What is Semrush: keyword research, rank tracking and site audit in one tool

Semrush is an SEO platform built by Semrush Holdings, a company founded in 2008 by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov and listed in New York since 2021. One subscription covers keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, backlink analysis, competitor research and AI visibility tracking, which the rest of the category usually splits across two or three products. Plans differ by capacity rather than by feature set: a subscription covers five websites on the two lower plans, fifteen on Pro+ and forty on Advanced, with daily limits from 500 tracked keywords to 5,000. Adobe acquired the company in 2026, and the plan lineup was rebuilt that same year.

Breadth is the trade. Nothing here is the deepest tool in its own field, and the case for one subscription is that six pieces of work stop arriving as six invoices.

So much for the shape of the lineup. The full price list, the seat arithmetic and the paid add-ons sit on the full Semrush pricing breakdown.

Semrush features by plan: keyword research, site audit and AI visibility

The figures below are Semrush's own capacity claims, printed from its features sheet and dated. We report them as claims. Nobody here counted a keyword index.

Slide the grid sideways. The capability column stays put.

The grid cannot show how the tools are used together, and two routines account for most of the working day, both included from the $139 entry. Point Keyword Gap at a rival, surface the keywords they rank for and you do not, then sort by volume and difficulty to decide which gaps are worth the fight. The backlink audit scores inbound links for toxicity and generates a disavow file for Search Console, and the on page checker reads the top 10 ranking pages for a keyword and prints what the results actually reward.

Keyword research, rank tracking, site audit, backlink analysis, competitor research and AI visibility all answer to one subscription. Every rival in the alternatives section sells two or three of those and asks you to stack the rest. Whether that consolidation is worth $95 over the median depends on how many of the six your team opens in a working week.

Semrush limits: projects, tracked keywords and AI prompts, no overages

Three ceilings decide which tier you need. Quotas force a jump, the one user rule meters people, and add-ons are priced on top of everything.

Read together, the limits explain the arithmetic that stings at small sizes: a three person team on the $139 entry plan runs at least $229 a month, which is more than the $199 Starter rate for one person with a numbered AI allowance. Count heads and count quotas before picking a plan, because Semrush prices capacity, not people.

One limit runs through time rather than quotas: the billing cycle. Annual rates sit at $117.33, $165.17, $248.17 and $455.67 a month, which prices the monthly option at a premium of $21.67 at entry rising to $93.33 at the top, roughly the vendor's own 17 percent figure. The annual year is billed up front, so the discount is also a commitment.

Semrush and Adobe: what the 2026 acquisition changed for existing users

Semrush changed hands and changed shape in the same year. Three dated changes stand on our record. No price cut appears in any of them, and the one restructure held the $139 entry while moving everything above it.

The rename reached the address as well as the plans: the vendor moved its pricing page and redirects the old one to it, where the four plans are published. The buyer's takeaway carries a figure. An old Guru quote at $249 now maps to no plan at all, and the nearest current plans cost $199 and $299. When this vendor redraws, it redraws the middle of its lineup.

Who should use Semrush: SEO agencies, in-house teams and solo consultants

We priced four working setups against the plans as published. Each one lists its inputs, the invoice floor with the arithmetic, and the first limit it hits. The floors use the published starting seat rate of $45. Semrush publishes a starting rate and no full schedule, so a real quote can be higher than a floor, never lower.

The rule in one line: people cost $45+ a seat, quota jumps cost $100 and $250, add-ons run $10 to $90 a month. One person using three or four of those capabilities does well here. Four people using one of them are paying platform rates for a single tool.

Semrush alternatives: Ahrefs, Moz Pro, SE Ranking, SISTRIX, SpyFu and Mangools

Every rival entry we track sits under the $139 line where Semrush starts. The spread runs $29 to $137.49, which puts the median at $44. Four of the six open between $29 and $49, then the strip goes quiet until $129. The middle is empty.

SISTRIX

Start$137.49/mo-$1.51 vs entry

$1.51 under the entry, so price is not why anyone moves. DACH and EU agencies come for the visibility index. The vendor bills in euros plus tax and runs no annual discount at all. Start includes three projects and buys no second user, and the tiers above it reach $923.16.

SE Ranking

Core$129/mo-$10 vs entry

$10 under the entry, so this is the closest thing to a like for like swap. Core drops to $103.20 on annual billing, twenty percent off. White labeling is not in the plan: the Agency Pack adds $69 a month, annual billing only, and AI Search costs another $89.

Moz Pro

Starter$49/mo-$90 vs entry

Read the footnote. We list $49 because that is the published floor, but the vendor keeps it off the main plans as a single site option. The first of those is Standard at $99, $79 on annual billing, which buys three sites and 300 tracked keywords a month against 500 a day here.

SpyFu

Basic$39/mo-$100 vs entry

Competitor and ad research, $100 under the Semrush entry. Basic is metered in rows: 10,000 rows of search results and the same again in exports. Annual billing adds three months free on the vendor's own claim, and extra users cost $30 on the plan above.

Mangools

Basic$30.50/mo-$108.50 vs entry

The solo switch when the platform is more than you will ever open. Annual billing cuts Basic to $18.85 a month, about 35 percent off, the steepest cut on this strip. The catch is seats: Basic carries none past the first.

Ahrefs

Starter$29/mo-$110 vs entry

The cheapest door here, and the narrowest. Starter buys basic SEO data and search visibility, and that is the whole plan. What people actually weigh against Semrush is Lite at $129, or $108 a month on annual billing, where each extra seat costs $40.

People switch by the work they need and the money they have, not by brand. Keyword research alone costs $30.50, competitor and ad intel $39, backlink depth $129 once you leave the Starter nub, and the EU visibility index $137.49. Seat prices differ as much as the tiers do: $45 a head here, $40 on Ahrefs Lite, $30 on the SpyFu tier above Basic, €24.90 on SISTRIX. Semrush stays above all of them as the only product where one account reaches every capability at once, and it charges $95 over the $44 median for exactly that. The full ranking sits on the seo tools category page.

Is Semrush worth it in 2026: our verdict on the all-in-one SEO platform

Verdict · Semrush · August 2026★★★★★★★★★★CE 4.6/5

Semrush enters at $139 a month in a category whose entry rates start at $29, with the middle at $44. No Semrush plan sits inside that band. The premium buys breadth: rankings, audits, backlinks, competitor data and AI answer tracking under one subscription, where most of the category sells a slice.

The tier is rarely the hard decision here. A single user per plan means a team of three pays at least $90 a month for extra seats before quotas even come up, and an agency adds $10 or $20 of reporting on top. Buy Semrush for the breadth. Budget the people separately.

what drives this invoice

• seats: every plan includes one user, and each extra user starts at $45 a month.
• the ai prompt allowance: 50, 100 and 200 a day are tier walls, and the walls cost $100 and $250 a month to pass.
• cycle: annual billing keeps roughly 17 percent, $139 down to $117.33 at entry.
• websites: 5, 15 and 40 are the monitoring caps, and the sixth client site forces Pro+.

when not to buy Semrush

• You work alone on a couple of sites and mostly need rank tracking: Mangools runs $30.50 a month.
• Your team is four people on a tight budget: three extra users start at $135 a month on top of any tier.
• You need the API without the rest of the platform: it is sold only inside the $549 Advanced plan.
• You bought Guru for its price point: that lineup is retired, and the nearest current tiers cost $199 and $299.

what it does well

• One subscription covers keyword research, rank tracking, site audit, backlink analysis, competitor research and AI visibility from $139.
• Every plan carries a published rate. Only the custom plan above $549 hides behind a quote.
• The annual rates are the vendor's own, not our arithmetic: $139 becomes $117.33, about 17 percent off.
• Prompt monitoring carries published counts, at 50, 100 and 200 a day on the three plans above $139.
• The vendor puts figures on its own capacity, and we date them: 25.6B keywords, 700 URLs a second on the audit crawler.

where it gets in the way

• Every plan includes a single user. The second person starts at $45 a month, so three people on $139 run at least $229.
• Reporting sits in no plan at all. It is $10 a month, or $20 with white labeling, at every step.
• The entry plan has no numbered AI allowance. The first published figure costs $199.
• There are no overage rates anywhere. Keyword 501 is a $100 plan jump, keyword 1,501 another $250.
• Past 40 websites the published range ends. Above $549 there is a custom plan and no rate.
• Pro, Guru and Business were retired in the redraw, so a quote from the old lineup now maps to nothing.

The price, in short

• Entry $139/mo, $117.33 on annual billing · verified August 5, 2026
• Dearest entry in the category, $1.51 over SISTRIX, the door below it
• Every published rate, the seat arithmetic and the retired lineup are laid out on our Semrush pricing breakdown

Go deeper · plans and ratesEach of the four rates with its annual figure, the $45 seat add-on, and what the retired Pro, Guru and Business plans map to now

signed Oleh Kemmethod: our checks of the live plans, and our own analysis of what each tier includesverified August 5, 2026tracked since June 2026