Semrush’s free account is good, but the first paid plan costs $139 a month. Most “Semrush alternatives” lists are written by the alternatives themselves, so every one of them wins its own list. We took a different route: one small site, one keyword and the same task list in Semrush, SE Ranking, Mangools and Ubersuggest, all on the same day.
Why Look for a Semrush Alternative in 2026
Semrush’s public pricing page lists a free plan with 1 demo project and 10 reports per day, then jumps to $139/month for the SEO plan on monthly billing (Semrush pricing, checked October 23, 2026). That gap is why people search for alternatives. Few solo site owners need a $139 tool, yet ten reports a day runs out fast.
So what do you give up when you switch? That is the real question, and a feature checklist can’t answer it. Numbers can. We ran the same keyword through four tools and got search volumes ranging from 3.6K to 9.9K, which tells you more about these tools than any marketing page.
This guide is for bloggers, solo creators and small businesses who check one or two websites. If you run an agency with dozens of clients, the free-tier details below matter less than plan limits; our guide to SEO tools for agencies compares client limits and pricing.
Key Takeaways
In our October 21, 2026 test, the same keyword got 9.9K monthly US searches in Semrush but 3.6K in SE Ranking, 4.1K in Mangools and 4.4K in Ubersuggest (Source: Indie Stack Lab hands-on test). SE Ranking is the closest full-suite swap, Mangools is the simplest, and Ubersuggest is the easiest free start. All three cost less than Semrush at entry level.
Quick Verdict: The Best Semrush Alternative for Each Need
SE Ranking is the best Semrush alternative for most small sites: its no-card trial audited 1,000 pages and set up Google rank tracking next to widgets for five AI answer surfaces, and its Core plan costs $129/month on monthly billing (SE Ranking pricing). The other two win on simplicity and price.
| If you want… | Pick | Why, from our test |
|---|---|---|
| The closest full SEO suite | SE Ranking | 1,000-page audit, backlinks, rank tracking and AI answer widgets in one project |
| The simplest keyword and backlink tools | Mangools | Five small tools, no setup wizard, clear daily lookup counters |
| The easiest free start | Ubersuggest | Google sign-in, a 150-page audit and 25 tracked keywords at $0 |
| To stay with Semrush for free | Semrush free | A 100-page audit, a full backlink summary and 10 tracked keywords at $0 |
Is the free Semrush account enough on its own? For one small site checked once a week, it often is. The alternatives earn their place when you hit the daily caps, want a bigger audit, or need a paid plan that costs less than $139.
How We Tested: One Small Site, One Keyword, Four Tools, One Day
We tested all four tools on October 21, 2026, with one work account and no credit card entered anywhere. The test site was a small marketing website our own team runs, and the keyword was “generative engine optimization,” searched in the US database.
Each tool got the same task list:
- Sign up.
- Look up the same English keyword.
- Audit the same site.
- Check backlinks for the same domain.
- Set up rank tracking for the keyword.
- Read the free limits shown inside the app.
Three tools ran on free accounts: Semrush, Mangools and Ubersuggest. SE Ranking has no free plan, so we used its 14-day trial, which asked for no card. We never started a paid trial on the other three.
Why one keyword and one site? Because it makes the numbers comparable. When four tools look at the same thing on the same day, the differences come from the tools, not from the test.
Two limits of this test are worth saying up front. Every tool was still collecting rank data when we finished, so we can’t judge ranking accuracy yet. And one small site can’t show how a tool behaves with 50 projects.
A note on money: Indie Stack Lab may add affiliate links to some tools later. When a link is an affiliate link, it is labeled, and our disclosure page explains how that works. It did not change what we tested or what we wrote down.
The Baseline: What Semrush’s Free Account Gave Us
Semrush’s free account returned full summary numbers for every task: a 100-page audit with a Site Health score of 89%, 46 referring domains, and a keyword difficulty of 72% for our test keyword. That is the bar the alternatives have to clear.
Signing up
Google sign-in worked, and the consent screen asked only for name, profile picture and email. After a three-question survey, Semrush showed its default path: “Pro+ $299/mo … 7 days free, then $299/mo.” The free path was the smaller “Skip trial” button. We pressed it.
What the tools returned
Keyword Overview put “generative engine optimization” at 9.9K monthly US searches, with a difficulty of 72% (“Hard”), a CPC of $14.49 and 22.9K global volume. It also said the keyword “will demand 124 high-authority referring domains.”
Site Audit capped the crawl at 100 pages and crawled all 100 in a few minutes. It reported 97 errors and 159 warnings; the top issue was broken internal links on 93 pages. It also scored AI Search Health at 95%.
Backlink Analytics showed 46 referring domains, 2.7K backlinks and an Authority Score of 7. Position Tracking accepted 1 of 10 keywords. Its engine menu listed ChatGPT and Gemini next to Google, but we only tracked Google.
Where the free account pinches
The free limits only show up one tool at a time. Why does that matter? Because you find each cap only when you hit it. The in-app subscription page listed Starter at $199/month, Pro+ at $299/month and Advanced at $549/month, with no summary of the free plan. For the full walk-through, read our Semrush SEO tools review, and for every plan and price, see the Semrush pricing guide.
SE Ranking: The Closest Full-Suite Alternative
SE Ranking matched Semrush task for task, and its trial gave us ten times the audit size: 1,000 pages crawled with a Health Score of 94, against Semrush’s 100 pages. It is also the only alternative here with a full crawler audit, backlinks and rank tracking under one project.
Signing up and setup
The signup page said “Start a free trial with your work email — No credit card required — Start 14-Day Free Trial.” Google sign-in works, but the button is a small icon next to the text “Sign up with Google work account”; clicking the text does nothing.
Project setup had two catches. The location defaulted to our own country, not the US, and so did the keyword database, so we switched both. And the tracking step would not launch until we entered at least one AI prompt: “You need to enter some prompts to track results within the platform.”
What surprised us was the project overview afterward. It showed Google USA rankings next to widgets for AI Overview, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Results were still collecting when we finished, so we can’t judge them yet.
What the tools returned
Keyword Research put the keyword at 3.6K US searches, with a difficulty of 78/100 (“NOT EASY”) and a CPC of $11.78. The audit started on its own when we created the project: 1,000 of 1,000 pages crawled, 2,230 issues found (6 errors, 29 warnings and 2,195 notices).
The Backlink Checker showed a Domain Trust of 15/100, 77 referring domains and 2.2K backlinks. That is 31 more referring domains than Semrush found for the same site on the same day.
Trial limits and price
The billing page showed the trial caps: 5 websites, 750 keywords and 5,000 audited pages. Research tools had their own counters: 10 keyword lookups and 10 backlink lookups. After 14 days, you pick a paid plan; there is no free tier to fall back to.
The cheapest plan, Core, showed in the app as $103.20/month billed annually ($1,238.40 a year). The public pricing page lists Core at $129/month on monthly billing (SE Ranking pricing, checked October 23, 2026). Is $129 a month worth it? If you want an audit, backlinks and tracking in one place for less than Semrush’s $139 entry plan, it was the closest match in our test. Our SE Ranking review covers the full trial.
Mangools: The Simplest Keyword and Backlink Toolkit
Mangools is the simplest tool in this test: its free account gave us 5 keyword lookups, 5 SERP lookups and 5 site lookups every 24 hours, with each counter shown in the account menu. It is not a full Semrush replacement, because it has no crawler-based site audit.
Signing up
There is no Google sign-in. The signup form asks for an email, a password and a reCAPTCHA, and the account has to be confirmed by email. Confirming in a different browser left us logged out of the first one, so open the email on the same device.
What the tools returned
KWFinder put the keyword at 4.1K US searches with a keyword difficulty of 51 and a 12-month trend of -42%. The related keywords that followed were mostly agency terms, such as “seo agency” at 24.2K.
For the site check, Mangools offers SiteProfiler, a domain metrics page, instead of an audit. It showed a Moz Domain Authority of 3/100, a Trust Flow of 19 and a Citation Flow of 21. One glitch: opening SiteProfiler from a URL with the domain in it showed zeros until we typed the domain into the search box.
LinkMiner listed 40 referring domains and 2.4K active backlinks. SERPWatcher took our keyword, showed 49 keyword slots left, and said ranks would be ready in about 15 minutes, with a weekly report by email every Monday.
Who Mangools fits
Do you mostly research keywords and check links, a few times a day? Then the tight free counters are honest about what you get, and paid plans start at $37.70/month billed annually or $61/month billed monthly (Mangools pricing, checked October 23, 2026). If you need a technical audit, look elsewhere. Our Mangools review goes tool by tool.
Ubersuggest: The Lowest-Friction Free Start
Ubersuggest was the easiest free start: Google sign-in, no card, and a free account that audited 150 pages and let us track 25 keywords. The catch is the daily cap: 3 free searches a day, shared by keyword and backlink lookups.
Signing up and setup
The register page said “Register to continue using Ubersuggest for free!” and Google sign-in worked. The dashboard showed “10 Credits left” and an offer to start a 7-day trial, which we skipped.
The project setup took five steps: segmentation, a business summary, competitors, AI prompts and keywords. Like SE Ranking, it set the language and location from where we were, not the US. The keyword form defaulted the same way, so check those two fields before every lookup.
What the tools returned
AI Keyword Overview put the keyword at 4.4K US searches, with an SEO difficulty of just 10 (“LOW”) and a CPC of $28.56. The volume trend chart was locked behind the trial. That one lookup used 1 of our 3 free daily searches.
Site Audit crawled 150 pages, then asked us to upgrade. It gave an On-Page SEO Score of 90 and listed 70 SEO issues, led by 36 pages with poorly formatted URLs. Backlinks Overview showed a Domain Authority of 3, 48 referring domains and 1,860 backlinks, 1,618 of them nofollow.
Who Ubersuggest fits
Is a 3-search daily cap workable? If you check a site once a week, yes. If you research keywords in batches, you’ll hit it in minutes. Our Ubersuggest review and Ubersuggest pricing guide cover the paid and lifetime plans.
Same Keyword, Four Answers: Volume and Difficulty Side by Side
The four tools disagreed by a wide margin on the same keyword, on the same day: US search volume ranged from 3.6K in SE Ranking to 9.9K in Semrush, and difficulty ran from 10 in Ubersuggest to 78 in SE Ranking.
| Metric | Semrush | SE Ranking | Mangools | Ubersuggest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US search volume | 9.9K | 3.6K | 4.1K | 4.4K |
| Keyword difficulty | 72% (“Hard”) | 78/100 (“NOT EASY”) | 51 | 10 (“LOW”) |
| CPC | $14.49 | $11.78 | N/A | $28.56 |
| Global volume | 22.9K | 13.8K | Not shown | 22.2K |
Which one is right? We can’t tell you, and neither can these numbers. Each tool builds its own keyword database and uses its own difficulty formula, so a “51” in one tool and a “72%” in another are not on the same scale.
What you can do is stay consistent. Pick one tool for keyword research and compare keywords inside it, not across tools. A keyword that scores harder than another in Mangools will usually rank the same way relative to its neighbors, even if the absolute number differs from Semrush.
Here’s the catch for budget planning: if you size a content plan with Semrush’s 9.9K and then track traffic in a tool that says 3.6K, the plan will look like a failure. Want to see how Semrush’s keyword tools hold up on their own? Read our Semrush keyword research review. For more tools run on a single keyword, see keyword research tools compared.
Same Site, Four Reports: Site Audit and Backlink Numbers
The site audits and backlink counts also differed: audit scores ran from 89% to 94, and referring domains from 40 to 77 for the same small site. Mangools has no crawler audit, so its column is not a like-for-like match.
| Report | Semrush | SE Ranking | Mangools | Ubersuggest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pages crawled | 100 of 100 | 1,000 of 1,000 | No crawler audit | 150 |
| Audit score | Site Health 89% | Health Score 94 | Not available | On-Page SEO Score 90 |
| Referring domains | 46 | 77 | 40 | 48 |
| Backlinks | 2.7K | 2.2K | 2.4K active | 1,860 |
| Authority metric | Authority Score 7 | Domain Trust 15 | Moz DA 3 | Domain Authority 3 |
Why do backlink counts differ so much? Each tool runs its own crawler and keeps its own link index. A link one crawler found yesterday may not exist yet in another tool’s index.
So treat these as a range, not a single truth. If you need one number for a report, pick a tool and stick with it month to month. For a broader look at link tools, see our guide to backlink checkers compared.
The audit scores tell a similar story. Semrush stopped at 100 pages, SE Ranking crawled ten times more, and Ubersuggest stopped at 150. A score based on 100 pages and a score based on 1,000 pages are not measuring the same site. Our errors-and-warnings breakdown across three crawls looks at the audit reports issue by issue.
Free Plans and Trials Compared: What You Get Before Paying
Three of the four tools have a free plan that stays free, and the fourth, SE Ranking, gives a 14-day trial without a card. None of them asked for a card during our test. That makes “semrush alternatives free” an easy search to act on.
| Free limit | Semrush (free) | SE Ranking (trial) | Mangools (free) | Ubersuggest (free) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Card needed | No | No | No | No |
| Google sign-in | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Keyword lookups | 10 reports per day across tools | 10 | 5 per 24 hours | 3 searches per day, shared |
| Site audit | 100 pages | 5,000 pages | No crawler audit | 150 pages |
| Tracked keywords | 10 | 750 | 50 | 25 |
| Projects | 1 demo project | 5 websites | 1 tracked domain | 1 project |
| After the free period | Stays free | Pick a paid plan | Stays free | Stays free |
The Semrush daily figure comes from its pricing page; every other cell is what the apps showed us. Mangools’ 50 tracked keywords is the 49 slots it showed after we added one.
Which free tier is the most generous? It depends on the task. For audits, Ubersuggest’s 150 pages beat Semrush’s 100. For lookups, Semrush’s 10 reports a day beat Mangools’ 5 and Ubersuggest’s 3. For tracking, Mangools’ 50 keyword slots lead the free plans.
If you want a wider list of no-cost tools, including Google’s own, our guide to free SEO marketing tools compares what each free plan lets you do, and free keyword research tools compared lines up the daily lookup limits.
What You Pay After the Free Tier
All three alternatives start below Semrush’s $139/month SEO plan on monthly billing: SE Ranking Core at $129/month, Mangools Basic at $61/month, and Ubersuggest from $12/month as shown to us. We read every price below on the vendors’ public pricing pages on October 23, 2026.
| Tool | Entry plan, monthly billing | Entry plan, annual billing | What the test account showed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | SEO, $139/month | $117.33/month | Starter $199/mo, Pro+ $299/mo, Advanced $549/mo |
| SE Ranking | Core, $129/month | $103.20/month | Core $103.20/month billed annually |
| Mangools | Basic, $61/month | $37.70/month ($452.40/year) | Not opened |
| Ubersuggest | Individual, $12/month as shown to us | Lifetime $120 as shown to us | Not opened |
Which number should you compare? Use the monthly-billing column if you might cancel within a year, and the annual column only if you’re sure you’ll stay. Two more notes on this table. First, Semrush shows different prices in different places. The public page adds an SEO plan at $139 that the in-app page didn’t list, and lists Advanced as a custom quote (Semrush pricing).
Second, Ubersuggest’s page showed us Individual at $12/month, Business at $20/month and Enterprise at $40/month, with lifetime plans at $120, $200 and $400 (Ubersuggest pricing). A comparison box on the same page lists Ubersuggest at “US$ 29 - US$ 99.” We loaded the page from outside the US, so the price you see may differ; check it at checkout.
Moving up a tier changes the picture. Mangools Premium is $81/month and Agency is $141/month on monthly billing, and SE Ranking Growth is $279/month. On Semrush, Pro+ at $299/month covers 15 websites and 1,500 tracked keywords, against 5 websites and 500 keywords on the SEO plan.
Alternatives We Have Not Tested: Ahrefs, Moz, SpyFu and Similarweb
Ahrefs, Moz Pro, SpyFu and Similarweb show up on most lists of Semrush competitors, but none of them went through our task list, so we don’t score them. Below is what each official pricing page said on October 23, 2026.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs has a free plan for sites you own and paid plans from $29/month for Starter. Its full suite starts with Lite at $129/month, which includes 750 tracked keywords and 5 non-verified projects; Standard is $249/month and Advanced is $449/month (Ahrefs pricing). Our Ahrefs SEO tools guide explains what each plan unlocks.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro lists an entry-level plan at $49/month for one website, and Standard at $99/month ($79/month paid yearly) with 3 tracked sites and 300 tracked keywords (Moz Pro pricing). Moz also offers free tools such as Link Explorer and the MozBar. Its Domain Authority score is the “Moz DA” that Mangools showed us; Moz Domain Authority explained covers how it works. Read our Moz Pro tools guide for the rest.
SpyFu
SpyFu leans toward competitor research, including paid search history. Its Basic plan is $39/month with 10k-row search results and 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings; Pro + AI is $59 for the first month, then $119/month (SpyFu pricing). Annual billing saves 25%, per the same page.
Similarweb
Similarweb is a traffic intelligence platform first. Its self-service Competitive Intelligence package costs $199/month, or $125/month billed annually. Keyword research, rank tracking, site audit and backlinks arrive in the next package up, at $399/month (Similarweb pricing). The free data on its website is “a high-level sample,” in its own words.
Why not test them now? Because a review without a test is a summary of the vendor’s homepage. We’d rather leave a gap than fill it with guesses.
How to Pick Your Semrush Alternative This Week
You can make this choice in one afternoon: run your own site and one keyword through two free tiers, and keep the tool whose numbers and workflow you’d trust every month. Our test took one day for four tools.
A short checklist to take with you:
- Do you need a technical audit? Choose SE Ranking or Ubersuggest; Mangools has no crawler audit.
- How many lookups a day do you run? Under 3, any tool works; over 10, plan to pay.
- Do you care about AI answer engines? SE Ranking’s trial put AI Overview, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity widgets in the project overview.
- What’s your budget? Ubersuggest showed us the lowest monthly price, $12, but check what your location gets; Mangools Basic is $37.70/month billed annually.
- Do you already rely on Semrush’s free account? Keep it; it costs nothing and pairs well with any of the three.
Honestly, many site owners end up with two tools: one free Semrush account for the occasional deep check, and one cheaper tool for daily work. That is a fine setup. If you’d like to see how these suites compare across a wider task list, read our roundup of the best SEO tools tested on the same website.