recommendations on word count, keyword density, headings, images, and more as you write. It gives you a paint-by-numbers template for creating content optimized for search engines. Rivalflow

Users get a live content score that updates as they write, NLP-driven term suggestions, structural guidance including heading recommendations, and the ability to choose which top-ranking competitors to include or exclude from the analysis. Most content analysis tools scan the top 10 or 20 results, but Surfer lets you focus on the top 3, 5, or 10 results, or even exclude one of the top-ranking pages. Backlinko

Surfer also includes a Topical Map feature that generates content clusters for building topical authority, a Content Audit tool that monitors existing pages for ranking drops, and an AI writing assistant called Surfy. As of recent updates, Surfer introduced AI Search Guidelines for one-click citation optimization and added AI Tracker support for tracking brand visibility in Google AI-generated answers. Surfer

Ahrefs, by contrast, offers no real-time content scoring or guided writing environment. While Ahrefs has no native built-in AI assistant to rank live content, users can make their own content choices by utilizing Ahrefs’ Keyword Data, Traffic Potential Metrics, and Competitive Insights. Rank Like A Hero Ahrefs added an AI Content Helper as an add-on, but independent reviews note it is positioned as supplementary rather than as a core writing environment.

Winner for content optimization: Surfer SEO, by a wide margin.

Keyword Research

Ahrefs provides a comprehensive keyword research tool with access to global and local search data, keyword difficulty scores, and click metrics. Surfer SEO focuses on semantic keyword integration, offering suggestions directly tied to on-page optimization. While it lacks the depth of Ahrefs in raw keyword analysis, its integration with content workflows makes it a strong choice for content-focused strategies. MADX Digital

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer covers 28.7 billion keywords across 217 global locations and 10 search engines including Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and others. You get search volume, keyword difficulty, traffic potential, click-through rate distribution, SERP volatility, and parent topic clustering. With Ahrefs, users are able to see search volume, keyword difficulty, click-through rates, estimated traffic, and SERP volatility all in a single dashboard, meaning teams are not limited to determining whether a keyword ranks but can also determine whether the keyword is generating enough traffic to be worth targeting. Rank Like A Hero

Surfer’s keyword research tool provides search volume data and keyword suggestions based on semantic similarity and groups keywords into content clusters automatically, but it is not as comprehensive as other keyword research tools like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool or Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Surfer only tells you monthly search volume, difficulty, and intent, while tools like Keyword Magic Tool show additional filters including Questions, Competitive Density, SERP features, and cost per click. Backlinko

Winner for keyword research: Ahrefs, clearly.

Backlink Analysis

Ahrefs owns this category. It is the primary reason hundreds of thousands of SEOs pay for the tool.

Backlinks are a critical ranking factor, and Ahrefs is the undisputed leader regarding backlink data. Its massive index allows you to analyze the link profile of any website, seeing metrics like Domain Rating, backlink count, referring domains, and anchor text distribution. You can use Ahrefs to find broken links, spy on competitors’ link-building strategies, and prospect for new link opportunities. Rivalflow

Surfer has no backlink analysis features. None. Surfer SEO does not offer dedicated backlink analysis features. For backlink data, link building research, and competitor backlink profiles, Ahrefs is the right tool. Brandonleuangpaseuth

Winner for backlink analysis: Ahrefs, uncontested.

Technical SEO and Site Audit

Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool scans over 170 SEO issues, covering everything from duplicate content to Core Web Vitals and structured data. In April 2025, Ahrefs launched real-time Site Audit reporting with continuous crawls for near-immediate issue detection. SQ Magazine This is a powerful standalone feature that many teams use as their primary technical SEO monitoring tool.

Surfer’s technical SEO capabilities are limited to on-page signals. It can flag issues related to the content structure of a page, but it does not crawl your website, identify broken links, check server errors, audit structured data, or assess Core Web Vitals in any systematic way. For technical SEO work, Surfer is not a tool you would reach for.

Winner for technical SEO: Ahrefs.

Rank Tracking

Ahrefs includes rank tracking from the Lite plan upward, with city-level precision across devices, competitor tracking, and daily alerts for ranking changes.

Surfer’s Rank Tracker exists but has historically been an add-on. The Essential and Scale plans do not include access to Rank Tracker, Surfer’s position-tracking tool, which costs an additional $17 for 200 keywords if you want to add it on. Backlinko This is a meaningful limitation for teams that want Surfer as their primary platform.

Winner for rank tracking: Ahrefs.

AI and Content Generation

Surfer built AI into its core product early. The Surfy AI assistant helps with content creation, plagiarism checks, and keyword optimization directly inside the Content Editor. Surfer also integrates with Jasper AI for users who want a more full-featured AI writing environment, though that integration requires a separate Jasper subscription.

In 2025, Surfer introduced Workspaces for multi-domain management, an AI Tracker that supports brand visibility tracking in Gemini and other AI search platforms, and a Pre-Publish Review that checks content for readability, originality, and AI-friendly structure before publishing. Surfer

Ahrefs has added AI features, including an AI Content Helper and Brand Radar for tracking visibility across AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Brand Radar costs $199/month per AI index or $699/month for all six, on top of the base Ahrefs subscription, and independent reviews have flagged accuracy concerns, noting the 199 million prompt database does not capture every conversation and that weekly update frequency means users are always looking at slightly stale data. TECHSY

For teams focused on AI search optimization and generative engine optimization (GEO), both tools are building in this direction, but neither has fully solved it yet. Surfer’s approach is more tightly integrated with content creation. Ahrefs’ approach gives you broader monitoring at a premium price.

Winner for AI content creation: Surfer SEO. Winner for AI visibility tracking: Ahrefs (with caveats about price and accuracy).

Integrations and Workflow

Surfer SEO integrates seamlessly with popular content tools like Google Docs and WordPress, making it easy to optimize your content as you write. Its interface is clean and intuitive with a short learning curve. Ahrefs has a steeper learning curve due to its vast array of tools and reports. Rivalflow

Surfer also connects with Zapier for automation workflows, making it easier for content teams to build repeatable processes around their publishing operations. Ahrefs offers an MCP server that allows integration with AI assistants like Claude and Cursor for programmatic SEO data access, aimed at more technical users.

Winner for ease of use and content workflow integration: Surfer SEO.

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Head-to-Head Comparison Table

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Pricing: The Detailed Breakdown

Surfer SEO Pricing (2025/2026)

Surfer SEO offers three main plans as of 2026: Essential, Scale, and Enterprise. Affiliate Booster

The Essential plan costs $99 per month on a monthly basis, or $79 per month when billed annually ($948 per year). This plan is ideal for individuals and small teams who want to grow their organic traffic without needing complex setups. It integrates with Google Docs for simple workflows and focuses on core SEO tasks. Affiliate Booster It is a reasonable entry point for bloggers or freelancers publishing 10 to 20 articles per month.

The Scale plan is priced at $219 per month or $175 per month annually ($2,100 per year). This plan is designed for growing teams looking to increase content output. It includes all Essential features with higher limits and additional features to support scaling, plus tools for tracking AI visibility and weekly performance checks. Affiliate Booster

The Enterprise plan is custom-priced. It includes API access, white-labeling, SEO advisory, custom limits, and higher user seat allocations. Teams managing large content operations at agencies or enterprise organizations should contact Surfer directly.

One important note: Rank Tracker is not included in the Essential or Scale plans and costs $17 per month for 200 keywords as an add-on. If you need that feature, budget accordingly.

As of February 2025, Surfer SEO brought back their 7-day free trial. Kristian Larsen

Annual billing saves up to 17% compared to monthly payments.

Ahrefs Pricing (2025/2026)

Ahrefs restructured its pricing in early 2026 with the introduction of a Starter plan.

The Starter plan is $29 per month (monthly billing only). It gives limited access to Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer for up to 5 projects, with reports capped at 1,000 rows and 1,000 crawl credits per user per month. You cannot access Content Explorer, Portfolios, or Batch Analysis. Clarorank It is useful for site owners who want occasional keyword research without committing to a full plan.

The Lite plan costs $129 per month or approximately $108 per month annually. It covers the core Ahrefs use case of backlink analysis with 5 projects, 750 tracked keywords, and 6 months of historical data. The key limitation that surprises most buyers is that Lite does not include Content Explorer — available only from Standard upward. Clarorank

The Standard plan costs $249 per month or approximately $208 per month annually. Standard adds Content Explorer to the Lite feature set, increases tracked keywords to 2,000, and expands crawl credits and report allowances. It suits content marketers, link builders, and SEO consultants managing multiple client sites. Scribe This is the plan most professional SEOs should start with.

The Advanced plan costs $449 per month or approximately $374 per month annually. Advanced increases the user seat count to 5, raises tracked keywords to 5,000, and adds Google Looker Studio integration for custom dashboards. Most individual SEOs and small agencies do not require Advanced; it makes sense for in-house teams with dedicated SEO analysts and clients who need automated reporting. Scribe

The Enterprise plan starts at $1,499 per month on an annual commitment ($14,990 per year). At $14,990 per year, it is actually cheaper per-user than buying multiple Advanced plans if you have 5 or more team members. Coda One

Ahrefs does not offer a free trial. Ahrefs eliminated its free trial in 2025 due to service abuse and fraudulent activity, creating a significant barrier for potential customers who want to test before committing financially. Max Productive AI The Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) is a free product but is restricted to your own verified domain and excludes competitor research, rank tracking, and full keyword explorer access.

API access is not included in standard plans. An Advanced subscriber needing API access faces a minimum $949/month combined cost: $449/month for Advanced plus $500/month for API Standard. Alternative API plans range from $2,000 to $10,000/month depending on data volume requirements. Checkthat

Pricing Comparison Table

For a solo content creator or small content team, Surfer’s Essential plan at $79/month (annual) offers substantial value for what it does. For a serious SEO professional or agency that needs backlink intelligence, competitive research, and technical auditing, Ahrefs Standard at $208/month (annual) is the more complete investment.

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Review Scores Across Platforms

Ahrefs has a Capterra rating of 4.7/5 across 575 reviews. On G2, it holds a 4.5/5 rating. TrustRadius rates it 9.1/10 based on 380 reviews. Gartner Peer Insights gives it 4.6/5 from 63 reviews. However, Trustpilot has given Ahrefs a 2.0/5 rating based almost entirely on negative feedback from 270 users. Electro IQ The Trustpilot disparity is notable and tends to reflect billing and cancellation complaints rather than product quality critiques.

Surfer SEO holds a G2 score of approximately 4.8/5 across hundreds of reviews and consistently earns high marks for ease of use and content optimization quality. Surfer SEO has a slight edge in user ratings, likely because its features focus on content optimization, keyword research, and AI-driven tools that align well with users’ modern SEO needs. MADX Digital

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What Real Users Are Saying

On Reddit

Discussions on r/SEO and r/juststart frequently surface a consistent pattern: SEOs who have used both tools tend to treat them as complementary rather than competing. A recurring sentiment in community threads is that Ahrefs is the go-to for research and Surfer is the go-to for writing. Users evaluating on a tighter budget often lean toward Ahrefs as the first investment because backlink and keyword research is foundational, while content optimization tools have lower-cost alternatives like NeuronWriter or Frase. Advanced SEOs running agencies frequently mention running both in parallel, which reflects the fact that the tools do not truly overlap.

One recurring criticism of Surfer in Reddit discussions is the risk of over-optimization. Users note that chasing a high Surfer content score can lead to keyword stuffing and content that feels mechanical rather than human. Surfer SEO faces substantial criticism regarding its core methodology, with concerns centered on the potential to encourage over-optimization, keyword stuffing, and an excessive focus on achieving high scores within the tool, sometimes at the expense of content quality, readability, and genuine user value. Baytech Consulting

Ahrefs’ most common Reddit complaints center on pricing, particularly after its price increase from $99/month to $129/month for the Lite plan. Users also note the elimination of the free trial as a significant barrier for smaller teams wanting to evaluate the tool before committing.

On Capterra and G2

One G2 review from Max, director of growth at Squared Media, rated Ahrefs 5 out of 5 and noted that Ahrefs is a “renaissance tool” for anything and everything needed in SEO, adding that Semrush, SpyFu, and Moz Pro all lacked the product offering that Ahrefs has. He emphasized that navigating Ahrefs’ data is agile and that narrowing down from millions of keywords to a goldilocks zone of targets is easy thanks to robust filtering. Capterra

Negative Capterra feedback for Ahrefs includes a complaint pattern about account lockouts tied to licensing, with one reviewer noting that refusal to purchase additional licenses led to their account being locked, calling it “extremely disruptive.”

For Surfer SEO, G2 and Capterra reviews consistently praise the Content Editor’s real-time guidance, the learning speed for new SEO writers, and the Google Docs integration. Price is the most cited complaint, with multiple reviewers noting that AI credits get consumed faster than expected and that scaling up article volume pushes costs significantly higher.

On X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn

The SEO community on X trends toward a “use both or use Ahrefs first” perspective, with content-focused practitioners defending Surfer as irreplaceable for execution. A notable discussion thread from early 2025 highlighted that teams doing content at scale (30 or more articles per month) see the most ROI from Surfer, while teams doing competitive research and link building without a high content volume see the most ROI from Ahrefs.

LinkedIn discussions among SEO agency owners frequently position Ahrefs as a non-negotiable line item in the toolstack budget, with Surfer as a strong secondary investment for content teams.

On Quora

Quora threads on this topic reflect a beginner-to-intermediate audience asking which tool to start with. The most upvoted answers consistently recommend Ahrefs as the foundational investment for learning SEO research, with Surfer positioned as the tool to add once a content workflow is established. Several answers note that if budget forces a choice, Ahrefs’ breadth of use cases justifies its cost more than Surfer for someone still learning the discipline.

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Key Facts and Recent News You Should Know

1. Surfer SEO crossed $15 million ARR with under $1 million in total marketing spend over its lifetime, which Lucjan Suski confirmed in interviews. This is a testament to product-led growth.
2. The acquisition by Positive Group in October 2025 was motivated partly by risk reduction: “Every shareholder had all their net worth in a single asset: Surfer,” Lucjan told They Got Acquired. “At some point, it becomes too risky.” They Got Acquired
3. Ahrefs achieved an annual revenue of $149.1 million in 2024 Electro IQ, making it roughly 10x the revenue scale of Surfer SEO despite both operating in the broader SEO tool space.
4. Ahrefs crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue as a bootstrapped company with approximately 50 employees, translating to over $1 million in revenue per employee. Max Productive AI
5. In January 2026, Ahrefs introduced a $29 Starter plan, cutting entry price by 70%, signaling an attempt to lower the acquisition barrier as competition in the SEO tools market intensifies. Aeoengine
6. Ahrefs launched Brand Radar in 2026 for tracking brand visibility across 150 million+ prompts on AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AI Overviews, and AI Mode — a direct response to the shift toward AI-driven search.
7. Surfer added Workspaces in early 2026 for multi-domain management, AI Search Guidelines for citation optimization, and Mention Gap plus Sentiment Analysis features to identify exactly where competitors are outperforming you in AI search. Surfer
8. The SEO tool market is navigating a structural shift with the rise of AI search. Both Surfer and Ahrefs are adapting their roadmaps to address GEO (generative engine optimization), but neither has fully delivered a native AI search optimization solution as of April 2026.

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Category-by-Category Winner Summary

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Who Should Choose Surfer SEO

You are a content writer, content strategist, or content-led agency. Your primary workflow involves writing and publishing blog posts, landing pages, or articles at volume. You want real-time guidance while writing that tells you what topics to cover, how long your content should be, what terms to use, and how your content scores against competitors. You are not doing deep link building campaigns or competitive technical audits. Your team is small and you need tools that anyone can pick up and use within a day.

You are also a good Surfer candidate if you are an Ahrefs user who already has research covered and wants to improve your content execution results. The combination of Ahrefs for research and Surfer for execution is one of the most common power-user setups in professional SEO.

Budget range where Surfer makes sense: $79 to $219 per month.

Who Should Choose Ahrefs

You are an SEO professional, agency, or in-house team that needs comprehensive keyword intelligence, deep competitive research, backlink auditing, and technical site monitoring. You are building link acquisition strategies, diagnosing why competitors rank above you, tracking ranking movements across a portfolio of sites, and auditing for technical issues that silently suppress organic performance. You need data you can trust to make business decisions, and you need a database large enough to reflect the actual competitive landscape in your niche.

You are also a good Ahrefs candidate if you are newer to SEO and want a single tool that teaches you strategy through exploration. Ahrefs’ data depth rewards curious, analytical users who want to understand how rankings work.

Budget range where Ahrefs makes sense: $129 to $449 per month for most professional use cases.

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The Honest Verdict

Ahrefs is the more powerful tool by most objective measures. Its data infrastructure is genuinely extraordinary, its feature breadth covers nearly every aspect of SEO outside of content writing, and its trust in the professional community is backed by decade-long consistency. If you are going to own one SEO tool and you work in a competitive landscape, Ahrefs is the foundational investment.

Surfer SEO is the more specialized tool, and within its specialty, it is best in class. No other tool provides the same quality of real-time content guidance during the writing process. For content-heavy operations where volume and optimization quality both matter, Surfer directly impacts output quality in a way that shows up in rankings.

The comparison that catches most buyers off guard: these are not competing tools. They occupy different parts of the SEO workflow, and the teams outperforming in organic search tend to use both. If budget forces a choice, start with Ahrefs. If you already have research covered, add Surfer. If you are a content-first operation with limited technical SEO needs, Surfer alone can carry significant weight.

What you should avoid is treating a high Surfer content score as a substitute for a real SEO strategy, or treating Ahrefs keyword data as a substitute for well-optimized content. Both tools have ceiling effects when used in isolation. The ceiling rises considerably when they work together.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can Surfer SEO replace Ahrefs? No. Surfer does not offer backlink analysis, technical site auditing, or comprehensive keyword research. Ahrefs can partially cover content research through Content Explorer and keyword data, but it cannot replace Surfer’s real-time content editor.

Is Ahrefs worth the price increase from $99 to $129 for Lite? For users who rely heavily on backlink analysis and keyword research, yes. The data quality and update frequency justify the premium. For users who primarily needed Ahrefs for basic keyword volume checks, the price increase makes alternatives like SE Ranking more competitive at the entry tier.

Does Surfer SEO actually improve rankings? Used properly, yes. The tool’s recommendations are grounded in what the top-ranking pages are actually doing for a given keyword. The risk is over-optimization. Content that hits a 90 Content Score but reads mechanically may underperform content that scores 70 but reads naturally and answers the query better.

Which tool is better for a beginner? Surfer has a shorter learning curve for content writers. Ahrefs has more depth for someone learning SEO strategy. If you are a writer, start with Surfer. If you are learning SEO comprehensively, start with Ahrefs. Surfer is the better choice for the content and optimization side of SEO, while Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is superb for analyzing existing pages. Rankability

How has the Surfer SEO acquisition affected the product? As of the current date, the core Surfer product continues shipping regular updates including new AI features, Workspaces, and expanded AI search tracking. The long-term roadmap impact of the Positive Group acquisition remains to be seen over the next 12 to 24 months.