TL;DR: For most people switching off Semrush, Ahrefs covers the deepest backlink and keyword data, SE Ranking is the closest match on features for close to half the price, and SpyFu is the pick if PPC competitor research is the actual job. Every price below comes straight from that tool's own pricing page, checked August 28, 2026.
Semrush's SEO plan renewed at $139 a month for me this year, and I was using maybe a third of it: keyword research, a monthly site audit, and rank tracking for two client sites. The other two-thirds sat unused every single month. Every month.
That gap between what I paid for and what I actually opened is the reason most people end up looking at alternatives to Semrush in the first place. Semrush is not a bad product. Not even close.
Semrush's own pricing page lists four tiers now, from $139 a month for the SEO only plan up to $549 a month for the Advanced plan with AI search tracking built in, and a seven day trial to test it.
For a solo operator or a two person agency, that is a lot of tool for the job.
I manage SEO across my own sites and about a half dozen client accounts, and I do not need everything in an all in one suite. I need keyword research, rank tracking, and backlink checks, without paying for seats nobody on my team uses.
So I spent a week putting ten Semrush alternatives through the same test: real pricing pages, real feature lists, and a look at what each one actually does better than Semrush rather than just cheaper.
Why people look for something other than Semrush
Price comes up first in almost every thread on this. A Quora question asking for good Semrush alternatives for SEO and keyword research is one of at least half a dozen similar questions posted over the past few years, and the pattern in all of them is the same: people are not unhappy with what Semrush does, they are unhappy with what they are paying for parts of it they never open.
One G2 reviewer, Pedro M., an AEO coordinator at a small business, put it plainly in a review of Semrush: "The pricing fill a bit too expensive for all the monitoring parts." That is the exact complaint I hear from clients too.
The monitoring and AI visibility add ons are the parts of the newer Semrush plans that push the price up fastest, and plenty of people only want the keyword and backlink core.
The second pattern, once people start comparing Semrush competitors directly, is complexity for people who do not need the full suite. Semrush is built for teams running content, PPC, social, and technical SEO out of one login. If you only touch two or three of those, you are paying full price for a tool built around a job you are not doing.
The 10 best Semrush alternatives
1. Ahrefs
Starting price: $129 a month for the Lite plan, billed monthly, per Ahrefs' own pricing page. A free Site Explorer and Site Audit tier is also available at no cost.
Ahrefs is a backlink checker and keyword research tool that most SEOs treat as the deepest link index available. It tracks 750 keywords and includes 100,000 monthly crawl credits on the Lite plan, which is enough for a handful of small sites.
2. SE Ranking
Starting price: $129 a month, or $103.20 a month billed annually for the Core plan, according to SE Ranking's pricing page.
SE Ranking is a rank tracker and SEO toolkit that packages daily keyword tracking, a site audit, and backlink data into one seat based plan. No credit system. No surprise math.
It is the closest feature match to Semrush's own core plan on this list, for close to half the annual price.
3. SpyFu
Starting price: $39 a month, or $33 a month billed annually for the Basic plan, per SpyFu's pricing page.
SpyFu is a competitor research tool built around PPC and organic keyword overlap. Nothing more. If your actual job is finding what a rival bids on and ranks for, not running a full site audit, this is a narrower and cheaper tool than Semrush for that one task.
It is one of the closest tools to Semrush on paid search history specifically, which is why it made our full SpyFu alternatives roundup too, for anyone who wants to see how it compares the other direction.
4. Similarweb
Starting price: not published. Similarweb's own pricing page sells the self serve tier through a free trial signup and quotes businesses and enterprise plans directly through sales.
Similarweb is a web traffic and market intelligence tool, not a keyword research tool first. It is the one to reach for when the question is where a competitor's visitors actually come from, not what they rank for.
We cover it in full in our Similarweb alternatives article, which is worth a look if traffic estimates, not keywords, are the main reason you pay for Semrush.
5. Ubersuggest
Starting price: $29 a month for the Basic plan, with a seven day free trial, per Ubersuggest's pricing page.
Ubersuggest is Neil Patel's keyword and site audit tool, built for people who want the core research features without an agency price tag.
The Basic plan covers one project with 125 tracked keywords, which fits a single small site more than a multi client workload.
6. Screaming Frog
Free for crawls up to 500 URLs. The paid SEO Spider licence, per Screaming Frog's pricing page, is £199 a year per user.
Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler, not a cloud dashboard, and it is the tool most technical SEOs actually open for a real site audit: broken links, redirect chains, missing meta data, and structured data checks, all run locally instead of through a monthly seat.
7. Majestic
Starting price: $49.99 a month for the Lite plan, or $499.99 a year, according to Majestic's pricing page.
Majestic is a backlink index built around its own Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics, which some link builders still trust more than Ahrefs' or Semrush's authority scores. The Lite plan includes 1 million analysis units and 5,000 Site Explorer rows per search.
8. Sistrix
Starting price: 119 euros a month for the Start plan, with a free trial on every tier, per Sistrix's pricing page.
Sistrix is built around its own Visibility Index, a single score tracking how a domain's rankings move over time, which makes it a fair replacement for Semrush's authority and traffic tracking if a European price and support base works better for your team.
9. Surfer SEO
Starting price: $49 a month for the Discovery plan, billed yearly, per Surfer's pricing page.
Surfer is a content optimization tool first, built around scoring a draft against what is already ranking, not a full research suite.
It also sells a standalone AI Search Analytics product at $158 a month that tracks prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google, and Gemini, which matters more below.
10. Nightwatch
Starting price: 79 euros a month for the Starter plan, with a 14 day free trial and no card required, per Nightwatch's pricing page.
Nightwatch is a rank tracker built for agencies that need white label reports and Looker Studio integration without an enterprise contract.
The Starter plan tracks 500 keywords daily across 5 websites, which covers a small agency book on its own. Nothing fancier than that.
How the 10 Semrush alternatives compare on price and pricing model
Tool | Starting price | Pricing model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
Ahrefs | $129/mo | Seat plus crawl credits | Backlink depth |
SE Ranking | $129/mo ($103.20 annual) | Seat based | Closest match to Semrush |
SpyFu | $39/mo ($33 annual) | Seat based | PPC competitor research |
Similarweb | Not published | Quote or free trial | Traffic and market data |
Ubersuggest | $29/mo | Seat based | Solo site owners |
Screaming Frog | Free up to 500 URLs, £199/yr paid | Per user licence | Technical site audits |
Majestic | $49.99/mo | Seat plus analysis units | Backlink authority metrics |
Sistrix | 119 euros/mo | Seat based | European teams |
Surfer SEO | $49/mo | Seat plus document credits | Content optimization |
Nightwatch | 79 euros/mo | Seat based | Agency rank tracking |
Watch for credit or unit based pricing, not just the sticker price
The sticker price on a plan is not the whole story. Some of these tools bill by the seat, which is predictable, and some bill by credits, units, or prompts, which can run out mid month and change what a tool actually costs you.
Ahrefs' Lite plan includes 100,000 crawl credits a month, and only internal pages that load successfully spend them, so a site with a lot of broken links can burn through a monthly allowance faster than the raw page count suggests.
Majestic prices around "analysis units" instead of seats: the Lite plan includes 1 million a month, and a single bulk backlink pull can use a big share of that in one search.
Otterly, one of the newer AI visibility tools, sells its Lite plan on 15 prompts a month for $29, which sounds cheap until you realize that is roughly two search terms tracked daily. Semrush itself avoids this exact problem on its core SEO plan by tracking keywords, not credits, which is one thing its own pricing page does clearly.
Before you commit to any tool on this list, check whether the plan you are looking at is priced on seats, which is predictable, or on credits, units, or prompts, which can run out mid month if your site is bigger or messier than you expect.
If you also want to track AI Overviews and chatbot citations, not just rankings
Semrush's own Starter plan now bundles 50 tracked AI prompts a month into its $199 tier, which tells you the company sees AI visibility as part of the core job now, not an add on. That is a real decision to make when you switch, not an afterthought.
If tracking whether your pages get cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews matters as much as classic rankings, two of the tools above already cover it.
Surfer's standalone AI Search Analytics product tracks 100 prompts a day across four AI engines for $158 a month.
Otterly's Lite plan starts at $29 a month for 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot, and its Standard plan at $189 a month adds API and MCP access if you want to pull the data into your own reports. Pick one, not both.
How to actually switch off Semrush without losing your history
The mechanics of the move itself are what actually stall most people, more than picking a new tool does.
Before you cancel, export your project list, your saved keyword lists, and your position tracking history as CSV files.
Semrush does not carry any of that to a new tool automatically, and once your subscription ends, the historical charts go with it.
Run your new tool alongside Semrush for two to four weeks rather than cutting over in one day, so your rank tracking has a chance to build its own baseline before you lose the old one.
The one thing that actually breaks on the way out is any saved report or dashboard you have shared with a client through Semrush's own report builder. Rebuild those in the new tool before the old login stops working, not after.
Which alternative is closest to Semrush if you do not want to relearn your workflow
SE Ranking is the honest answer here. It packages rank tracking, a site audit, keyword research, and backlink data into one seat based dashboard the same way Semrush does, and its Core plan interface maps onto Semrush's own layout closely enough that switching does not mean relearning where everything lives.
Ahrefs comes close on raw data depth but organizes its tools more separately, so it feels less like a straight swap and more like a different way of working.
Which one fits your situation
If you run a two or three person agency billing clients for reports, use Nightwatch or SE Ranking. Both include white label reporting without an enterprise contract.
If your main job is PPC competitor research rather than organic SEO, use SpyFu. It is built around ad and keyword overlap first, which Semrush treats as one feature among many.
If you run one or two sites solo and mainly need keyword ideas and a monthly audit, use Ubersuggest or the free tier of Screaming Frog. Neither charges for seats you are not using.
If you manage an enterprise team that needs AI visibility tracking alongside classic rankings, use SE Ranking's built in AI prompt tracking or pair Ahrefs with Otterly or Surfer's AI Search Analytics product.
FAQs
Do Semrush alternatives use credits or limits that change the real cost?
Some do. Ahrefs and Majestic price part of their plans on crawl credits or analysis units instead of flat seats, and Otterly prices on a set number of AI prompts a month. Check the unit, not just the sticker price, before you commit.
Is there a free alternative to Semrush?
Screaming Frog is free for crawls up to 500 URLs, and Ahrefs offers a free tier of its Site Explorer and Site Audit tools. Neither replaces Semrush's full feature set, but both cover a real slice of it at no cost.
Which Semrush alternative is closest to Semrush's own features?
SE Ranking. It covers rank tracking, site audits, keyword research, and backlinks in one seat based plan the way Semrush does, for close to half the price of Semrush's own Core SEO plan.
Is Ahrefs actually better than Semrush?
Neither is strictly better. Ahrefs has the deeper backlink index and a free tier Semrush does not offer. Semrush covers a wider set of adjacent tools, including AI prompt tracking, inside one login. The right pick depends on whether backlink depth or an all in one dashboard matters more to you.
Does Semrush have a free trial?
Yes. Semrush's own pricing page lists a seven day trial across its paid plans, with no free ongoing tier.
My picks
Ahrefs if backlink depth is the main reason you pay for a tool at all. SE Ranking if you want the closest match to what Semrush already does, at close to half the price.
SpyFu if PPC competitor research, not organic SEO, is the actual job.
Pricing and features verified August 28, 2026, direct from each tool's own pricing page.