How to Remove a Member From an Ahrefs Shared Workspace (Step by Step)
It is Thursday afternoon, a contractor’s last day is Friday, and their Ahrefs seat is still active. I run Ahrefs seats for a twelve-person SEO team, and I have done this exact offboarding dozens of times. The good news is that the removal path is short, and once you know where the controls live, it takes about two minutes. The bad news is that if you skip a step, a departed freelancer can keep pulling keyword data on your dime for weeks.
This walkthrough is the ordered version I use when someone leaves: what to check before you touch anything, the exact click path to remove a member, what happens to your seat count and billing afterward, and the edge cases that catch people out. If you want the official reference open in a second tab while you work, the Ahrefs documentation on how to remove from ahrefs workspacew covers the same ground from the product side and is worth reading alongside these steps.
Before You Remove Anyone: Prerequisites and Permissions
Only workspace owners and admins can remove members. If the “Remove” option is missing or greyed out when you open a member’s row, that is almost always a permissions issue rather than a bug. Ask the workspace owner to either do the removal themselves or promote you to admin first. In agency setups, the owner is often a founder who is not in the tool day to day, so confirm this before Friday rather than at 5pm on Friday.
Second, decide what happens to the work the person owned. Ahrefs does not transfer ownership of projects or saved reports automatically when a member leaves. If your contractor built dashboards, ran site audits, or set up rank tracking that the team still relies on, capture that context now. Screenshot the key reports, note the project names, and reassign the ongoing work to a remaining member. Removing a person is clean; removing the only person who knew how a report was configured is not.
Third, check whether the person is also the billing contact. If they are, change the billing details to a finance or ops address before you remove them, otherwise invoices and renewal notices may start bouncing to a dead inbox. This is a five-minute task that prevents a genuinely annoying month-end problem.
Finally, confirm whether the person is a member of more than one shared workspace. Agencies frequently run separate workspaces per client or per department. Removing someone from the main workspace does not remove them from a client-specific one. If you want a clean offboard, list every workspace they appear in and work through them one at a time.
How to Remove a Member From an Ahrefs Shared Workspace
Once you are inside the workspace as an owner or admin, the removal itself is a short sequence. The interface changes occasionally, but the logic has stayed consistent: member settings live under the workspace administration area, not under your personal account settings. If you find yourself in personal billing or profile screens, you are in the wrong place.
Step 1 — Open the workspace member list. From your Ahrefs dashboard, open the workspace menu and go to the members or team section. You should see a table of everyone with access, their role, and their status. If you see only your own name, you are looking at your personal account rather than the shared workspace, so switch workspaces from the selector at the top.
Step 2 — Locate the person’s row. Use the search or filter if the list is long. Check the email address carefully, not just the display name. Contractors often appear under personal Gmail addresses that look nothing like their work identity, and it is easy to remove the wrong person if you go by name alone.
Step 3 — Confirm their role. Note whether they are an admin, a standard member, or a limited-access user. This matters because admins can invite others and change settings. If you are removing an admin, do a quick pass afterward to confirm no unexpected invites were sent.
Step 4 — Use the remove action on that row. Open the member’s options and choose the remove or delete option. Ahrefs will ask you to confirm, because removal is immediate and the person loses access right away. Read the confirmation dialog before you click through; it sometimes offers a role change as an alternative, and you want removal, not a downgrade.
Step 5 — Refresh and verify. Reload the member list. The person should no longer appear. If they still show up, you may have removed them from a different workspace than the one you are viewing, or the page is serving a cached view. Log out and back in before you assume the removal failed.
Permission Edge Cases That Cause Leftover Access
The straightforward case is a standard member in a single workspace. Real agency life is messier, and these are the situations that leave people with access after you think you have removed them.
Multiple workspaces. As mentioned, membership is per workspace. A departing contractor with access to your main workspace and two client workspaces needs three separate removals. Build a checklist and tick each one off.
Pending invitations. If you invited someone and they never accepted, they may not appear in the active member list at all. Look for a separate pending or invited tab and cancel those invitations. An unaccepted invite is still a live door into your workspace.
Shared logins. If your team ever shared a single login instead of using individual seats, removing a named member does nothing to stop access through the shared credentials. This is the single most common cause of “I removed them but they are still in the account.” The fix is to change the shared password and move the team onto individual seats.
API keys and integrations. Ahrefs API access is tied to the account or workspace rather than to a person’s seat in every configuration. If your contractor set up an integration or held an API token, rotate that token as part of the offboard. Removing the seat does not automatically invalidate a key they already copied.
Third-party connections. Tools like reporting dashboards or Looker Studio connectors that authenticate with an Ahrefs account may keep working until the underlying credential is revoked. Check your connected apps list and disconnect anything the departing person set up.
What Happens to Seats and Billing After Removal
This is the part finance cares about, and it is where expectations often diverge from reality. Removing a member frees up their seat in the workspace. It does not automatically reduce your next invoice unless your plan is billed by seat count and you are below a threshold that triggers a lower tier.
Most Ahrefs plans are billed at the workspace level with a set number of seats included. If you are on a plan with a fixed seat allowance, removing one person simply gives you a free seat to assign to the next hire. Your bill stays the same. If you are paying for additional seats beyond the included allowance, removing a member should reduce the add-on charge, but the change typically takes effect at the next billing cycle rather than immediately. Do not expect a same-day refund or a prorated credit for the remainder of the current period.
Practical steps after removal: confirm the seat count in your plan settings reflects the change, check that the freed seat is not accidentally reassigned to a pending invite, and note the date so you can verify the next invoice matches your expectation. If the invoice does not line up, raise it with support before the following cycle so the correction is easier to trace.
One more billing detail worth knowing: if the removed person was listed as the account owner or billing contact, removal can leave the workspace without a valid payer. Ahrefs generally prevents you from removing the last owner, but it is worth confirming you have at least one active owner with current billing details before you finish the offboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I remove myself from an Ahrefs shared workspace?
Yes, a member can usually leave a workspace from their own account settings, provided they are not the sole owner. If you are the last owner, you will need to transfer ownership to another admin first, because a workspace cannot be left without an owner. If you are a standard member and the leave option is missing, ask an admin to remove you from their side instead.
Does removing a member delete their projects and saved reports?
No. Projects, saved reports, and rank tracking setups live in the workspace, not in the person’s seat. Removing the member revokes their access but leaves the data intact for the remaining team. This is why it is worth documenting how key reports were configured before the person leaves, so the next person can pick them up without guesswork.
Why can I not see the remove option for a member?
The most common reasons are insufficient permissions, being in the wrong workspace, or the person being a pending invite rather than an active member. Confirm you are an owner or admin, check the workspace selector at the top of the dashboard, and look for a separate pending invitations list. If all three check out and the option is still missing, contact Ahrefs support with the workspace name and the member’s email.
How quickly does access stop working?
Removal takes effect immediately. The person is signed out of the workspace and cannot access shared projects, reports, or keyword data on their next action. Any API tokens or third-party integrations they configured are a separate matter and should be rotated manually as part of the same offboarding pass.
Will removing a member lower my bill right away?
Usually not on the same day. Seat changes typically apply at the next billing cycle. If you are on a plan with included seats, your bill may not change at all — you simply gain a seat to reassign. If you pay for extra seats, the reduction should show on the following invoice. Check your plan settings after removal to confirm the seat count updated as expected.
