What Is DR3? Ahrefs Domain Rating Before DR4

DR3 is the name Ahrefs now gives to the version of Domain Rating it used right before DR4. Until DR4 arrived, the "DR" that Ahrefs showed was DR3, and so was the number most SEO tools passed on from it.

Ahrefs introduced DR4 on November 5, 2026 as the fourth iteration of the metric, and its API now takes version=dr3 or version=dr4. Ahrefs has not published a history of the earlier versions or a launch date for DR3, so in practice "DR3" means "the Domain Rating model in use right before DR4".

How DR3 is calculated

Ahrefs does not disclose the exact formula, but its Domain Rating glossary and its long-standing explanation of DR describe the idea, which works much like PageRank between websites rather than pages:

1. Find the linking domains. Every website with at least one followed link to the target counts once. Extra links from the same website do not add more.
2. Weigh each linking domain by its own DR. A link from a strong website passes more than a link from a weak one.
3. Split by how many websites it links to. A website that links out to thousands of domains passes less to each of them than a selective one.
4. Put the result on a logarithmic 0–100 scale, relative to every other website in Ahrefs' index.

A few consequences follow:

• Nofollow links do not pass DR.
• It is site-wide. DR describes a whole domain; page-level strength is a different Ahrefs metric (URL Rating).
• It is relative. Your DR3 can change because other websites gained links, not just because you did.
• It is logarithmic. Going from DR 54 to 55 is far easier than going from 84 to 85.

What DR3 did not account for

DR4 was designed to fix a few blind spots in DR3:

• Search traffic of the linking site. DR3 did not give extra weight to links from websites that actually get visitors from search. A website nobody visits could pass as much as a popular publication with the same DR that links to as many websites.
• Subdomains. A subdomain usually showed its root domain's DR3. A brand-new site on a free blogging or hosting platform could therefore display a DR in the 90s.
• Spam. Domains Ahrefs labels as spam could keep high DR3 scores.

Subdomains show the effect most clearly: in DR Checker's data, 95% of them score lower under DR4. See DR4 vs DR3 for how 4,002 websites tracked by DR Checker were affected.

Is DR3 going away?

DR4 rolls out in the Ahrefs interface on December 1, 2026. Ahrefs says DR3 will stay available in its API for a short period afterwards so people can compare the two, without giving an end date.

DR Checker keeps every DR3 value it has recorded, so the history on each domain page stays readable after Ahrefs stops serving DR3.

When DR3 still matters

• Historical reports. Keep a DR trend in one model. Ahrefs has not said when DR3 started, and DR4 has been in the API since November 5, 2026, so note where each point came from and which model it uses, and start DR4 as a separate series rather than mixing them.
• Old benchmarks and listings. Guest-post marketplaces, domain sale listings and link-building quotes usually show a "DR" without saying which model. Check both scores yourself before you pay for anything priced on DR.
• Questions worth asking. If a website's DR4 is far below its DR3, look at what changed for it: a subdomain is now rated on its own, and links count differently. The gap alone does not prove that its links are weak, manipulated or labelled as spam.

Check DR3 and DR4 for any website

Enter a domain on the DR Checker homepage to see its DR3 and DR4 side by side when both are available, with the history DR Checker has recorded. For the new model, read What is DR4?; for the basics of the metric, start with What is Domain Rating?