Semrush alternatives: what we use and pay

If your Semrush renewal is coming up, the question is not which suite costs less but whether you need a suite at all. We run the sites we manage without one. In the 64 days after we deposited $50 with DataForSEO on 10 August 2026, our balance fell by $9.33. That covered the keyword research, Google result checks and AI answer checks we needed beyond what four free tools show. On 13 October 2026, Semrush’s cheapest paid plan listed at $139 for a single month.

Our pick, for an operator who mostly looks after their own sites: Google Search Console first, the other free consoles beside it, and data bought by the call for the keyword, competitor and AI answer research beyond them. This page shows what each one does for us, what it costs, and what you give up.

We tried Semrush in June and July 2026 and never paid for a plan, so nothing here is a story about leaving it. Every tool below is one we have used, and each row says how.

What to look for in a Semrush alternative

A Semrush alternative should answer four questions: what it shows about your own site, what it shows about other sites, what one month really costs you at your volume, and what history it keeps. Free consoles answer the first well; paid data answers the second; only your own spending records answer the third.

The fourth, history, is the one none of the seven comparisons we read on Google’s results page listed as something you lose. A suite stores your rankings and reports for you. Without one, history older than each tool’s window is gone unless you saved it yourself. This page covers the tools for research and measurement; it does not cover paid-search, writing or paid rank-tracking tools.

Our Semrush alternatives at a glance

Six tools do the work on our sites: four free tools that only see the sites we verify or set up, a free crawler for our own pages, and one paid data service for research beyond them. The table says how we know each one and what limit each puts on us.

Google Search Console: for your own rankings

Google Search Console is the free tool we use first, for one job: your own site’s Google queries, positions, clicks and indexing. It is Google’s own data, not a third-party estimate, and we read it every month on the sites we manage. It says nothing about competitors and keeps 16 months of history.

Google’s own guide gives the window as 16 months and suggests pulling the data and storing it yourself to keep more. In October 2026 we found that we had never saved our September positions. Search Console still had them; anything older than its window would not have come back.

Bing Webmaster Tools: for Bing data and AI citations

Bing Webmaster Tools is the free console for Bing’s queries and, since 2026, for an AI Performance report that counts citations of your pages in Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and partner services. None of the seven comparisons we read on Google’s results page mentioned Bing Webmaster Tools.

We read it every month; from August to October 2026 it was the only engine report we use that counted wiserstaff.com’s citations. That report is how we learned that citations and money are different things: what those citations turned into is a page of its own. On wiserstaff.com it counted thousands of Copilot citations from 16 August to 3 October 2026. Citations are not visits, so read it whatever Bing sends you in clicks.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: for your own backlinks

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is the free option for the backlinks pointing at the sites you verify, with Ahrefs’ own domain rating. We read it once a month on screen. On the free plan, its API and its assistant connector both refused us in August 2026, so we could not automate it through either; we read it on screen.

It answers “who links to me” well and “who links to my competitor” not at all. That second question is one we pay for by the call when we need it, which has been rare.

Microsoft Clarity: for what visitors do

Microsoft Clarity is free and shows what visitors do on a page: recordings, scroll depth, rage clicks, and which AI crawlers visited. It measures behaviour, not search data. We run it on two of the sites we manage: wiserstaff.com since August 2026 and ranthrice.com since September.

Its API is tight. Microsoft’s documentation, which we read again on 13 October 2026, allows 10 requests a day per project and looks back three days at most. We take our monthly reading of AI bot visits from the screen.

Screaming Frog: for crawling your own pages

Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that reads a site the way a search engine does, page by page. Its free version crawls up to 500 URLs at a time, per its pricing page read on 13 October 2026. We used it in August 2026 on wiserstaff.com, well under that limit.

A suite runs this kind of site audit from its own servers. On a few small sites, a crawler on your own machine was enough for us.

DataForSEO: for research beyond your own sites

DataForSEO sells search data by the request: keyword volumes, Google results pages, competitors’ rankings, backlinks and AI answers. It is the only paid tool in this setup. We deposited $50 on 10 August 2026; on 13 October, $40.67 was left. That is $9.33 in 64 days, across every site we manage.

The $9.33 is the fall in the account balance, with no other deposit in between, so it counts every request we made, AI answer checks included, rather than a sum we added up from responses. Two rows of our figures page show single jobs inside it: a half-hour calibration session for $2.35 (broken down by API), and a 54-topic blog plan researched for $0.41. How the vendor bills each call is explained in what DataForSEO is. We also sell a manual on keeping this kind of spending in check, the By-the-Call SEO Manual; nothing on this page depends on it.

What a Semrush plan costs, read on 13 October 2026

On 13 October 2026, Semrush’s prices page listed its cheapest paid plan, SEO, at $139 for one month on monthly billing, or $117.33 a month billed annually. Our 64 days of pay-per-call data came to about a fifteenth of that one month. The comparison is not like for like, and the paragraph under the table says why.

A suite’s price buys a screen, a stored keyword and backlink database, saved history and, depending on the plan, seats, used or not. Our $9.33 bought answers only, with no screen and no history kept for us. The comparisons on Google’s results page quoted the same SEO plan at anything from $99 to $139.95 when we read them on 12 October 2026, so read the prices page yourself before you decide. Every vendor price on this page carries the date we read it, as our house rules require.

What you give up without a suite

Working without a suite cost us four things: a screen to browse keywords on, history kept for us, one difficulty score to get used to, and competitor research inside a flat fee. Each one came up on our sites, and each one now costs us time or a billed call instead of a subscription.

• No screen for the paid data. Pay-per-call data arrives as files. You read it through a script or an AI assistant, or not at all.
• No history beyond each tool’s window unless you save it. Our September positions were still in Search Console when we went back for them; data older than 16 months would not have been.
• Scores that disagree. For “restaurant employee scheduling software”, DataForSEO gave a keyword difficulty of 12 on 8 August 2026, on the free credit we used before our deposit; Semrush had given 39 on 14 July. Different formulas, different data and 25 days apart: the two numbers cannot be swapped for each other. We read the results page before writing anything, as we did for this one.
• Competitor research is metered. Each look at another site costs at least one billed request. We have done it rarely, and every extra check shows on the balance.

Who should keep paying for Semrush

Keep the suite if your work happens inside it: agencies sending client reports, teams that share seats, anyone running paid search campaigns from the same tool, and anyone who browses keyword lists daily. Our setup suits one operator, a few sites and occasional research.

For those readers, a monthly fee may save more time than it costs; we did not measure that, nor the paid search features. If you would rather assemble something like this yourself, this page gives you the tools and what they cost us: the four free tools cost nothing, and the paid part is a deposit you control. You will still need a way to read the paid data. If you do not want to read data outside a screen, stay where you are; that is a fair reason, not a failure.

Our pick, and the renewal test

Our pick for a solo operator is Google Search Console, with the three other free tools beside it and pay-per-call data for research. Before you renew any suite, run what we call the renewal test: list the reports you opened in the last 30 days, and ask which ones a free tool already answers.

The ones that remain are what you would pay for by the call. If that list is long and daily, price those calls and your time against the suite before you decide. If it is short, a deposit may last months at your volume: ours had $40.67 left after 64 days. Which of those research jobs are worth automating is covered in what SEO tasks you can actually automate.