{
    "title": "Semrush Alternatives 2027: 9 Paid, Free & Open-Source",
    "url": "https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/semrush/",
    "summary": "The best Semrush alternatives in 2027 are Ahrefs (best overall, $129/mo), OpenSEO (best open source, MIT) and Moz Pro (cheaper, $99/mo). Semrush itself starts at $139/mo. Zekai checked these prices on vendor pages on 11 Nov 2026; 6 more are compared below, including 2 open source.",
    "tool": {
        "name": "Semrush",
        "starting_price": "$139/mo",
        "free_plan": "1 demo project, 10 reports a day",
        "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
        "pricing_url": "https://www.semrush.com/prices/"
    },
    "task": "AI SEO suite",
    "prices_checked": "2026-11-11",
    "date_modified": "2026-11-11",
    "alternatives": [
        {
            "name": "Ahrefs",
            "type": "Free plan + paid",
            "starting_price": "$129/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "Ahrefs Free: limited Site Explorer and Site Audit",
            "best_for": "backlinks and competitor research",
            "difference": "Ahrefs Lite costs $129 a month with 750 tracked keywords and 5 unverified projects, and sells Brand Radar AI tracking separately from $199 a month, while Semrush bundles AI visibility into plans.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://ahrefs.com/pricing",
            "website": "https://ahrefs.com/",
            "zekai_score": 9.1,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/ahrefs/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Moz Pro",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "$99/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "small sites needing SEO basics",
            "difference": "Moz Pro Standard includes 1 user, 3 tracked sites, 300 tracked keywords and 400K pages crawled a month, plus 150 AI prompts tracked weekly across three AI models.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://moz.com/products/pricing",
            "website": "https://moz.com/products/moz-pro",
            "zekai_score": 7.6,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/moz-pro/"
        },
        {
            "name": "SE Ranking",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "$129/mo",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "agencies and in-house teams on a budget",
            "difference": "SE Ranking Core covers 10 projects and 2k keywords tracked daily at $129 monthly, with extra manager seats from $16 and a 14-day trial without a card.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://seranking.com/subscription.html",
            "website": "https://seranking.com/",
            "zekai_score": 8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/se-ranking/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Mangools",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "solo SEOs wanting simple tools",
            "difference": "Mangools splits work across KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner and SiteProfiler, and updates rank tracking weekly except on its Agency plan, which is daily.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://mangools.com/plans-and-pricing",
            "website": "https://mangools.com/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Conductor",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "enterprise content and SEO teams",
            "difference": "Conductor publishes no prices; Essentials lists 3 tracked websites, 1,000 analyzed pages and 60 Writing Assistant drafts a year, with usage-based pricing and a free-trial link.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.conductor.com/pricing/",
            "website": "https://www.conductor.com/",
            "zekai_score": 6.3,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/conductor/"
        },
        {
            "name": "Botify",
            "type": "Paid",
            "starting_price": "Not checked",
            "free_plan_limit": "No free plan",
            "best_for": "large sites with crawl-heavy SEO",
            "difference": "Botify sells by demo request only, with modules named AI Readiness, AI Visibility and AI Activation and no self-serve sign-up or posted price.",
            "price_checked": "2026-11-11",
            "pricing_url": "https://www.botify.com/pricing",
            "website": "https://www.botify.com/",
            "zekai_score": 7.7,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/ai-tools/botify/"
        },
        {
            "name": "OpenSEO",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "MCP-ready SEO with pay-as-you-go data",
            "difference": "OpenSEO has no subscription: you bring a DataForSEO API key, pay DataForSEO per request, and get keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks, audits and an MCP server.",
            "repository": "https://github.com/every-app/open-seo",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/openseo/",
            "zekai_score": 8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/openseo/"
        },
        {
            "name": "claude-seo",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "SEO audits inside Claude Code",
            "difference": "claude-seo is a skill bundle with 25 sub-skills and 18 specialist agents for Claude Code, so audits run in your terminal instead of a hosted dashboard.",
            "repository": "https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-seo",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/claude-seo/",
            "last_release": "2026-09-23",
            "zekai_score": 7.8,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/claude-seo/"
        },
        {
            "name": "open-seo-mcp-skills",
            "type": "Open source",
            "starting_price": "Free (self-hosted)",
            "free_plan_limit": "No limit (self-hosted)",
            "licence": "MIT",
            "best_for": "SEO from your own GSC and GA4 data",
            "difference": "open-seo-mcp-skills reads your own Search Console and GA4 data through an MCP server for Claude, rather than querying a third-party keyword and backlink index.",
            "repository": "https://github.com/Ryze-AI-Adgent/open-seo-mcp-skills",
            "zekai_open_source_page": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/open-seo-mcp-skills/",
            "zekai_score": 7.5,
            "zekai_review": "https://zekaiwork.com/free-open-source/open-seo-mcp-skills/"
        }
    ],
    "faq": [
        {
            "q": "What is the best alternative to Semrush in 2027?",
            "a": "Ahrefs is the best overall Semrush alternative on this page ($129/mo). To self-host, OpenSEO is open source (MIT)."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a free version of Semrush?",
            "a": "Yes. Semrush has a free plan: 1 demo project, 10 reports a day. Paid plans start at $139/mo, checked on 11 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "Is there a 100% free alternative to Semrush?",
            "a": "Yes. OpenSEO, claude-seo, open-seo-mcp-skills are open source and free to self-host. Ahrefs has a free plan with limits, shown in the table."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is cheaper than Semrush?",
            "a": "Moz Pro starts at $99/mo, against $139/mo for Semrush, as listed on each vendor's pricing page on 11 Nov 2026."
        },
        {
            "q": "How much do Semrush alternatives cost for a team of 5?",
            "a": "If each of 5 people buys the entry paid plan, at the prices Zekai checked on 11 Nov 2026, the monthly cost is Moz Pro $495/mo, Ahrefs $645/mo, SE Ranking $645/mo, against Semrush $695/mo for Semrush. Team and business plans can cost more per seat. The Zekai Cost Finder on this page recalculates for any team size."
        },
        {
            "q": "Which is better, Ahrefs or Semrush?",
            "a": "Ahrefs Lite costs $129 a month with 750 tracked keywords and 5 unverified projects, and sells Brand Radar AI tracking separately from $199 a month, while Semrush bundles AI visibility into plans. Choose Ahrefs if you mainly need backlink and competitor data and want a free tier covering your own verified sites. Stay with Semrush if you want AI-visibility prompt tracking and site audit inside one monthly SEO plan."
        },
        {
            "q": "Why are people leaving Semrush?",
            "a": "The documented reasons are: Semrush's pricing page lists the SEO plan at $139 a month ($117.33 billed annually) with 5 websites and 500 daily-tracked keywords; Starter, Pro+ and Advanced tiers sit above it (11 Nov 2026); The free tier is limited to 1 demo project and 10 reports per day across vital tools (11 Nov 2026). Each is sourced in the section above."
        },
        {
            "q": "What is better than Semrush?",
            "a": "It depends on the job: Ahrefs for backlink research, SE Ranking or Moz Pro for lower-cost plans, and Conductor or Botify for enterprise sites."
        }
    ],
    "publisher": "Zekai (zekaiwork.com) — independently reviewed; prices read on vendor pages on the dates shown.",
    "licence": "Free to quote with a link to https://zekaiwork.com/alternatives/semrush/. Bulk copying or republishing the dataset is not permitted."
}