Semrush alternatives with prices you can check

By Michael Nefedov, noetio · Updated 21 October 2026

Semrush SEO costs €134.21 a month. The cheapest Semrush alternatives start at €59 (Surfer Discovery) and €61 (Mangools Basic), and Otterly Lite is €29 for AI tracking only.

Which one to pick

Pick by the job you need done. Prices are monthly billing, in the currency each vendor shows.

• AI answer tracking on a small budgetOtterly Lite is €29 for 15 prompts a day. SE Ranking Core is €109 for 100 prompts a day, against 50 on Semrush Starter at €190.
• Rank tracking at a lower priceSE Ranking Core is €109 a month and lists 2k keywords tracked daily, against 500 on the €134.21 Semrush SEO plan.
• A short keyword listMangools Basic is €61 a month in the AIO + SEO bundle. It tracks 200 keywords, updated weekly.
• A site crawl onlyScreaming Frog is free up to 500 URLs. It is a crawler, not a suite, so run it next to another tool.
• Writing and optimizing pagesSurfer Discovery is €59 a month for 10 documents and 10 tracked pages on monthly billing. The yearly card says 120 documents.
• Try before you paySemrush The free plan needs no card, and paid plans have a 7-day trial. SE Ranking has a 14-day trial with no card.

Semrush vs the alternatives

Semrush SEO at €134.21 a month is above most entry plans here, but the limits differ.

• Entry plan of each tool, from its own page, 21 October 2026.
• Monthly column: the price if you pay month to month. Yearly column: the monthly equivalent when you pay for a year.
• Currencies are as each vendor page shows them: euro for Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Mangools, Surfer and Otterly, dollar for the rest.

Two monthly cells need a note:

• Surfer: monthly prices are Discovery €59, Standard €119, Pro €219, Peace of Mind €359 and AI Search Analytics €95. Its plan cards show the yearly rate.
• Writesonic: monthly prices are $99, $249 and $499 (USD). Its plan cards also show the yearly rate.

Semrush pricing: every plan

Semrush has a free plan and four paid tiers, and AI prompt tracking starts at Starter.

Prices: Semrush pricing page, read 21 October 2026. The page shows $ on the free plan and € on paid plans.

• Annual billing saves up to 17%.
• Extra users start at €43 a month.
• Two report add-ons: Base Report at €9.59 a month and Pro Report at €19.18 a month.
• Semrush for Enterprise has custom pricing. The Advanced plan adds API access, team users and SEO share of voice.

What Semrush gives you: 13 features

Semrush lists 13 features in three groups, from research to reporting.

• Research: keyword research, competitor analysis, AI visibility, market analysis, local search visibility, AI brand sentiment, backlink analysis, prompt research.
• Create and optimize: content creation, technical site audit, digital PR.
• Track: marketing reports, rank tracking.

The AI visibility feature covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and AI Overviews. Content creation generates full-length articles from a brief.

Where Semrush wins

Semrush lets you test before you pay, and it scales to large teams.

• The free plan needs no card.
• Paid plans have a 7-day trial. Semrush checks the card with a small charge, refunds it at once and does not charge until the trial ends.
• Cancelling, downgrading or upgrading is allowed at any time unless you signed custom terms.
• Advanced lists 40+ websites, 5,000+ keywords tracked daily and unlimited prompts. Enterprise lists SSO, audit logs and a dedicated account manager.

Where Semrush falls short

The SEO plan has no AI search tracking, and it costs more than several alternatives.

• Its card crosses out AI tracking, AI sentiment and custom prompts.
• On one unit (prompts tracked per day, monthly billing), the table below shows Semrush Starter at 50 for €190.84 a month and SE Ranking Core at 100 for €109.
• The free plan caps you at 10 reports a day, and Advanced has no public price.
• The SEO plan (€134.21) is above Ahrefs Lite (€119), SE Ranking Core (€109) and Mangools Basic (€61, the AIO + SEO bundle) on monthly billing. The limits differ, so that is not like for like.

AI prompts per day, on one unit

Put on prompts per day, SE Ranking Core and Semrush Pro+ lead with 100, and Ahrefs Lite has 5.

Vendors count AI prompts in different periods. This table puts them all on prompts per day.

• Ahrefs lists checks per month. One check is one prompt on one platform in one location, and its own table shows the same limit as 5, 10 and 20 prompts, tracked daily. 150 checks a month divided by 30 days is 5.
• Vendors may count engines and locations differently. Treat the numbers as a guide, not a proof of equal coverage.

The 8 Semrush alternatives, one by one

Each tool below trades something against the Semrush SEO plan. Each section says what you give up or gain, from that vendor's own pages.

Ahrefs

Best for: one person who needs deep keyword and backlink data.

• Lite is €119 a month for 750 tracked keywords, which Ahrefs updates weekly. Semrush SEO lists 500 keywords tracked daily.
• AI tracking on Lite is 5 prompts a day. Lite has 1 user and each extra user costs €37.40 a month.
• There is no paid-plan trial, and Ahrefs says it does not issue refunds in general.
• A €27 Starter plan also shows on the pricing page. Ahrefs' own 2024 post (written at $29) calls it credit-based, for light usage and renewable monthly only, so it is not a like-for-like price.

Full detail: Ahrefs alternatives.

SE Ranking

Best for: the cheapest daily rank and AI tracking in one plan.

• The subscription page offers Save 20% on annual billing, and Core goes from €109 to €87.20 a month.
• Core lists 10 projects, 1 manager seat, 2k keywords and 100 AI prompts tracked daily, 250k audit pages a month and 25K API credits.
• The 14-day trial needs no card and is capped at 10 projects, 750 keywords a day and 20 AI prompts a day.
• Payments are non-refundable unless the service was not delivered as promised.
• Growth is €235 monthly (€188 yearly) with 30 projects, 3 seats, 5k keywords and 250 prompts.

Mangools

Best for: a short keyword list.

• Basic is €61 a month, or €37.70 on yearly billing, in the AIO + SEO bundle, the only Basic price its pricing page shows.
• Surfer Discovery (€59) is priced alike, but it counts documents, not keywords. The trade here is tracking depth: 200 keywords, updated weekly.
• Its home page names six tools: KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner, SiteProfiler and AI Search Watcher.
• A 48-hour refund applies, except for 2 consecutive subscriptions.

See Mangools alternatives.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Best for: a site crawl on a desktop.

• This is a desktop crawler, not a suite. The free version stops at 500 URLs.
• A licence is $279 per year, lasts one year, then must be renewed.
• It matches only the Site Audit part of the Semrush features list, so it works as a second tool, not as a swap.

Surfer

Best for: writing and optimizing pages.

• Discovery is €49 a month billed yearly or €59 month to month (10 documents on monthly billing, 120 on the yearly card; 10 tracked pages).
• Standard is €99 (€119 monthly), Pro €182 (€219) and Peace of Mind €299 (€359).
• The AI Search Analytics plan is €82 yearly or €95 monthly and tracks 50 prompts a day.
• You cancel by turning off auto-renew; access continues to the end of the paid period. The page gives no trial terms for its Start for Free button.

Frase

Best for: articles, audits and AI tracking on one bill.

• Starter is $39 a month billed yearly or $49 month to month for 1 seat and 1 site, with 10 articles and 50 audit pages a month.
• Professional is $103 yearly or $129 monthly, and Scale $239 or $299.
• Every plan has a free 7-day trial with no card.
• Starter stops at its limits; Professional and Scale have optional pay-as-you-go, off by default.
• The page lists publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix.

Writesonic

Best for: a small team that wants articles, audits and AI tracking in one plan.

• Starter is $79 a month billed annually, which the page says saves $240 a year. Month to month that works out at $99.
• It tracks 50 prompts and 50 answers a day on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
• It adds 15 AI articles and 10 site audits of 100 pages each for 1 user and 1 project.
• Basic is $199 yearly ($249 monthly) and Growth $399 ($499 monthly).
• Starting needs no card, and the FAQ promises a 7-day no-questions-asked refund.

Otterly.AI

Best for: AI answer tracking alone, at the lowest price here. Otterly only tracks AI answers.

• Lite is $29 a month or $25 on annual billing for 15 search prompts on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, tracked daily, with unlimited team members.
• Claude, AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons.
• The cards show euro in a German browser, and the page meta description says "Lite Plan starts at $29/month". Standard is €189 (€160 yearly) for 100 prompts.
• There is a free trial and you cancel in account settings.

How to pick a Semrush alternative

Start from what you need to test, track or write, then check the plan limit.

More comparisons: Ahrefs alternatives, Mangools alternatives, Surfer SEO alternatives, Frase alternatives and Peec AI alternatives for AI tracking. Back to the full list of SEO tool alternatives. For the AI side, read SEO vs GEO and how to get cited by ChatGPT.

Where Compass fits

Compass is the AI SEO agent we are building, and it is not open yet.

It is designed to ship fixes for a site's own code as pull requests or drafts that you approve. More: AI SEO tools by the job they do, SEO automation and the AI SEO agent page.

Sources

All read on 21 October 2026 in a browser with a German IP. Prices are as shown there.

1. Semrush, Plans & Pricing, semrush.com/prices/ (plans, free plan, trial, FAQ, add-ons).
2. Semrush, Features, semrush.com/features/ (13 features).
3. Ahrefs, Plans & pricing, ahrefs.com/pricing (plans, limits, FAQ, refund policy).
4. Ahrefs blog, “Ahrefs’ $29 Starter plan”, 2 September 2024, ahrefs.com/blog/starter-plan/.
5. SE Ranking, subscription page, seranking.com/subscription.html.
6. Mangools, Plans & pricing, mangools.com/plans-and-pricing, and home page mangools.com (tool list).
7. Screaming Frog, SEO Spider pricing, screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/pricing/.
8. Surfer, Pricing, surferseo.com/pricing/.
9. Frase, Plans and pricing, frase.io/pricing.
10. Writesonic, Plans & Pricing, writesonic.com/pricing.
11. Otterly.AI, Pricing, otterly.ai/pricing.

Questions

More alternatives pages

• Ahrefs alternatives
• Mangools alternatives
• BrightEdge alternatives
• Conductor alternatives
• Profound alternatives

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Written by Michael Nefedov, founder of noetio. Updated 21 October 2026.