Semrush alternatives

By Udayan Ambwani, Co-founder & CTO · Updated 5 Oct 2026

Teams usually look past Semrush when they pay for far more of it than they use. We list the alternatives in the order our published scoring rules put them, with Veritas, our product, scored by the same rules.

The short answer

Replace the part of Semrush you use. For research and backlinks, a suite is the like-for-like swap; for writing or AI answers alone, a narrower tool does the job for less.

AhrefsFor one of the largest published backlink indexes, 35 trillion live links, from $129 a month.$129/mo
SE RankingFor the same core suite with daily rankings and local SEO from $129.$129/mo
FraseFor research, briefs and drafting from $49 a month.$49/mo
Otterly.AIFor daily AI answer tracking for the whole team from $29 a month.$29/mo
VeritasOursFor drafts cited to your own documents, with SEO research, from $16.$16/mo

How to choose a Semrush alternative

Semrush is several products in one: a research database, a rank tracker, a site auditor, a writing tool and, from its Starter plan, an AI answer tracker. Most teams that leave use one or two of those every week and pay for the rest. So name the job you open Semrush for most often, and replace that job rather than the whole suite.

If the job is keyword and backlink research, stay with a suite. Ahrefs is the closest match on data depth: it reports 35 trillion live backlinks and filters 28.7 billion keywords, against Semrush’s 27.3 billion, though its rankings update weekly on every plan and it has no trial. SE Ranking does the same core jobs for less, at $129 a month for daily tracking of 2,000 keywords, ten projects and local SEO for three locations, with extra seats from $16 rather than $45. Moz Pro starts lowest, at $49 for one campaign and 50 tracked keywords, and has unusually deep learning material for a team new to SEO.

If the job is writing, a content tool does it more directly for less. Frase runs research, briefs and drafting from $49 a month, Surfer scores drafts as you write from $59, and Veritas drafts from your own documents with a citation on every knowledge-based claim from $16. None of them replaces a market-wide keyword database.

If you moved up a tier for AI answer tracking, you are paying for a suite to use one feature. Otterly.AI tracks prompts daily from $29 a month with unlimited team members, and Writesonic adds GEO fixes and outreach from $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly. Semrush’s own tracking starts at $199 on Starter.

Whichever you pick, price the team rather than the plan. Semrush’s SEO plan with two extra users is $229 a month before any add-on, so compare that figure, not the $139 headline.

Semrush and 8 alternatives at a glance

Every alternative here starts below Semrush’s $139 SEO plan. Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Moz Pro are full SEO suites; the rest replace one part of Semrush and do it more directly.

Tool	Best for	From	AI search score
SE Ranking	Teams that use most of Semrush and want the same jobs for less	$129/mo	82
Frase	Content teams who mainly used Semrush for research and briefs	$49/mo	76
Semrush The tool you are comparing against	Agencies and in-house teams that need deep historical keyword and link data across many markets and can absorb per-user fees.	$139/mo	73
Writesonic	Single-brand teams that want GEO fixes and outreach rather than a research database	$99/mo, or $79/mo billed yearly	70
VeritasOurs	Teams of up to five who want cited drafts, SEO research and AI visibility in one workspace	$16/mo	66
Surfer	Writers who used Semrush mainly as a content scoring tool	$59/mo, or $49/mo billed yearly	63
Otterly.AI	Teams that only need to know where AI answers mention them	$29/mo	62
Ahrefs	Teams whose Semrush use is mostly backlink and keyword research	$129/mo	59
Moz Pro	Smaller teams that want a full suite at a lower entry price	$49/mo	59

From is the cheapest paid plan. The AI search score rates AI visibility and content features by our published rules; it is not a verdict on SEO depth.

Using Semrush mostly for content?

Veritas researches keywords, audits your site and drafts from your own documents, with every knowledge-based claim cited to its source. Users are included in the workspace price.

Start your 7-day free trial See pricing

Why teams look past Semrush

Additional users start at $45 a month each on top of the plan fee.
Daily prompt tracking starts on the $199 Starter plan; the $139 SEO plan shows no tracked-prompt allowance.
Content Creation generates from a brief; the features page does not describe citations to documents you supply.
Semrush is now part of Adobe, which completed the acquisition on 28 April 2026 and says customers can expect an expanded roadmap as the two integrate.

For everything Semrush does well, read our Semrush review.

The SEO toolkit: Semrush and each alternative

What each tool gives you for classic SEO, as its own pages describe it. A tick is included, a dashed circle is included with a limit the cell names, and a dash means the vendor’s pages do not describe it.

Among the suites, the biggest practical difference is rank tracking: Semrush and SE Ranking refresh rankings daily on their entry plans, while Ahrefs and Moz Pro update weekly.

Tool	Keyword data	Backlinks	Rank tracking	Site audit	AI writing
SE Ranking	5.5 billion keywords	Backlink checker	Daily, 2,000 keywords on Core	Website audit	AI writer
Frase	SERP research into briefs, not a keyword database	Link gaps with drafted outreach	Ranking decay alerts (Content Guard)	Site Audit	AI agent, 10 to 100 articles a month
Semrush	Over 27.3 billion keywords	Backlink Analysis	Daily, 500 keywords on SEO	Technical Site Audit	Content Creation
Writesonic	Not described	Outreach to sites citing competitors	AI answers only	Technical audit from AI bot visits	Rewrites pages for GEO
VeritasOurs	Volume, CPC and difficulty from DataForSEO	Backlink monitoring on Business	Position history on every plan	Graded for Google and AI crawlers	Drafts cited to your own documents
Surfer	Topical Map, not a keyword database	Not described	Not described	Content Audit, not a technical crawl	Content Editor score and Surfer AI
Otterly.AI	Not described	Not described	AI answers only	Content Audit with crawlability checks	Briefs, not full drafts
Ahrefs	28.7 billion filtered keywords	35 trillion live backlinks	Weekly, 750 keywords on Lite	170+ SEO issues	Content Kit add-on, from $99/mo
Moz Pro	1.25 billion keyword suggestions	45.5 trillion links indexed	Weekly, 50 keywords on Starter	Weekly crawl, 5,000 pages on Starter	AI Content Briefs from Standard

AI answer tracking

AI answer tracking separates these tools more than their SEO features do. Semrush tracks five engines daily from $199 on Starter. SE Ranking includes 100 prompts a day across five engines in its $129 Core plan, the most at an SEO-suite entry price, and Otterly.AI tracks daily from $29 with unlimited users.

Frase includes tracking from its $49 Starter plan, and Surfer from $95 on AI Search Analytics. Ahrefs Lite includes 5 custom prompts on one platform, Moz Pro tracks 50 prompts weekly from its $99 Standard plan, and Veritas tracks four engines every two weeks from Starter at $16. The engine-by-engine grid and yearly costs for four team sizes are below.

Veritas’s price includes keyword research, site audits, AI visibility on four engines and cited drafting.Start a 7-day trial See pricing

Engine by engine, and what tracking costs a yearWhich engines each tool covers on its tracking plan, and the yearly cost for four team sizes

Which engines each tool covers

On the cheapest plan that tracks AI answers. Most vendors list more engines than that plan includes, so this is what you get at the price shown, not the brochure maximum.

Tool and plan	ChatGPT	Claude	Gemini	Perplexity	AI Overviews	AI Mode	Copilot
SE Ranking Core	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Included	Included	Included	Not on this plan
Frase Starter	Included	Not on this plan	Not on this plan	Not on this plan	unclear	unclear	Not on this plan
Semrush Starter	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included	unclear	unclear
Writesonic Starter	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Not on this plan	Not on this plan
VeritasOurs Starter	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Included	Included	Not on this plan	Not on this plan
Surfer AI Search Analytics	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Included	Included	Included	Not on this plan
Otterly.AI Lite	Included	add-on	add-on	Included	Included	add-on	Included
Ahrefs Lite	you choose	you choose	you choose	you choose	you choose	you choose	you choose
Moz Pro Standard	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Included	Not on this plan	Included	Not on this plan

A tick is included. Add-on means an extra monthly fee. You choose means the plan lets you pick a limited number of platforms from this list. Unclear means the vendor’s wording does not say.

The plan behind each row, and what changes on higher plans, are on each tool’s review: SE Ranking, Frase, Semrush, Writesonic, Surfer, Otterly.AI, Ahrefs, Moz Pro and Veritas.

What AI answer tracking costs a year

These setups price one thing: tracking how AI assistants answer about you, for a given number of prompts and people, over twelve months. They are not the cost of the SEO toolkit, which is in the table above. Where no published plan fits, the note says why instead of guessing.

Tool	Getting started1 seat, 10 tracked prompts, 1 brand	One marketer, one brand1 seat, 50 tracked prompts, 1 brand	Team of five, one brand5 seats, 100 tracked prompts, 1 brand	Agency, three brands10 seats, 300 tracked prompts, 3 brands
Otterly.AI	$348lowest	$2,268	$2,268	$5,868
Frase	$588	$588lowest	$2,244lowest	$5,328
VeritasOurs	$936	No published fit¹	No published fit¹	No published fit¹
Surfer	$1,140	$1,140	$4,308	No published fit¹
Moz Pro	$1,188	$1,188	$3,912	$8,304
SE Ranking	$1,548	$1,548	$2,316	$4,344lowest
Semrush	$2,388	$2,388	$7,428	No published fit¹
Ahrefs	$2,988	$17,988	No published fit¹	No published fit¹
Writesonic	No published plan fits any of these setups²

1No published plan tracks the prompts this setup needs; larger volumes are arranged with the vendor.
2The vendor does not publish how many prompts each plan tracks, so we cannot say which plan meets this setup.

Bars share one scale across the whole table, so cost growth shows as well as rank. A figure far above the rest is marked off scale.

The plan, seats and add-ons behind every figure are worked through on each tool’s review: Otterly.AI, Frase, Surfer, Moz Pro, SE Ranking, Semrush, Ahrefs, Writesonic and Veritas.

Each alternative against Semrush

What you gain and what you give up with each, against Semrush. Each tool’s full, sourced review is on its own page.

SE Ranking

Best for teams that use most of Semrush and want the same jobs for less.

Full SE Ranking review

SE Ranking covers the same core jobs as Semrush at a lower price per person. Core is $129 a month, or $103.20 billed yearly, and includes daily tracking of 2,000 keywords across 10 projects, a keyword database of 5.5 billion, backlinks, site audits, local SEO for three locations and 100 AI prompts tracked a day. Extra manager seats start at $16 a month, against $45 on Semrush’s SEO plan.

What you give up is depth: its keyword database is about a fifth of Semrush’s by each vendor’s count, and Semrush’s digital PR and content tools go further. Its trial of 14 days needs no card, which makes it the easiest switch to test on your own projects.

Frase

Best for content teams who mainly used Semrush for research and briefs.

Full Frase review

Frase covers the part of Semrush most content teams use daily: SERP research, briefs, drafting and optimisation, with site audits, link gaps with drafted outreach and ranking-decay alerts added. Starter is $49 billed monthly, or $39 billed yearly, with 10 articles a month and AI answer tracking included; Professional gives three seats and 40 articles for $129.

What you give up: Frase turns research into briefs rather than keeping a keyword database, so it cannot replace Semrush’s historical keyword and competitor data, and article generation is capped by plan. Choose it if Semrush was mainly where your content plans started.

Writesonic

Best for single-brand teams that want GEO fixes and outreach rather than a research database.

Full Writesonic review

Writesonic replaces the AI visibility half of Semrush and adds execution Semrush does not describe: an Action Center that ranks fixes by citation impact, an agent that rewrites pages for GEO, and drafted outreach to sites that cite your competitors. Starter is $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, for one user and three tracked platforms, with a free trial that needs no card.

What you give up: it describes no keyword database and tracks rankings only in AI answers, so it does not replace Semrush for search research. Choose it if your Semrush upgrade was about AI search and you want the fixes done, not only reported.

VeritasOurs

Best for teams of up to five who want cited drafts, SEO research and AI visibility in one workspace.

Our write-up of Veritas

Start a 7-day trial See pricing

Veritas trades Semrush’s data depth for a tighter workflow. Keyword research, gap analysis, rank tracking and site audits cover the domains you work on rather than a market-wide database, and the same workspace drafts content from your own documents with a numbered citation on every knowledge-based claim. Plans are $16, $78 or $125 a month with one, three or five users included, so a team of five pays one fee instead of per-user add-ons.

What you give up: backlink monitoring starts on Business, AI answer tracking covers 5 prompts on Starter or 10 on Growth and refreshes every two weeks, and there is no market-wide keyword or backlink index. Veritas is ours; it suits teams whose Semrush use ends in published content.

Surfer

Best for writers who used Semrush mainly as a content scoring tool.

Full Surfer review

If Semrush was mostly your writing assistant, Surfer does that job more directly. Its Content Editor scores drafts as you write, and Surfer AI drafts articles, linking sources as it writes. Discovery is $59 a month, or $49 billed yearly, and AI answer tracking across five engines starts on AI Search Analytics at $95.

What you give up: its product pages describe no backlink tools and no technical crawl, only a content audit, and its Topical Map plans topics rather than replacing a keyword database. No trial is listed. Keep a suite alongside it if you still need research and audits.

Otterly.AI

Best for teams that only need to know where AI answers mention them.

Full Otterly.AI review

For teams whose only reason to upgrade Semrush was AI answer tracking, Otterly.AI is the cheapest credible swap. Lite is $29 a month for 15 prompts and Standard $189 for 100, both refreshed daily, with unlimited team members and API and MCP access from Standard. It tracks four engines, with more as add-ons.

What you give up: it describes no keyword research, backlinks or content drafting, only briefs and a content audit. Paired with a free research tool, it covers what many teams bought Semrush Starter for, at a fraction of $199.

Ahrefs

Best for teams whose Semrush use is mostly backlink and keyword research.

Full Ahrefs review

Ahrefs is the closest like-for-like swap for research. Site Explorer reports 35 trillion live backlinks with more than ten years of history, and Keywords Explorer filters 28.7 billion keywords, slightly more than Semrush’s 27.3 billion by each vendor’s own count. Lite costs $129 a month against Semrush’s $139, and API and MCP access start on Lite rather than on a top tier.

What you give up: rankings update weekly on every Ahrefs plan, where Semrush tracks daily; there is no trial, only Ahrefs Free for sites you verify; extra users cost $40 to $80 a month; and there are no white-label reports. Switch if links and research are the job; stay if daily rankings or client reporting matter more.

Moz Pro

Best for smaller teams that want a full suite at a lower entry price.

Full Moz Pro review

Moz Pro is a full suite at the lowest entry price of the three. Starter is $49 a month for one campaign and 50 tracked keywords, and Standard $99 for three campaigns, 300 keywords and AI visibility across four engines, refreshed weekly. Its link index of 45.5 trillion links and its Domain Authority score are what most teams know it for, and its free learning material is unusually deep for beginners.

What you give up: rankings and crawls update weekly, not daily; the keyword database is smaller, at 1.25 billion suggestions; and each extra user costs $49 a month. Moz suits a team that wants the core suite without Semrush’s price, not one that relies on daily data.

Switching from Semrush

01Export tracked keywords, position history and site audit results before cancelling; history rarely transfers between tools.
02List the reports your team opens every week. That list, not the feature catalogue, is what the replacement has to cover.
03Recreate AI visibility prompts word for word, so the new tool’s baseline is comparable with your Semrush history.
04Run both tools side by side for one reporting cycle so the trend lines overlap before you switch.
05Cancel last, after the new tool has produced a report your stakeholders accept.

What would change our verdict

Adobe repricing or repackaging Semrush after the acquisition, which would change both the reasons to look past it and the cost figures here.
Semrush stating whether its AI tracking covers Google AI Mode and Copilot, which its pricing page leaves unclear.

Questions people ask

What is the best Semrush alternative for a small team?

It depends on the job Semrush was doing. For the same suite at a lower price per person, SE Ranking, whose extra seats start at $16. For content and briefs, Frase. For AI visibility alone, Otterly.AI. For cited drafts, SEO research and AI visibility in one workspace with users included, Veritas.

Which alternative has the most keyword data?

Ahrefs, whose Keywords Explorer filters 28.7 billion keywords against Semrush’s 27.3 billion, each by its own count. SE Ranking lists 5.5 billion and Moz 1.25 billion keyword suggestions; the content and AI tools here do not keep a keyword database.

What is the cheapest Semrush alternative with AI tracking?

Otterly.AI, from $29 a month with daily refresh. Among the full suites, SE Ranking includes 100 prompts a day across five engines in its $129 Core plan, where Semrush tracking starts at $199.

Head to head

Veritas vs Semrush Veritas vs Frase Veritas vs Surfer Veritas vs Writesonic Veritas vs Otterly.AI Semrush vs Ahrefs Semrush vs SE Ranking Surfer vs Semrush

How we chose4 tests every alternative had to pass

The data you actually use. Most teams use keyword research, a site audit and rank tracking. Count what your team opens each week before paying for a database it will not query.
AI visibility coverage. Which engines are included at the price you would pay, and how often prompts are re-checked.
Content workflow. Whether the tool drafts and scores content, and what the drafts are built from.
Price for your team size. Per-user fees change the comparison more than headline plan prices.

How we researched this pageMethod and the update log

How we researched this page

Every fact about another tool comes from that vendor’s own pages, or from a press report where we say so, listed under Sources with the date we read them. Where a vendor does not describe something, we say so rather than guess.

The scores and cost figures on this page are calculated, not assigned. Our full methodology sets out every rule, what each criterion is worth, and where our evidence runs out.

Disclosure. Veritas is our product. It appears on this page because it competes in this category, and we have tried to state its limits as plainly as anyone else’s. If anything here is wrong or out of date, write to support@getveritas.io and we will correct it and note the change in the log.

Update log

5 October 2026Updated: Veritas Starter now includes AI visibility, tracking 5 prompts across the same four engines, so AI visibility is on every Veritas plan. Earlier versions said it started on Growth.
29 September 2026Updated the Surfer figures on this page after re-reading Surfer’s own pages.
29 September 2026Updated the SE Ranking figures on this page after re-reading SE Ranking’s own pages.
29 September 2026Updated the Ahrefs figures on this page after re-reading Ahrefs’s own pages.
29 September 2026Updated the Semrush figures on this page after re-reading Semrush’s own pages.
29 September 2026Rewritten as a guide: added Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Moz Pro as full-suite alternatives, a section on choosing by the job you use Semrush for, and what you give up with each. Removed Profound, which no longer sells a self-serve plan to brands.
25 September 2026Veritas pricing updated: Starter added at the entry, and the plans above it renamed Growth and Business and repriced. Marketing Suite was retired on 25 September 2026; its LinkedIn and scheduled publishing moved into Business, and its Local SEO into Growth and Business. Competitor figures were not re-checked.
22 September 2026Updated: Veritas no longer tracks Claude, so it tracks four AI engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Its engine count, coverage and score changed to match, which can move its place in a ranked list.
15 September 2026Updated the Surfer figures on this page after re-reading Surfer’s own pages.
15 September 2026Updated the Semrush figures on this page after re-reading Semrush’s own pages.
15 September 2026Updated the Ahrefs figures on this page after re-reading Ahrefs’s own pages.
15 September 2026Updated the SE Ranking figures on this page after re-reading SE Ranking’s own pages.
15 September 2026Updated the Frase figures on this page after re-reading Frase’s own pages.
15 September 2026Rebuilt verdict first: a short verdict with calculated figures, an engine-by-engine coverage grid and yearly cost charts, with full reviews, specs and method folded below. The intro was shortened; no facts were removed.
12 September 2026Rebuilt as a full review from each vendor’s product pages, documentation and announcements, not only pricing pages, with pros and cons, recent changes, a method section and this log. Corrected: Semrush includes content creation and tracks Claude. Added an Otterly.AI review and a switching checklist.
11 September 2026Published.

Sources

The pages behind this comparison, most recently read 29 September 2026. Each tool’s review dates its own sources.

SE Ranking: Academy · AI Visibility Tracker · Free Tools · Homepage · Pricing
Frase: Homepage · Pricing · Security
Semrush: Academy · Adobe Completes Semrush Acquisition · Features · Keyword Magic Tool · Local · My Reports · Pricing · Pricing (SEO AI Search) · Security · User Management
Writesonic: Homepage (writesonic.com) · Homepage (writesonic.trust.site) · Pricing
Surfer: AI Instructions · Homepage · Pricing · Release Notes · Trust Center · Whats new at surfer june 2026…
Otterly.AI: Cool vendor in the 2025 gartner… · Homepage · Pricing · Security
Ahrefs: Academy · AI Content Helper · Brand Radar · Free · Homepage (ahrefs.com) · Homepage (trust.ahrefs.com) · Is there any way to brand… · Keywords Explorer · New features february march 2026 · New Features May 2026 · Pricing · Product announcement ahrefs adds youtube and… · Rank Tracker · SEO MCP · Site Audit · Site Explorer
Moz Pro: Archive · Custom Reports · Explorer · Homepage · Link Explorer · Overview · Pricing (Local) · Pricing (Pro) · Starter Plan · Track Local Keywords

The same jobs in Veritas, our product

Keyword research Site audit Backlinks Local SEO tool Competitor keyword analysis Plans and pricing

How this page was made. Veritas is our product. Every fact about another tool is checked against that vendor’s own pages, and scores and costs are calculated by our published rules.

Try the one that cites its sources.

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