Every article about Semrush alternatives quotes a price that no longer exists. The old Pro, Guru and Business ladder is gone, and what replaced it splits the product in a way that changes the comparison entirely.

Semrush now sells an SEO plan and a set of SEO plus AI Search plans, starting at different prices, alongside a free tier. Before you shop for an alternative, work out which of those you were actually going to buy, because the answer moves the budget by hundreds of dollars a month.

TL;DR

Semrush's published ladder is now a free plan at $0, an SEO plan at $139 a month, then Starter at $199, Pro+ at $299 and Advanced at $549, all with 17% off on annual billing and additional users starting at $45 a month. Ahrefs is the closest like-for-like at $129 a month for Lite, with a $29 Starter tier below it and extra users at $40 to $80 depending on plan. SE Ranking undercuts both at $129 a month, or $103.20 billed annually, with three manager seats on its Growth tier. Screaming Frog replaces the site audit alone for EUR 245 a year, and its free version crawls 500 URLs. Google Search Console is free and is the only source on this page that reports your actual data rather than an estimate. The pattern worth noticing is that both Semrush and Ahrefs now price AI search visibility as a separate thing, so the honest question is not which tool is cheaper but which of these jobs you are actually paying to have done.

What you are actually replacing

Semrush is five products in a trench coat. Keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, site auditing and backlink data. Most teams use two of them heavily and pay for all five.

Which is why the cheapest alternative is usually unbundling. If your actual use is site audits, a crawler costs a fraction of a suite. If it is rank tracking, a tracker does. The suite earns its price when you genuinely use three or more of the jobs every week.

Seats are the line people forget. Semrush lists additional users starting at $45 a month. Ahrefs charges $40 per extra user on Lite, $60 on Standard and $80 on Advanced. A three-person team on a suite is paying meaningfully more than the headline.

And AI search visibility is now sold separately by both leaders. Semrush splits SEO from SEO plus AI Search across its ladder. Ahrefs sells Brand Radar from $199 a month. Whatever you think of the category, it is no longer bundled into the entry price.

The five alternatives worth considering

Ahrefs, the like-for-like swap. Ahrefs lists Lite at "$129 /mo" with "5 projects", "6 months of historical data", "750 tracked keywords" and "1 user included", with "Add 2 more users at $40/mo each". Standard is "$249 /mo" with "20 projects", "2 years of historical data" and "2,000 tracked keywords". Advanced is "$449 /mo" with "50 projects", "5 years of historical data" and "5,000 tracked keywords". Enterprise is "$1,499 /mo" with an annual commitment, uncapped API access and unlimited historical data. There is also a "$29 /mo" Starter plan and a free tier.

SE Ranking, the price-led suite. SE Ranking lists Core at $129 a month, or "$103.20" a month billed annually with the stated 20% annual saving, including 10 projects, one manager seat, 2,000 keywords tracked daily, 250,000 pages a month in audit and 25,000 API credits. Growth is $279 a month, or $223.20 billed annually, with 30 projects, three manager seats, 5,000 keywords tracked daily, two million pages a month in audit and 100,000 API credits. Extra seats start "from $16". Enterprise is custom.

Screaming Frog, if what you wanted was the site audit. Screaming Frog lists a single licence at EUR 245 per year, falling to EUR 235 for 5 to 9 licences, EUR 219 for 10 to 19 and EUR 209 for 20 or more. The free version carries a "Crawl Limit - 500 URLs" and otherwise includes broken link detection, metadata analysis, XML sitemap generation, JavaScript rendering and structured data validation. The paid licence removes the crawl limit.

Google Search Console, the one that is not an estimate. Every other tool on this page models your traffic. Search Console reports the queries, impressions, clicks and positions Google actually recorded for your site, for free. Google's AI features guidance also confirms that "sites appearing in AI features (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode) are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console", so the free tool covers the surface everyone is currently anxious about.

Semrush's own free plan, the option nobody lists. The published ladder includes a $0 tier. If your usage is occasional keyword checks rather than daily work, downgrading is an alternative to switching, and it costs nothing to test before you migrate a year of tracked keywords somewhere else.

What they cost

The entry prices are closer than the reputations suggest. Ahrefs Lite at $129 and SE Ranking Core at $129 sit below Semrush's $139 SEO plan, and SE Ranking's annual rate of $103.20 undercuts all of them.

The gap opens at the top. Semrush Advanced is $549 a month against Ahrefs Advanced at $449, and Ahrefs Enterprise is $1,499 with an annual commitment. At that level you are buying seats, projects and historical depth rather than features.

Historical data is the quiet differentiator. Ahrefs publishes 6 months on Lite, 2 years on Standard and 5 years on Advanced. If you need to show a three-year trend, the entry tier will not do it and no discount changes that.

Annual billing is worth roughly the same everywhere. Semrush and Ahrefs both advertise 17%, SE Ranking advertises 20%. That is a real saving and it is also a twelve month commitment to a tool you have not lived with yet.

Screaming Frog is the outlier on shape. A perpetual-feeling annual licence at EUR 245 rather than a monthly subscription, which is why it survives in stacks that have otherwise been cut.

Which one to actually pick

If you use three or more of the jobs weekly, buy a suite. Ahrefs and SE Ranking are the two real candidates, and the choice is between Ahrefs' backlink index and SE Ranking's seat economics.

If you have one heavy job, unbundle it. Site audits go to Screaming Frog. Your own performance goes to Search Console. Neither needs a suite subscription attached.

If you are a team, price the seats before the plan. Three people on Ahrefs Lite is $129 plus two seats at $40, which changes the comparison against SE Ranking Growth with its three included manager seats.

If the trigger was an AI search worry, slow down. Both leaders now sell that visibility separately, and Google states there is nothing special to do to be eligible for those surfaces. Buying a monitoring product is a measurement decision, not a ranking one.

And if you barely use it, the honest alternative is the free tier. Semrush publishes one, Ahrefs publishes one, Search Console is free. Cancelling is an option that does not appear in comparison articles for obvious reasons.

What none of these tools will tell you

Their traffic numbers are models, not measurements. Every organic traffic estimate on every one of these platforms is inferred. Only Search Console reports what actually happened, and only for your own property.

Keyword volumes disagree across tools and always will. They are built from different clickstream and modelling inputs. Comparing a volume figure between two suites tells you about the suites.

We publish no accuracy comparison. Every study of that kind we have seen is published by one of the vendors involved.

Mangools was left out on purpose. Its plan page did not render prices without interaction when we read it, and we do not publish figures we have not seen.

No tool sees inside an AI answer. Products in this category infer visibility from sampled prompts. That is a legitimate method and it is not the same as measurement.

FAQ

How much does Semrush cost in 2026?

The published ladder is a free plan at $0, an SEO plan at $139 a month, Starter at $199, Pro+ at $299 and Advanced at $549, with 17% off when billed annually, which brings them to $117.33, $165.17, $248.17 and $455.67 respectively. Additional users start at $45 a month. The older Pro, Guru and Business names no longer appear on the pricing page.

What is the best Semrush alternative?

Ahrefs for a like-for-like suite at $129 a month on Lite, SE Ranking if price and seats matter more than backlink depth at $129 a month or $103.20 billed annually, and Screaming Frog at EUR 245 a year if the only job you needed was the site audit. There is no single best, because Semrush bundles five jobs and most teams only use two of them.

Is there a free Semrush alternative?

Yes, and more than one. Google Search Console is free and reports your own actual query, impression, click and position data rather than an estimate. Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Both Semrush and Ahrefs also publish free tiers of their own, so downgrading is an alternative to switching.

Is Ahrefs cheaper than Semrush?

At the entry paid tier, marginally. Ahrefs Lite is $129 a month against Semrush's $139 SEO plan, and Ahrefs also publishes a $29 Starter plan below that. At the top of the ladder Ahrefs Advanced is $449 against Semrush Advanced at $549. Extra seats cost $40 to $80 on Ahrefs and start at $45 on Semrush, so a team comparison can land either way.

Do I need a tool to track AI search visibility?

Not to be eligible for those surfaces. Google states that "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary" and that you do not need to create new machine readable files or markup. A monitoring product tells you whether you are appearing, which is a measurement question, and Search Console already includes AI feature traffic in overall search reporting.

Can you replace Semrush with free tools?

Partly, and it depends which job you were buying. Your own performance data is fully covered by Search Console at no cost. Site auditing is covered up to 500 URLs by Screaming Frog's free version. What free tools do not give you is competitor keyword and backlink estimation at scale, which is the part the paid suites actually sell.

Bottom line

Start by writing down which of the five jobs you used in the last month, because the answer usually reveals that you are paying for a suite to do one or two things. If it is three or more, Ahrefs and SE Ranking are the two credible suites and the decision is backlink depth against seat economics, with SE Ranking's annual rate of $103.20 the lowest published figure here. If it is one job, unbundle it: Screaming Frog for audits at EUR 245 a year, Search Console for your own data at nothing. Price the seats before you price the plan, because that is where team comparisons flip. And if the reason you are shopping is anxiety about AI search, note that Google says there is nothing special to do to be eligible, so what you would be buying is a measurement product rather than a ranking one.

Want the pipeline built rather than the tool stack rationalised? Book a call with GROU. We run lead generation and outbound inside B2B revenue engines across verticals. If competitor traffic estimation was the job you wanted, our Similarweb alternatives piece covers that category instead.

We are GROU, a B2B pipeline agency that runs lead generation, outbound, and LinkedIn content for clients across manufacturing, fintech, iGaming, software, and professional services. Some links in this article are affiliate links, including Semrush. Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Screaming Frog and Google Search Console carry plain links because we hold no affiliate arrangement with them, and every price above was read on the vendor's own page.