Semrush vs SE Ranking, and when to pay per report instead
SE Ranking's entry plan tracks four times the keywords for $10 less, but neither suite fits someone who checks competitors only a few times a month.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team··4 min read
Semrush vs SE Ranking is the comparison most SEO teams run when the Semrush renewal email arrives. Both are full suites with rank tracking, audits, keyword research and backlink data under one login, and both price by the month. The gap between them is in the limits each plan carries, and for a lot of readers the better answer is a third option: seogeoaeo.ai, which skips the subscription model and charges per report.
All prices below were checked on the vendors' pricing pages in October 2026.
The entry plans side by side
| Semrush SEO | SE Ranking Core | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $139 | $129 |
| Billed annually | $117.33 a month | $103.20 a month |
| Sites or projects | 5 websites | 10 projects |
| Keywords tracked daily | 500 | 2,000 |
| Audit capacity | Site Audit included | 250,000 pages a month |
| Research tools | Basic keyword research and competitor analysis | Unlimited keyword, competitor and backlink research |
| MCP | From Starter at $199 | Included, with 25K API credits |
| Seats | Extra users from $45 a month | 1 manager seat |
| Trial | Seven days, plus a free account with 10 reports a day | 14 days, no card |
On paper SE Ranking Core wins the entry tier. It tracks four times as many keywords, covers twice as many projects, and costs $10 less a month. It also includes MCP access and API credits, which Semrush keeps for higher plans.
Where Semrush pulls ahead
The comparison changes one step up. Semrush's SEO plan carries the basic research tools. The fuller keyword research and competitor insights tools sit on Starter, at $199 a month or $165.17 billed annually, and that plan also adds MCP. Pro+ at $299 brings historical SEO data and 1,500 tracked keywords across 15 websites. Advanced, with API data integration and 5,000 tracked keywords, is now a custom quote.
Semrush also sells separate toolkits next to the core plans, including Traffic & Market, Advertising, Local and Content. If your team needs traffic estimates and ad research in the same place as keyword data, Semrush can cover all of it, at a combined price.
SE Ranking's next tier, Growth, costs $279 a month and adds 30 projects, 5,000 tracked keywords, 2 million audit pages and historical data across a project's life.
The question both suites skip
Both tools assume you work in them every day. Daily rank tracking and weekly audits across many sites are what the subscription pays for. Many people who search for Semrush vs SE Ranking do not work that way. They open the tool a few times a month to size up a competitor, pull its keywords, or check who links to it.
For that pattern, seogeoaeo.ai is the cheaper fit. A plan buys credits, and each report spends a fixed amount shown before it runs:
- Domain Overview, 50 credits: how many Google keywords a site ranks for, its estimated visits, what those visits would cost as ads, and how many sites link to it.
- Competitor Keywords, 35 credits: up to 100 of a rival's keywords, ordered by the visits Google sends, with volume, difficulty and cost per click.
- Keyword Gap, 85 credits: the 300 most searched keywords a competitor ranks for in the top 20 where you do not rank.
- Backlink Finder, 70 credits: the 100 strongest sites linking to a domain.
The Indie plan costs $29 a month for 2,000 credits, enough for 40 domain overviews. Every plan includes every tool in the browser and through MCP or REST, so the agent access that costs $199 at Semrush comes with the smallest plan. The plans and credit packs are listed on the seogeoaeo.ai pricing page.
It also covers the technical side that a suite audit checks: indexing, robots.txt and AI crawler access, schema, Core Web Vitals and llms.txt, each as a separate low-credit check.
What you give up with per-report pricing
seogeoaeo.ai does not track rankings and keeps no link index of its own. Its numbers come from a third-party data provider and are estimates, good for comparing sites, not for exact counts. It does not store how a site changed over time, and it does not show the keywords a competitor bids on. If a client report needs a ranking chart every Monday, you need a suite.
Which one to pick
- You look up competitors a few times a month, or want an agent to do it: seogeoaeo.ai.
- You want one suite for the least money and track many keywords: SE Ranking Core.
- Your team uses Semrush's research, traffic and ad toolkits together every day: stay with Semrush. Moving also means your ranking history starts again from zero.
A practical split many teams land on is a suite for tracking plus per-report lookups when a new rival needs a closer look. The full Semrush alternatives comparison covers seven more options, including Moz Pro, Similarweb and Google's own free tools.