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01 / Honest comparison

Cheaper alternatives to Semrush: what each cheap Semrush alternative actually costs

Semrush is the biggest name in SEO software for a reason: an enormous data set, and a feature for nearly everything. If what you need is data, it is a fine choice. People search for a Semrush alternative when the price climbs and the audits keep landing in a backlog no one clears. That second problem is the one Seomake exists to solve.

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02 / The short answer

Which Semrush alternative you want depends on which half you use

Semrush is two products sold as one: a web index for research, and a set of tools for acting on it. If you need the index, Ahrefs is the genuine like for like and is cheaper at every tier, with Lite at $129 against Semrush SEO at $139. Moz Pro Standard is the cheapest complete suite at $99. If what you actually need is the execution half, the audit turned into published fixes, you do not need an index at all and should not be paying index prices for one. That is the gap Seomake fills at $49.

The reason this distinction matters more than any feature grid: the most common way a Semrush subscription gets wasted is a team that logs in once a month, exports a site audit, and hands the PDF to someone who then does the work by hand. That team is renting a continuous crawl of billions of pages in order to receive a to-do list. Check your own login frequency before you renew, because it answers the question faster than any comparison page can.

One thing worth clearing up before you compare anything, because it is the reason a lot of people are on this page in September 2026: Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on 28 April 2026, and it has not changed any published price. The plans below were re-checked on 3 September 2026 and match the pre-acquisition ladder exactly. Semrush is not shutting down and nothing is being migrated. If that is what brought you here, the commitments Semrush made in writing, and what each one leaves open at renewal, are on the Semrush Adobe acquisition page.

Semrush plan prices re-read off semrush.com/prices on 3 September 2026 and unchanged since 31 July 2026. Ahrefs prices read off ahrefs.com/pricing on 2 September 2026.

03 / Side by side

The honest side-by-side

Public facts only: Semrush's published entry price is $139 a month for its SEO plan, or $117.33 billed yearly, with one seat and extra users from $45 a month. Seomake's Growth tier is $149 for three seats and five sites. The difference is not the number; it is what happens after the audit. If you are weighing Semrush against the other big research suite rather than against us, the Semrush vs Ahrefs pricing comparison puts both ladders side by side. Prices re-verified against semrush.com/prices on 9 September 2026, and note that the Pro, Guru and Business plans most comparison articles still list are retired: the Semrush Guru plan price page maps each old plan to the tier that replaced it. The full ladder, every tier limit and the add-on costs are broken down on our Semrush pricing page.

Semrush

  • +Industry-leading keyword and competitive data set
  • +Covers ads, social and PR workflows beyond SEO
  • -Reports problems; your team still does every fix by hand
  • -$139/mo SEO plan for one seat; extra seats from $45/mo
  • -Complexity built for specialists, not for teams in a hurry

Seomake

  • +Writes the fixes and drafts, not just the report
  • +One loop: audit, keyword research, content, rank tracking
  • +$149/mo Growth: 3 seats, 5 sites, no per-seat math
  • -Flat price, unlimited audits, no credits to run out of
  • -No ads or social modules; SEO is the whole product

Competitor pricing is their published list pricing as of July 2026 and may change; we compare positioning, not their internals.

04 / The real difference

A dashboard bills you to know. An autopilot works.

The Semrush workflow ends with a to-do list, and the labor to clear it is your cost on top of the subscription: an in-house afternoon per audit, or $60-an-hour contractor time. Seomake's loop delivers each finding with its fix already written, and hands you the corrected title, meta and heading outline as copy you can paste. You judge output, not effort.

Comparing more of your stack? See the Ahrefs alternative page, or how the AI SEO tools fit together as pillars. If the tool you are actually weighing against Semrush is an automation platform rather than another research suite, the OTTO SEO alternative page sets all three side by side with current prices.

05 / Cheaper without a seat

If what you want cheaper is the data, not the dashboard, buy an API instead of a seat

A large share of people looking for a cheaper Semrush option are not trying to replace the interface at all. They want authority and link numbers landing in a reporting stack, and they are paying for seats to get them. That is the most expensive way to buy rows.

Semrush prices programmatic access as two separate purchases: a qualifying subscription plan, and then API units bought on top of it. That structure is why the real number surprises people, and we work the whole thing through on our Semrush API pricing page rather than restating it here.

The cheapest published alternative for authority and link data is the Moz API, which has no seat component at all. Normalized to a cost per 1,000 rows, its ladder reads like this, taken off moz.com on 30 August 2026:

Moz API band Price per month Rows included Cost per 1,000 rows
Starter, small$203,000$6.67
Starter, large$7515,000$5.00
Growth, small$12550,000$2.50
Growth, medium$250120,000$2.08
Growth, large$500500,000$1.00
Advanced$2,0004,000,000$0.50

Two cautions before anyone treats that as a swap. The metrics are not interchangeable: Moz returns Domain Authority and Page Authority, Semrush returns Authority Score, and they are computed differently, so a dashboard rebuilt on the other index will not match last quarter's chart. And the $20 band has no overage available, so a scheduled job that exceeds 3,000 rows simply stops until the month resets. The full ladder for both products, including the annual rates and the $49 plan Moz does not put on a card, is on our Moz pricing breakdown.

The honest summary is that nothing cheap replaces the whole Semrush suite. What is genuinely cheaper is unbundling it: an API for the numbers your reports need, and something small for the work the numbers create.

06 / Semrush vs the rest

Not replacing Semrush, just choosing between it and something else?

Plenty of people land here mid shortlist rather than mid cancellation. If you are still deciding whether to buy Semrush at all, these are the tools it usually gets weighed against, and two of them are not what most comparison posts still claim.

Weighed against Entry price The short verdict
Ahrefs $129 The genuine like for like. Cheaper at every tier, better link index, fewer bundled modules.
SEO PowerSuite EUR 349 a year Desktop software, so about a quarter of the price. You lose cloud access, shared dashboards and scheduled crawls. Full breakdown on SEO PowerSuite vs Semrush.
Searchmetrics Not sold Retired. Conductor acquired it in 2023 and searchmetrics.com now redirects to conductor.com.
SEOquake Free Not a rival at all. It is a free browser extension in the Semrush family, so install it either way.
SEOptimer $29 A white label client reporting tool with SEO features, not a research suite. Different purchase.
MarketMuse No public price Content strategy, owned by Siteimprove since October 2024. Solves planning, not research.

All ten of these are worked through properly, with status and verified prices, on SEO PowerSuite vs Semrush and every other rival compared, which prices both ladders in full and explains why unlimited keyword tracking on the desktop option costs a quarter as much. The Searchmetrics row is the one that surprises people, so if you came here weighing Semrush vs Searchmetrics, that comparison has no live second option left and the dedicated page explains what replaced each part of it. If the question is purely budget, the full ladder including cost per tracked keyword sits on our SEO software pricing comparison. If what you were actually pricing was programmatic access rather than a seat, the Semrush API pricing works out separately and is higher than most people expect, because the plan and the usage units are two purchases.

07 / Judge it

Do not take a comparison page's word for it

Run the free AI audit on a page you know well and compare the output with your last audit deliverable. No account and no card, which is the fairest test we can offer.

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08 / Semrush alternative questions

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Semrush alternative?

It depends which half of Semrush you actually use. For the research data, Ahrefs is the genuine like for like and costs less at every tier. For the execution half, where the audit turns into published fixes, a dedicated tool does more per dollar. Most teams overbuy the first and underbuy the second.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Semrush?

Several. Ahrefs Lite is $129 against Semrush SEO at $139. Moz Pro Standard is $99 for a full suite. Seomake Starter is $49 for unlimited audits and rewrites without a keyword index attached. The real saving is usually seats: Semrush charges from $45 a month per extra user.

Is there a free alternative to Semrush?

Nothing free replaces it, and it is worth being blunt about why. Semrush is expensive because it runs a continuous crawl of billions of pages, and nobody gives that away. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free and genuinely useful for your own site, but neither shows you a competitor.

Why is Semrush so expensive?

You are renting a web index, not software. Semrush crawls and stores years of keyword and backlink history so it can answer a query in two seconds. That infrastructure is almost the entire cost. Tools that skip the index, including ours, charge far less because they do not carry it.

What is a good alternative to the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool?

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is the closest equivalent and is included from the $129 Lite plan. Google Keyword Planner is free with an Ads account but shows bucketed volume ranges rather than exact numbers. If you only need difficulty checks occasionally, Ahrefs Starter at $29 is a metered lookup tool.

Is Semrush worth it?

If you use the competitive data weekly, yes. If you log in monthly to export a site audit and hand it to somebody, you are paying index prices for a report. That is the most common way this subscription gets wasted, and it is worth checking your own login frequency before renewing.

Do I need to cancel Semrush to use something else?

No, and most teams should not. The common setup is one research suite plus one tool that does the execution, because the suites are priced and built as research products. Buy the index once, then buy the writing and fixing separately rather than paying twice for two overlapping keyword databases.

09 / Run it

Keep the data, lose the backlog

Run one page through Seomake and compare the output to the last report your data tool sent you.

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