9 Best Semrush Alternatives in 2026 for Agencies and In-House SEO Teams

All nine, side by side

Nine tools on the five things that decide a Semrush evaluation: monthly price, the AI engines you get before add-ons, how many brands and seats the plan carries, how far each one takes the work, and whether it sees Google at all. Semrush is one of only six here that answer yes to that last column, which is a large part of why people stay.

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Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked 27 August 2026, and are monthly list. Amadora AI is our product. Semrush annual billing saves up to 17%, taking Starter to $165.17. SE Ranking prices by region: read from Europe the same Core plan is €109.

Why teams leave Semrush

Teams leave Semrush over the shape of the bill rather than the size of it. The 2026 restructure put four tiers on the page — SEO $139, Starter $199, Pro+ $299, Advanced $549 — and the cheapest one carries four explicit red crosses against AI search: no performance tracking, no sentiment monitoring, no AI visibility reports, no custom prompts. AI visibility genuinely begins at $199, where it covers 50 prompts a day against one domain. Pro+ raises that to 100 prompts and Advanced to 200 with API access. Every colleague is $45 a month on any tier, and white-labelled client reporting is a separate $20 Pro Report add-on. An agency with ten clients is not buying a platform, it is buying ten domains and a stack of seats.

The second reason is what comes out. Semrush diagnoses better than almost anything in this category: an AI-ready site audit, content optimisation from Pro+, keyword cannibalisation analysis, and a decade of historical SEO data behind it all. None of that reaches the site. There is no agent that publishes an approved page, no internal-link repair, no schema applied to a live template. The output is a report, and a report is the thing you have to turn into work before anyone pays for it.

How we compared

Every figure here comes from the vendor’s own pricing page, read on 26 and 27 August 2026, with the monthly toggle on wherever one exists. No number is taken from a third-party roundup, and that matters more on this query than most: the pages ranking for it compare keyword-research suites to each other and barely mention AI answers, so their figures predate the 2026 restructure.

Amadora AI is our product and it ranks first here. Its entry follows the same shape as every other one, limitations included, and each tool links to its own site so the figures can be checked. Screenshots are each vendor’s live homepage. A wider set of tools, several of them nothing like a research suite, sits in our roundup of the top LLM monitoring tools.

The nine alternatives, ranked

Ranked for the buyer currently on Semrush: an agency or in-house team with real reporting obligations, more than one brand to answer for, and a growing suspicion that the AI half of the account is priced per domain.

01

Amadora AI — Best for agencies and in-house teams billing per client rather than per domain.

Our productRung 7 of 7From $59/moUnlimited brands at $179Google SEO included

Amadora runs a brand’s prompts daily against the live ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini interfaces rather than APIs, and names the competitor owning the sources each answer trusted. What separates it from a research suite is what happens next: the audit becomes an action plan, that becomes briefs and drafts, approved on-page work is pushed to the CMS, and Search Console puts the Google number beside the AI one.

Key features

• Unlimited brands and seats from $179, so a roster is one bill rather than a stack of domains.
• White-label audits and action plans as interactive HTML plus an editable document.
• Publishes to WordPress and Webflow, others via API and MCP, approval-gated and reversible.
• Search Console connects, so AI answers and Google rankings sit in one report.

Pricing

Three tiers on Amadora’s pricing page. Starter $59/mo: 15 prompts, one brand, 300 credits. Professional $179/mo: 100 prompts, unlimited brands and seats, 1,000 credits. Agency $499/mo adds white-label workspaces and API. Credits price the deliverables — 200 an audit, 40 a draft.

Limitations

• Nothing approaching Semrush’s keyword and backlink index — we are not a research suite.
• No historical SEO archive: our data starts the day you connect a domain.
• Three engines on base plans, against the five surfaces Ahrefs covers at $129.

Best for a team whose month ends with a deliverable rather than a dashboard, and whose client count grows faster than its domain count. Not the right call if keyword research is the job.

02

Semrush — Best for teams that need a full keyword and backlink suite and will treat AI visibility as one more report inside it.

Rung 3 of 7From $139/moAI from $199Google SEO yes

Semrush is the most complete research platform on this page and, since becoming an Adobe company, the most obviously well-resourced. The 2026 restructure folded AI search into the same account as rank tracking and site audit, so one login answers both questions — rare here, and the main reason teams stay.

Key features

• A keyword and backlink index nothing else on this page comes close to.
• AI brand performance, sentiment and custom prompts from the $199 Starter tier.
• AI-ready site audit, content optimisation and keyword cannibalisation analysis from Pro+.
• Historical SEO data and MCP access, with API on Advanced.

Pricing

Monthly list: SEO $139, Starter $199, Pro+ $299, Advanced $549; annual billing saves up to 17%, taking Starter to $165.17. Prompts tracked daily run 0, 50, 100 and 200 by tier. Additional users start at $45/mo, a white-label Pro Report is $20/mo, and Enterprise is quoted.

Limitations

• The $139 SEO plan carries no AI search tracking at all — four explicit exclusions on the pricing page.
• AI brand performance covers one domain at Starter, so a roster means a tier jump or a second account.
• Nothing is published: no CMS agent, no internal-link repair, no schema applied.

Best for a team that would buy the research suite anyway and wants AI visibility reported next to it. Not the right call for an agency whose bill scales with clients rather than domains.

03

Search Atlas — Best for agencies that want SEO, AI visibility and the fixes applied inside one white-labelled platform.

Rung 6 of 7From $99/moOTTO per siteGoogle SEO yes

Search Atlas is the closest structural competitor to Amadora in this list and the closest thing to a Semrush replacement that also acts. Its OTTO module auto-implements on-page and technical fixes rather than listing them, LLM visibility and rank tracking sit in the same platform, and the Agency tier ships white-label reporting and a client portal. The catch is in the invoice.

Key features

• OTTO SEO applies on-page and technical fixes rather than recommending them.
• LLM visibility, rank tracking and site audit in one platform.
• Agency tier at $999/mo: 10 seats, white-label reporting, client portal, custom domain.
• Seven-day free trial, and monthly billing with no annual price published.

Pricing

Monthly list: Starter $99, Growth $199, Pro $399, Agency $999. No annual pricing is published. OTTO is charged separately per site — $85 Basic, $69 Standard, $59 Plus, $49 Premium per site per month — so the plan price understates the real cost for anyone running more than a couple of clients.

Limitations

• OTTO is billed per site on top of the plan, which is where the agency maths turns.
• Starter carries one seat and two LLM visibility projects.
• Its own materials claim week-over-week AI and Google reporting in one view; we could not confirm that without opening a trial account, so this page does not credit it.

Best for an agency that wants one platform to diagnose and fix, and can absorb a per-site charge. Not the right call if you need the total cost predictable before the first client lands.

04

SE Ranking — Best for teams swapping suites to spend less without giving up rank tracking, GEO or a publishing content editor.

Rung 5 of 7From $129/mo10 projectsGoogle SEO yes

SE Ranking is the like-for-like swap on this page: an SEO platform with rank tracking, site audit and competitor research, now with AI mentions, citations and sentiment folded into the same plan rather than sold above it. Core carries ten projects and 2,000 keywords where Semrush Starter carries five websites and 500, and AI tracking is included rather than gated behind a tier.

Key features

• AI mentions, citations and sentiment included on the entry platform tier.
• Ten projects and 2,000 keywords tracked daily at Core, with 100 prompts.
• Content Editor briefs, AI Writer drafts, WordPress publishes — 25 articles a month at Core.
• Free 14-day trial, and a visible monthly-versus-annual toggle at 20% off.

Pricing

Core is $129/mo monthly and Growth sits above it, with annual billing at 20% off. Prices are region-dependent: read from Europe the same Core plan is €109 monthly and €87.20 annual. AI visibility is part of the platform tier rather than an add-on, which is the practical difference from Semrush.

Limitations

• Content is metered in articles: 25 a month at Core, with extras from €39.20 each.
• One manager seat at Core, and client seats are an annual-billing-only add-on.
• Prices vary by region, so the figure you see may not be the figure quoted here.

Best for a team that wants the Semrush workflow at a lower monthly number, with GEO and a publishing content editor in the box. Not the right call if the research index is what you are paying Semrush for.

05

Profound — Best for enterprises that need AI-optimised drafts arriving in the CMS for editorial review.

Rung 5 of 7From $99/mo$399 for 3 enginesGoogle SEO no

Profound has the deepest answer-engine analytics in the category and $96M of Series C funding at a $1B valuation behind it, with more than 700 enterprises on the platform. Its Agents draft and update entries across ten CMSs — WordPress, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Drupal, Adobe Experience Manager and more — injecting FAQs, statistics and schema for an editor to approve.

Key features

• Agents that draft and update entries across ten content management systems.
• The deepest answer-engine analytics on this page, with citation-level source data.
• Agency Growth adds per-client workspaces with consolidated billing and five agency seats.
• Monthly billing at the headline price, with a yearly toggle for two months free.

Pricing

Monthly list: Starter $99 and Growth $399, with Enterprise quoted. Starter is ChatGPT only, 50 prompts, 100 Agents credits and one seat. Growth covers three answer engines, 100 prompts, 400 credits and three seats. For agencies the workspace is the billing unit, at $399 per client.

Limitations

• No Google organic anywhere, so the AI number never sits beside a ranking.
• The $99 tier tracks ChatGPT only — three engines start at $399.
• Per-client-workspace pricing is the most expensive shape here for a roster.

Best for an enterprise or a well-funded brand team that wants drafts queued in the CMS and does not need Google in the same report. Not the right call if you are replacing Semrush and still need rank data.

06

AthenaHQ — Best for single brands that want outreach targets and drafts published beside the tracking.

Rung 5 of 7From $295/moUnlimited seatsGoogle SEO partial

AthenaHQ tracks ten models on its entry paid tier where Semrush Starter tracks a handful, and it does not charge for seats at all. Its Action Center converts findings into drafts, outreach targets and commerce fixes and publishes the drafts into six content systems, and a free Essential tier with five models and a $25 credit means an evaluation costs nothing.

Key features

• Ten models tracked on Starter, five on the free tier.
• Unlimited seats on every plan, including the free one.
• An Action Center producing drafts and publishing them into six content systems.
• A free Essential tier with a $25 credit before any commitment.

Pricing

Essential is free with five models and a $25 credit. Starter is $295/mo flat with ten models and unlimited seats; API access and extra credits are paid add-ons on top, and larger plans are quoted. Against Semrush Starter that is roughly 1.5× the price for ten models rather than one tracked domain.

Limitations

• One brand per account, so a client roster means several accounts.
• Nothing is repaired on the site after a page publishes — no links, no schema.
• No keyword rank tracking, and no keyword or backlink research of any kind.

Best for a single brand that wants the draft and the outreach list generated where the tracking already lives, with the whole team able to log in. Not the right call for an agency consolidating clients onto one bill.

07

Conductor — Best for enterprises with a procurement cycle that want AEO and SEO governed in one platform.

Rung 4 of 7No public priceUsage-basedGoogle SEO yes

Conductor is the enterprise incumbent in this list and the only tool here that publishes a full tier table with every price removed. It monitors ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot alongside a decade of SEO intelligence, and its Writing Assistant produces a fixed allowance of drafts a year rather than a monthly quota.

Key features

• Essentials, Growth and Enterprise tiers with published feature allotments.
• Writing Assistant drafts allocated annually: 60, 180 and 600 by tier.
• Explicitly usage-based, not seat-based — team size does not change the bill.
• Monitoring across content, product pages and compliance at up to 500,000 pages.

Pricing

No prices are published at any tier; every plan routes to a demo request. Growth adds 2,500 AI search credits a year on top of 180 drafts, 25,000 pages analysed and 5,000 keywords. Enterprise raises drafts to 600 and removes the website cap. Budget accordingly: this is a sales-led purchase, not a card-on-file one.

Limitations

• No published price at all, so it cannot be compared on cost without a call.
• Monitoring alerts on problems but does not remediate them; nothing reaches the CMS.
• Drafts are allocated per year, which suits a content calendar rather than a sprint.

Best for a global organisation that needs governance, compliance monitoring and a named account team. Not the right call for anyone who wants to know the price before the first meeting.

08

Ahrefs Brand Radar — Best for teams that want AI share of voice measured against the largest prompt index available.

Rung 2 of 7From $129/mo5 AI prompts at entryGoogle SEO yes

Ahrefs Brand Radar is a module inside Ahrefs rather than a product beside it, which is exactly its argument against Semrush: the same login already carries the backlink, keyword and rank data the AI number needs context from. Five AI surfaces are covered, including Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, against an index of more than 474 million organic prompts.

Key features

• Five AI surfaces including Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• An index of more than 474 million organic prompts behind share of voice.
• Backlinks, keywords, rank tracking and site audit in the same account.
• Brand Radar available standalone from $199/mo for teams that want only that.

Pricing

Monthly list: Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449, Enterprise $1,499. Annual billing saves up to 17% but exact annual figures are not published. Lite includes just five tracked AI prompts against Semrush Starter’s fifty. Extra users are $40 to $100 a month by tier, and there is no free trial — the vendor states it never runs discounts.

Limitations

• Five tracked AI prompts on Lite is a demo, not a working set.
• Every seat is billed, from one included at $129.
• Nothing is planned, produced or published — it is a metric, not a workflow.

Best for an SEO team that already trusts Ahrefs data and wants AI share of voice beside its rankings. Not the right call if the prompt set or the seat count is going to grow.

09

Surfer SEO — Best for writers who need pages optimised for Google first and AI answers second.

Rung 4 of 7From $59/moAI from $119Google SEO yes

Surfer SEO comes at the same problem from the document rather than the dashboard: its Content Editor and auto-optimize improve a page as it is written, which is the half of the job Semrush charges Pro+ for. AI tracking is newer and thinner — 25 prompts refreshed weekly, starting at the Standard tier rather than the headline one.

Key features

• Content Editor and auto-optimize produce and improve documents directly.
• 25 AI prompts refreshed weekly from the Standard tier.
• A standalone AI Search Analytics product for teams that want only tracking.
• Enterprise from $999/mo adds white-label and SSO.

Pricing

Surfer publishes both cycles, with yearly exactly 17% cheaper: monthly list is Discovery $59, Standard $119, Pro $219 and Peace of Mind $359. AI prompt tracking effectively starts at Standard, so treat $119 as the real entry point rather than $59.

Limitations

• No monthly billing option is published at all, so evaluation means a year’s commitment.
• The $59 tier shows no AI prompt allowance; AI tracking starts at $119.
• One brand workspace and one seat, with no client-roster structure.

Best for a content team that writes at volume and wants the optimisation in the editor. Not the right call as a Semrush replacement — it has no backlink index and no rank tracking at that price.

Best by job

An agency billing ten clients rather than ten domains

Amadora AI. Professional is $179 for unlimited brands and unlimited seats, and Agency $499 adds white-label workspaces. Semrush prices AI brand performance per domain and every colleague at $45, so the same roster arrives as a very different invoice.

Swapping the whole suite to spend less

SE Ranking. Core is $129 with ten projects, 2,000 keywords and AI mentions, citations and sentiment included rather than gated. It is the nearest like-for-like replacement here, and it keeps the rank tracking a Semrush team would miss first.

Getting the fixes applied, not just listed

Search Atlas. OTTO implements on-page and technical work instead of recommending it, inside a platform that also tracks rankings and AI visibility. Budget for the per-site OTTO charge on top of the $99 plan before comparing it with anything else.

When Semrush is still the right choice

The execution ladder

The execution ladder is seven steps from measuring an AI visibility problem to proving it was fixed: measure, diagnose, plan, produce, publish, fix, prove. Index size and keyword counts miss the thing it captures, which is how much of the work lands back on your team after the platform has finished reporting. Every tool here climbs the same seven steps and each stops somewhere.

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Rung placements reflect what each vendor documents publicly as of 28 August 2026. SE Ranking moves from 3 to 5: its Content Editor builds briefs, its AI Writer generates articles and its WordPress integration publishes them live, which the earlier reading missed. Search Atlas is credited at rung 6 on OTTO's published behaviour; its own materials claim rung 7, which we have not confirmed because doing so needs a trial account.

Semrush stops at rung 3, and so does the tool most people swap it for. That is the finding worth carrying out of this page: the cheaper suite and the more expensive suite stop in the same place, because a research platform’s job has always ended at the recommendation. Two of the nine climb past rung 5, and only one of those puts the AI number and the Google number in the same week-over-week report. If your shortlist runs to enterprise answer-engine analytics rather than research suites, the Profound alternatives page covers that end, and the Peec AI alternatives page covers the analytics-only mid-market.

Migrating off Semrush

Keyword lists, projects, competitor sets and tracked domains all export as CSV and import cleanly almost anywhere, and your prompt list moves the same way. What does not move is the history, and on this switch that is the real cost rather than a footnote: Semrush’s archive is the reason a lot of teams renew, and no tool here can backfill it. Export the reports you will need to reference before the account lapses, because the position-tracking graph is not reproducible from anyone else’s data.

Expect first AI data within twenty-four hours of adding a domain and a usable trend line at about two weeks, so run the two side by side for a fortnight rather than cutting over. Semrush bills monthly on all four self-serve tiers, so there is nothing to run down unless you took the 17% annual discount — check the renewal date first. If the deciding question is which one produced something you could send a client, that fortnight will answer it.

Common questions

Last updated

This comparison is current as of 27 August 2026, with every price, engine count, seat limit and prompt allowance verified against each vendor's own pricing page on that date.