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Cheaper Semrush Alternatives: 7 Tools, Real Prices

A cheaper Semrush alternative is a tool that covers the part of Semrush you actually use, for less money.

Semrush's entry plan is $139 a month, and its plans that include AI-search tracking run from $199 to $549. The seven tools below range from free to $129 a month. None of them is Semrush, and the honest way to read this list is as a set of parts: one tool for crawling, one for keyword data, one for rank tracking, one for AI answers.

Prices were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 24 September 2026 and are linked so you can check them.

Check any page free
SEO, GEO and entity authority in one audit. About 15 seconds, no sign-up for your scores and top fix.

Why people look for a Semrush alternative

Price is the usual reason, and it is rarely the only one:

  • The bill. $139 a month is $1,668 a year before add-ons, and extra users start at $45 a month each.
  • Most people use one or two modules. Paying suite prices for a site audit and a rank tracker is the usual reason to leave.
  • Small sites hit none of the limits. Five sites and 500 tracked keywords is a lot of allowance for one business with one website.
  • AI-answer tracking is now priced into the plans, so the cost of watching ChatGPT and AI Overviews rises with the plan rather than being bought on its own.

The alternatives, compared

Each tool below is listed with what it does, what it costs and who it suits.

  1. 01

    Google Search Console

    Free

    Shows Google's own record of your site: which queries showed your pages, what got indexed, and what Google could not crawl.

    Best for: Everyone, first. No paid tool knows more about your own site's Google performance than this does.

    Google Search Console →

  2. 02

    Seobility

    €59.90/month Premium, €99.90 Professional, €209.90 Agency, plus VAT; 20% off annually

    Crawls a site for on-page and technical faults, tracks rankings, and publishes a set of small tools that need no account.

    Best for: One or two sites that need an audit and rank tracking rather than a keyword database.

    Free option: Free SEO tools without registration, and a 14-day trial

    Seobility →Our Seobility comparison →

  3. 03

    Serpstat

    $50/month Individual, $100 Team, $169 Team x2, $410 Agency; up to 27% off annually

    Carries the four suite modules — keyword research, rank tracking, site audit and backlink analysis — at the lowest suite price here.

    Best for: Anyone who wants the shape of Semrush and can accept a smaller index for a third of the price.

    Free option: Free trial

    Serpstat →

  4. 04

    SE Ranking

    $129/month Core, $279 Growth; 20% off annually

    Runs rank tracking, audits and competitor research, and now reports on AI search alongside the classic rankings.

    Best for: Agencies with a client list, where seats and white-label reports matter more than the raw index.

    Free option: 14-day trial, no card

    SE Ranking →Our SE Ranking comparison →

  5. 05

    Screaming Frog SEO Spider

    $279 per licence per year, cheaper from five licences

    Crawls a site from your own machine and reports every redirect, duplicate, broken link and missing tag it finds.

    Best for: Deep technical audits. This is the tool most people pair with a cheaper suite rather than replace one with.

    Free option: Free version with a reduced feature set

    Screaming Frog SEO Spider →Our Screaming Frog SEO Spider comparison →

  6. 06

    Ahrefs Starter

    $29/month Starter; Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449

    Opens Ahrefs' keyword and backlink index at a small-site price, with lower limits than the team plans above it.

    Best for: The one thing no free tool can fake: a real backlink and keyword index.

    Free option: Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, free for sites you verify

    Ahrefs Starter →

  7. 07

    Maveriko

    Free for scores and the top fix, no account; $29/month for the full report

    Scores any URL for SEO Health and AI Readiness in about 15 seconds and names the exact change that fixes each failing check.

    Best for: Checking whether a page can be crawled, understood and quoted — including by AI engines. Not a Semrush replacement: no keyword volumes, no backlinks.

    Free option: Free scan, no sign-up, for scores and the first fix

    Maveriko →

Every price on this page was read from the vendor’s own pricing page, linked in each entry and again at the foot of this page, on the date below.

Which one to pick, by what you need

The right tool is the one that answers the question you actually have:

What you needWhat to use
Keyword volumes and backlink dataAhrefs Starter, or Serpstat for the suite shape. No free tool has this data and none can invent it.
Rank tracking across a client listSE Ranking or Serpstat, both of which sell seats and reports rather than a single-site view.
A deep technical crawl before a migrationScreaming Frog, whose free version already covers a small site.
Your own site's search performanceGoogle Search Console, free. No paid tool holds Google's own query data for your pages.
Whether a page is built to be quoted by AI enginesMaveriko, free per page.

What Maveriko does not measure

We are one entry on our own list, so here is our ceiling, stated plainly:

  • No traffic, keyword-volume or backlink data — that needs a paid clickstream database, and guessing it would be worse than omitting it.
  • No measurement of whether AI engines cite you today. Maveriko scores whether a page is built to be cited, which is a different (and controllable) thing.
  • Site crawls stop at 25 pages, so a large site is sampled rather than covered. A single-page scan stays unlimited and free.
  • No scheduled or recurring crawls — every scan and crawl is one you start yourself.

The full scoring methodology publishes every check, weight and threshold behind those scores.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a genuinely free Semrush alternative?+

For parts of it, yes. Google Search Console is free and holds your real query and indexing data, Screaming Frog's free version crawls a small site, Seobility publishes free tools without an account, and Maveriko scores a page free. What no free tool offers is a keyword-volume and backlink database, because that needs a crawled index and licensed clickstream data that costs money to build.

What is the cheapest paid tool on this list?+

Ahrefs Starter and Maveriko both sit at $29 a month, and they answer different questions: Ahrefs Starter opens a real keyword and backlink index at small-site limits, while Maveriko reports what is wrong with a page and how to fix it for search engines and AI answers. Serpstat at $50 a month is the cheapest tool here shaped like a full suite.

Can any of these replace Semrush's keyword and backlink data?+

Only the ones that license or build an index of their own — Ahrefs and, at a smaller scale, Serpstat and SE Ranking. Audit tools without an index, Maveriko included, do not estimate volumes, and a tool that prints an invented number is worse than one that leaves the column empty.

How current are these prices?+

Every figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 24 September 2026, and each entry links to that page. SaaS pricing moves, so treat the numbers as a snapshot dated on this page rather than a quote, and check the vendor's page before you buy.

Sources

Last reviewed .