Semrush

Keyword research, competitor tracking and site auditing in one dashboard, now also watching how AI answer engines cite or ignore your site.

Marketing & social Agents

Checked 25 Sep 2026

Open semrush.com

What you'd use it for

Finding out which keywords are worth targeting, what a competitor is ranking for that you aren't, and whether AI answer engines mention your business at all.

Run a technical audit of your own site and get a prioritised list of what's broken
Look up a competitor's domain and see the traffic and keywords driving it
Track daily how often your brand surfaces in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews
Track keyword rankings over time and see which ones are moving
Generate a content brief from the same keyword data the tracking already has

The verdict

Semrush's real value is the pre-built crawl of the web behind it, which turns competitor research into an instant answer instead of a week of guesswork. What it costs you in practice is more than the sticker price -- extra users, extra reports and white-labelling are separate add-ons on top of a plan that already opens near $120 a month, and the AI-visibility tracking most people come here for sits one tier above the cheapest paid plan. Worth it for a business that depends on organic or AI-search visibility and will use it weekly; a poor fit for a one-off audit.

What it costs

Tier	Price	For	Includes
Free	$0/month	Trying the tool on one project before committing.	1 demo project, 10 daily reports, basic AI visibility features.
SEO	$117.33/month billed annually, $139/month billed monthly	A single site owner wanting the core research and tracking tools.	5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily, competitor analysis, site audit.
Starter	$165.17/month billed annually, $199/month billed monthly	Someone also watching how their brand shows up in AI search results.	Everything in SEO, plus AI visibility reporting across 1 domain and 50 tracked prompts a day.
Pro+	$248.17/month billed annually, $299/month billed monthly	An agency or in-house team managing several client or brand sites.	15 websites, 1,500 keywords tracked daily, historical data, content optimisation, cannibalisation analysis.
Advanced	$455.67/month billed annually, $549/month billed monthly	Larger teams needing API access and share-of-voice reporting.	40 websites, 5,000 keywords tracked daily, SEO share of voice, full API access.

Read from Semrush's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.

What you need to start

A Semrush account, email signup, no card needed on the free plan
A credit card to start the seven-day trial on any paid plan
The Starter plan or above for the AI-visibility tracking; the cheaper SEO plan doesn't include it

A working free account takes a couple of minutes with no credit card. A first keyword or competitor report comes back almost immediately, though a full audit of your own site needs a live crawl first.

Your first run Signing up on the free plan needs no credit card and takes a couple of minutes, and a first competitor lookup or keyword report comes back almost immediately because it runs against Semrush's own crawl of the web rather than yours. A full audit of your own site needs a live crawl first, so that one takes longer.

Where it breaks

The tier naming is a recent moving target — 'SEO' now sits below 'Starter' as a cheaper entry tier, which reads backwards next to the older Starter/Guru/Business naming still floating around in reviews and forum posts. Confirm which tier you're looking at by its price, not its name.

Entirely browser-based. There is nothing to install; every report runs against Semrush's own crawl of the web, not your own site's logs.

First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.

When not to use it

Not for someone hoping to check AI-search visibility on the cheapest paid tier -- the SEO plan is classic keyword and competitor tooling only, and AI tracking starts one tier up on Starter. Also not for anyone unwilling to hand over a card for even a seven-day trial, or a solo user who needs one audit rather than an ongoing subscription.

Semrush earns its subscription by doing something no single business can do for itself cheaply: crawling and indexing the web at a scale that makes “who ranks for this keyword” and “what is my competitor doing that I’m not” answerable in seconds instead of guesswork.

The AI layer sits on top of that existing crawl rather than replacing it. Content briefs are generated from the same keyword data the tool already has, and the newer AI-visibility reporting tracks a different question entirely — not where you rank in Google, but whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews mention you at all when someone asks a relevant question.

What actually changes at each tier

The jump from SEO to Starter is not about more keywords — it’s the AI visibility features switching on. The jump from Starter to Pro+ is about scale: more sites, more history, and content tools that matter once you’re managing several properties rather than one. Advanced exists mainly for the API and the share-of-voice reporting, which are agency-grade needs.

Against Ahrefs

The two are close enough that the honest answer is: whichever one your industry’s practitioners recommend, because both index the web well enough for small-business SEO. Semrush leans slightly further into brand and competitive intelligence beyond pure search; Ahrefs has historically had the edge on raw backlink data. Neither is a casual purchase at these prices — trial the free tier before committing to either.

Alternatives

Marketing & socialApps

Ahrefs

Shows what competitors rank for and who links to them, with AI content tools and tracking of how often AI answer engines mention your brand.

Checked 25 Sep 2026

Marketing & socialApps

Surfer SEO

Analyses what's already ranking for a keyword, tells you exactly what to include to compete, then drafts the article against that brief for you to edit.

Checked 25 Sep 2026