SE Ranking has no free plan, so the real question is which paid plan you land on after the 14-day trial. The two self-serve plans cost $129 and $279 a month, and paying for a year cuts both by a fifth. This guide breaks down what each dollar buys, what costs extra, and which discounts actually exist.
What SE Ranking Costs in 2026
SE Ranking prices start at $103.20 a month for the Core plan when you pay for a full year, or $129 a month when you pay month to month, according to the official pricing page we checked on October 23, 2026 (SE Ranking pricing). Growth costs $223.20 or $279. Enterprise has custom pricing through sales.
We started our own SE Ranking trial on October 21, 2026 and read the billing page before writing anything here. That page showed the same two annual prices, which tells you the in-app numbers and the public page agree. For what the tools themselves did on a real site, see our hands-on test of the SE Ranking trial.
Why write a whole guide on two prices? Because the plan price is rarely the final bill. Add-ons, extra keywords, extra seats and the billing period all change what you pay, and some of those choices can’t be undone once you pay.
Key Takeaways
Paying annually saves 20% on every SE Ranking plan, per the official pricing page (SE Ranking pricing). Core suits one team with up to 10 projects; Growth suits agencies with up to 30. The trial needs no card and never turns into a paid plan on its own. There is no lifetime deal on the official pricing page.
SE Ranking Prices at a Glance: Core, Growth and Enterprise
SE Ranking sells three plans in 2026, and the annual price is exactly 80% of the monthly price for both self-serve plans. Here’s what a year costs either way, with the yearly totals worked out from the per-month prices on the pricing page:
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed annually | One year, monthly billing | One year, annual billing | You save per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core | $129/month | $103.20/month | $1,548 | $1,238.40 | $309.60 |
| Growth | $279/month | $223.20/month | $3,348 | $2,678.40 | $669.60 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Ask sales | Ask sales | Not listed |
The $1,238.40 Core figure is also what our trial billing page showed as the yearly charge. So if you see that number at checkout, it’s the full year paid at once, not a monthly fee.
Is the jump from Core to Growth worth more than double the price? That depends almost entirely on how many sites you manage, which the next two sections cover.
What the Core Plan Includes for $129 a Month
Core gives one manager seat 10 projects, 2,000 keywords and 100 AI prompts tracked daily, and 250,000 audited pages a month, according to the Core plan card on the pricing page. It also lists unlimited keyword, competitor and backlink research, plus integrations with Data Studio, Matomo, Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Here’s the rest of the Core card in one list:
- 5 domains in GEO research, which is SE Ranking’s name for AI competitor research
- 25,000 API credits and MCP access
- Rank tracking across major search engines
- Website and on-page audit
Do the per-project math and Core on annual billing works out to $10.32 per project per month if you fill all 10. A freelancer with three sites pays the same $103.20, so the per-site cost is much higher for small users. So should a solo site owner pay for it? Only if daily tracking is something you’ll actually check.
One limit is easy to misread. Since the October 2024 plan update, SE Ranking counts every keyword and search engine pair as a separate keyword, according to its billing FAQ (SE Ranking help center). Track one keyword in Google New York and Google Chicago and you’ve used 2 of your 2,000. If you track the same terms in several cities or on mobile and desktop, your real keyword count is lower than it looks.
What Growth Adds Over Core
Growth triples the projects to 30 and the manager seats to 3, raises daily tracking to 5,000 keywords and 250 prompts, and adds full project history, guest links, page change monitoring and dedicated support, per the pricing page’s plan cards. The “Compare plans” table on the same page shows the gaps in more detail:
| Limit | Core | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | 10 | 30 |
| Manager seats | 1 | 3 |
| Report Builder reports | 10 | 30 |
| Data export rows | 50k | 100k |
| Keywords tracked daily | 2k | 5k |
| Keyword database expansion | 17.5k | 50k |
| Historical data | Shown as 6/mo | All time |
| Content Marketing articles | 25 | 50 |
| AI prompts daily | 100 | 250 |
| AI competitor research domains | 5 | 15 |
| Audit pages per account | 250k | 2M |
| Max audit pages per project | 250k | 1M |
| On-page checker and SERP analyzer | 50 | 1,000 |
| Research API credits | 25K per month | 100K per month |
Some things don’t change. Both plans list 3 Local Marketing locations, 1,500 Local and Map Rank Tracker keywords and 5 AI platforms tracked.
Who needs Growth, then? Mostly agencies. Core stops at 10 projects, so anyone managing more than 10 sites needs Growth or Enterprise, or should ask sales how the Agency Pack’s 30 projects fit with Core. On annual billing, a full Growth plan costs $7.44 per project per month, cheaper per project than a full Core plan at $10.32. For a wider look at plans built for client work, see our guide to SEO tools for agencies.
Monthly vs Annual Billing: What the 20% Saving Costs You
Annual billing saves 20%, but you pay the whole year at once: the pricing page FAQ says annual plans “are billed upfront to provide the discounted rate” (SE Ranking pricing). On Core, that means $1,238.40 on day one instead of $129 each month.
That upfront charge matters because of the refund rule. The same FAQ says “Payments are non-refundable, except in cases where the service wasn’t delivered as promised (or where a special promotion specifies otherwise).” If you pay for a year and stop using SE Ranking in month three, you don’t get the rest back.
There are two softer options. First, the FAQ says sales can discuss “quarterly payment schedule with an annual commitment.” Second, free assisted migration from another tool comes only with an annual plan; monthly users get self-serve import tools instead.
How do you decide? We’d start monthly for at least one billing cycle after the trial. The $25.80 a month you lose on Core is cheap insurance against a year you can’t refund. Switch to annual once you know you’ll keep it.
What the 14-Day Free Trial Includes
The trial is free for 14 days with no credit card: our sign-up page read “No credit card required,” and the trial started without any payment step. The pricing page FAQ calls it “fully functional” with “up to 10 projects, 750 tracked keywords per day, 20 AI prompts per day, and AI competitive research for up to 3 domains.”
Our own billing page showed slightly different numbers. Here they are side by side:
| Trial limit | Our billing page (October 21, 2026) | Pricing page FAQ (October 23, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Sites or projects | 5 websites | Up to 10 projects |
| Tracked keywords | 750 | 750 per day |
| AI prompts | 20 (from the setup screen) | 20 per day |
| Audited pages | 5,000 | Not listed |
| AI competitor research | Not shown | Up to 3 domains |
Which number is right? We can’t tell you; the two pages simply disagree. Check your own billing page after sign-up, because that’s the limit your account runs on.
Research tools had their own counters during our trial. Keyword Research read “Account limit: 3/10” after our lookup, and the Backlink Checker read “Account limit 1/10.” Plan your trial lookups with those caps in mind.
What happens when the trial ends
Nothing gets charged. SE Ranking’s help center says the free trial “does not renew into a paid subscription, and you will not be charged when it ends”; access becomes inactive instead (SE Ranking help center). The article doesn’t give a storage period for trial projects; the 60-day storage it describes applies to paid plans that expire. If you want to keep your trial setup, buy before day 14.
If you do buy, you upgrade from the trial’s Billing page, and the help center notes that “the trial account will be deactivated” once you purchase (SE Ranking help center). In other words, you don’t start over in a new account.
Add-Ons and Extra Limits That Change the Bill
Add-ons are where a Core plan can grow past $170 a month: the pricing page lists three add-ons and several pay-as-you-go limits on top of Core and Growth. Here are the add-ons:
| Add-on | Price on the pricing page | Billing | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency Pack | +$69/month | Annual only | 30 projects, 30 client seats, white-label platform and reports, Lead Generator |
| AI Search | +$71.20/month annual, $89 monthly | Monthly or annual | 200 prompts, AI Results Tracker for AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT |
| API | +$45/month | Annual only | 3M credits for the Backlinks, Domain Analysis, Keyword Research, AI Search and Website Audit APIs |
So Core on annual billing plus the AI Search add-on comes to $174.40 a month, and Core plus the Agency Pack comes to $172.20. The billing FAQ adds that the Agency Pack requires an annual Core, Growth or Enterprise plan. If AI answer tracking is the main reason you’re looking, compare it with dedicated trackers in our roundup of AI search visibility tools, or see how two of them handled the same prompts in our Otterly.AI vs Writesonic comparison.
Extra limits without changing plans
The “Compare plans” table also lists extras you can buy without upgrading:
- Extra manager seats: from $16 on both plans
- Extra keywords: from $22.40 on Core and from $32 on Growth
- Extra Content Marketing articles: from $39.20
- Extra Local Marketing locations: from $18.40
Keyword packs come in fixed sizes: 100 keywords on Core and 500 on Growth, according to the help center’s keyword purchase guide (SE Ranking help center). They run on their own billing cycle, apply across all projects, and have no partial refunds.
Some smaller tools, such as Keyword Grouper and Search Volume Checker, are paid from an account balance you top up separately, and the billing FAQ says that balance “cannot be used to purchase a subscription plan.” For heavier data needs, SE Ranking also sells a standalone API plan from $179 a month, annual billing only.
Why does this matter for budgeting? Because a team that adds seats, keywords and one add-on can end up near Growth’s price while still on Core. Price the full setup before you pick a plan.
Discounts, Coupons, Black Friday and Lifetime Deals
The only standing discount on the official pricing page is the 20% for annual billing; we found no lifetime deal there or in the billing FAQ. Here’s what else is real:
- Coupon codes: the checkout page has an “Add coupon code” field, per the billing FAQ. SE Ranking doesn’t publish codes on its pricing page, so treat any code from a third-party site with care.
- Black Friday: SE Ranking’s Black Friday page read “The deal 2025 is over” when we checked on October 23, 2026 (SE Ranking Black Friday). The 2025 offer bundled SE Ranking with add-ons “with an extra 20% discount.” Nothing for 2026 was posted yet.
- Planable bundle: buying the Planable social media tool with SE Ranking gets 20% off Planable, which starts from $33 a month.
- Bonus keywords: the help center’s bonus program gives 5 extra ranking keywords for sharing or following SE Ranking on Facebook and X.
What about “SE Ranking Pro”? Pro was one of the old plans. The billing FAQ says the legacy Essential, Pro and Business plans were used “until the October 2024 update” and “are no longer available for new subscriptions.” If a review quotes a cheap Essential price, it’s describing a plan you can’t buy.
The same FAQ also describes a Solo plan, a one-time payment of $65 for 3 months for new users, with 2 projects and 150 keywords tracked daily. It wasn’t on the pricing page we checked, so ask support whether it’s still offered before planning around it.
Paying, Upgrading and Canceling
SE Ranking takes payments through Stripe, by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, bank transfer or Direct Debit, and the billing FAQ says plainly that PayPal is not available (SE Ranking help center). VAT applies to buyers in the EU and the UK; businesses can enter a VAT ID at checkout.
Plan changes work like this, per the help center’s purchasing guide:
- Upgrade any time from Billing. The system subtracts the unused part of your current plan, so you pay only the difference.
- Downgrade any time. The unused balance goes to your Stripe account as credit for future SE Ranking purchases, not back to your card.
- Watch for the renewal email, which arrives 7 days before an auto-renewal with instructions on how to cancel.
To cancel, go to Billing, open Current plan and click Cancel subscription, then finish the confirmation screen. The help center warns that clicking “Nevermind” aborts the process. Your plan stays active until the end of the paid period, and add-ons bought in the same bundle cancel with it; add-ons with their own invoice need canceling one by one.
What if you cancel and come back later? Projects stay stored for 60 days after the plan expires. After that, the purchasing guide says, “the data in the account will be deleted.”
Which SE Ranking Plan Should You Pick?
Pick Core on monthly billing if you run one to a few sites and want daily tracking, audits and backlinks in one place; move to annual once you’re sure, and pick Growth when you manage more than 10 sites or need full project history and several manager seats. That’s our judgment from the plan limits above, not a rule from SE Ranking.
Our quick guide:
- One blog or small business site: start the trial, then Core monthly. Don’t buy add-ons until you’ve used the plan for a month.
- In-house team with several brands: Core annual, plus the AI Search add-on if AI answers matter to you.
- Agency with more than 10 client sites: Growth annual, and add the Agency Pack only if clients need white-label reports.
- Occasional checks only: SE Ranking is probably more than you need. Our list of free SEO marketing tools covers what free plans can do, and our Semrush free account review shows one free plan in detail.
Still comparing? See how other suites price their plans in our guides to Semrush pricing, Ubersuggest pricing and Moz Pro pricing, or compare cheaper all-in-one suites in our best Semrush alternatives. If rank tracking is all you need, our best keyword rank tracker software guide lines up trackers set up on the same site.
References
- SE Ranking: Pricing and plans
- SE Ranking Help Center: Payment and billing details FAQ
- SE Ranking Help Center: How to cancel your SE Ranking subscription
- SE Ranking Help Center: Purchasing a subscription plan
- SE Ranking Help Center: How to purchase additional keywords
- SE Ranking Help Center: Bonus program
- SE Ranking: Black Friday