Semrush shows you three different price lists depending on where you look. Inside a free account, the cheapest paid plan is $199 a month. On the public pricing page, it’s $139.95, and some help pages still use plan names Semrush no longer sells. This guide puts all three side by side, explains what each plan includes, and shows how to pay less, or nothing.
How We Checked Semrush’s Prices
We read every price in this guide on Semrush’s own pages on October 23, 2026, in a US English browser that wasn’t logged in. The in-app prices come from our own free Semrush account, opened on October 21, 2026, with Google sign-in and no card.
That’s important because Semrush pricing moves. Plan names changed when Semrush started bundling AI visibility tracking with its SEO tools, and older help pages still quote the earlier names. Which number should you trust? The one on the live pricing page on the day you pay. We link to it throughout, so you can compare.
If you’re new to the tool itself, start with our plain-English tour of Semrush’s toolkits. This page sticks to money: plans, limits, trials, add-ons and the free account.
Key Takeaways
Semrush has a free account at $0 and paid plans from $139.95 to $299 a month on its public pricing page, with Advanced sold on request. Paying yearly “saves up to 17% compared to monthly billing,” per Semrush’s Subscriptions and Toolkits guide. Extra users, reports and specialist toolkits cost more on top.
Semrush Pricing at a Glance: The Short Answer
Semrush costs $0 for a free account, $139.95 a month for the SEO plan, $199 for Starter and $299 for Pro+, according to the Monthly tab of its public pricing page. The top plan, Advanced, shows “Custom” with a demo request button. Inside our free account, the same plan was listed at $549 a month.
Here’s the whole picture in one table, using the public page’s monthly prices:
| Plan | Monthly price | Websites to monitor | Keywords tracked daily | AI prompts tracked daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 demo project | 10 in Position Tracking | Not included |
| SEO | $139.95 | 5 | 500 | Not included |
| Starter | $199 | 5 | 500 | 50 |
| Pro+ | $299 | 15 | 1,500 | 100 |
| Advanced | Custom ($549 in-app) | 40 | 5,000 | 200 |
Limits come from the pricing page’s plan comparison and the Subscriptions and Toolkits guide. The free account’s 10 tracked keywords come from the pricing page FAQ, and we saw the same cap inside Position Tracking.
So, how much does Semrush cost for a typical small business? If you need SEO data only, $139.95 a month. If you also want to track how ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers mention your brand, $199 a month is the entry point.
Every Semrush Plan and What It Costs per Month
The SEO plan costs $139.95 a month and covers 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords, while Pro+ costs $299 and raises those limits to 15 websites and 1,500 keywords (Semrush pricing). Each step up adds limits and features, not just a bigger number.
Here’s what each plan is built for, in Semrush’s own framing:
- SEO, $139.95/month: “For freelancers and small businesses looking to grow their online visibility with SEO.” It includes Position Tracking, Site Audit, and basic keyword and competitor research, but no custom AI prompt tracking.
- Starter, $199/month: for small teams and agencies. It keeps the SEO plan’s limits and adds AI visibility: 50 prompts tracked daily, 1 domain for AI brand performance, 300 AI visibility reports per day and an AI-ready Site Audit.
- Pro+, $299/month: everything in Starter plus 15 websites, 1,500 keywords, historical data, content optimization, keyword cannibalization analysis and multi-location tracking.
- Advanced, custom price: 40 websites, 5,000 keywords, SEO share of voice and API access. The plan card on the pricing page says “Unlimited prompts to track daily,” while the comparison table and the help center list 200, so ask sales which figure applies to your quote.
The limits that separate the plans
Which limits will you actually hit? For most buyers, it’s reports per day and pages crawled. The pricing page’s comparison table lists these caps:
| Limit | SEO | Starter | Pro+ | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reports per day | 3,000 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 |
| Results per report | 10,000 | 10,000 | 30,000 | 50,000 |
| Pages to crawl per month | 100,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Keyword metric updates per month | 250 | 250 | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Historical data | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | No | No | Yes |
| Included users | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Source: Semrush SEO + AI Search pricing, comparison table, read October 23, 2026.
Semrush One, explained in one sentence
Semrush One is the name for the plans that bundle the SEO Toolkit with the AI Visibility Toolkit in one subscription (Semrush One guide). On the pricing page, Starter, Pro+ and Advanced carry an “SEO + AI Search” label; the SEO plan doesn’t. If you see “Semrush One pricing” in a search result, it means those three plans.
Three price lists, side by side
Why do guides disagree on what Semrush costs? Because Semrush itself shows different lists in different places. On October 23, 2026, these were the three:
| Plan | In-app Subscription info (our free account) | Public pricing page, Monthly tab | Older help page (SEO Toolkit tiers) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Not listed | SEO, $139.95 | Pro, $139.95 |
| Middle plan | Starter, $199 | Starter, $199 | Not listed |
| Upper plan | Pro+, $299 | Pro+, $299 | Guru, $249.95 |
| Top plan | Advanced, $549 | Advanced, Custom | Business, $499.95 |
The older tiers come from Semrush’s SEO Toolkit Pricing and Plans page, which still lists Pro, Guru and Business. Their limits line up with today’s plans: Pro has the SEO plan’s 5 websites and 500 keywords, Guru matches Pro+ at 15 websites and 1,500 keywords, and Business matches Advanced at 40 websites, 5,000 keywords and API access. Semrush’s cancellation guide calls these “legacy Pro, Guru, or Business” subscriptions (Semrush).
One more quirk: the Annually tab of the pricing page shows the SEO plan’s monthly price crossed out as $139, while the Monthly tab charges $139.95. The 95 cents matters little, but it explains why some guides round the price down.
What We Saw on Semrush’s Own Subscription Page
Our free account’s Subscription info page listed three paid plans, Starter at $199 a month, Pro+ at $299 and Advanced at $549, and said nothing about what the free account includes. We read that page on October 21, 2026, without changing anything.
What surprised us was the missing entry plan. The $139.95 SEO plan, the cheapest way to pay for Semrush, didn’t appear in that list at all. A free user who upgrades from inside the app would see $199 as the starting price, about $59 more per month than the public page’s entry plan.
Does that mean the SEO plan is hidden? Not exactly. It’s on the public pricing page, with its own “Try for free” button. If you want the cheapest paid plan, start from semrush.com’s pricing page, not from the upgrade prompts inside the tools.
The in-app page also had no summary of free limits. We found them one tool at a time: Site Audit showed “Limit per audit 100 pages,” and Position Tracking showed “Keyword limit 1/10” after we added one keyword.
How Semrush Prices Its Toolkits
A Semrush toolkit is a separately priced bundle of tools for one marketing job, such as local SEO or social media, and Semrush sells eight of them (Semrush). Paid plans include the SEO Toolkit, and Starter and above add the AI Visibility Toolkit. The six specialist toolkits are bought on top.
Semrush describes the model as “Pay only for the tools you use,” and says you can add or remove specialist toolkits at any time. Here’s what each one cost on its pricing page on October 23, 2026:
| Toolkit | Plans and monthly prices | Pricing basis |
|---|---|---|
| AI Visibility | Base, $99 | Per domain |
| Local | Base, $30; Pro, $60; Business on request | Per location |
| Content | Base, $60 | Flat monthly price |
| Traffic & Market | Pro, $289 | Flat monthly price |
| Social | Base, $20; Pro, $40; Business, $250 | Flat monthly price |
| Advertising | Base, $99; Pro, $220 | Flat monthly price |
| AI PR | Base, $149; Pro, $279; Business, $499 | Flat monthly price |
Sources: the Semrush pricing pages for AI Visibility, Local, Content, Traffic & Market, Social, Advertising and AI PR.
The toolkit pages showed the same monthly figure under both the Monthly and Annually tabs when we checked, so the up-to-17% saving applies to the main plans. The Local Toolkit also includes Map Rank Tracker credits: 375 on Base and 1,225 on Pro.
Do you need the AI Visibility Toolkit on its own? Only if you don’t have Starter or above, since those plans already include AI visibility. For a broader look at trackers in this space, see our guide to the best AI search visibility tools, and for what Semrush’s own AI features do, read our overview of Semrush AI features.
The Free Account: What $0 Actually Gets You
A free Semrush account includes 1 demo project and “10 reports per day across all vital tools,” with no credit card required (Semrush pricing). That’s the whole free plan in one line, and it’s enough for a small site.
On our own free account, the limits showed up inside each tool: 100 pages per Site Audit and 10 keywords in Position Tracking. Semrush’s pricing FAQ confirms the second one and adds the scale of the jump: free users get 10 Analytics requests a day, while the SEO plan gets 3,000.
What else does $0 include? Semrush’s free-account guide lists 10 Domain Overview queries a day, up to 10 Backlink Analytics searches a day, one On Page SEO Checker campaign with 10 pages or keywords, and AI writing tools with three free uses a day (Semrush).
We won’t repeat the tool-by-tool results here. Our Semrush SEO tools review shows what each free tool returned on a real site, our Semrush Site Audit review goes deep on the 100-page audit, and our Semrush keyword research review covers the free keyword lookups.
Is the free account a trial in disguise? No. Semrush lists it as a separate Free plan, and canceling a paid plan or a trial drops you back to a free-level account, per Semrush’s cancellation guide.
The Pro+ Trial Offer at Signup and the Skip Trial Button
Semrush’s sign-up flow ends on a paid trial offer, not on the free account. When we signed up on October 21, 2026, the last screen read “This is your best plan match — Pro+ $299/mo … 7 days free, then $299/mo,” with “Get free trial” as the main button and “Skip trial” as the smaller one.
We pressed “Skip trial” and landed in a free account with no card on file. That smaller button is the free path. Miss it, and you’re starting a trial that bills $299 a month after 7 days unless you cancel.
How do Semrush trials work in general? The Subscriptions and Toolkits guide lists the rules:
- Length: 7 days for the SEO + AI Search plans and for the Traffic & Market, Local, Content, Social, Advertising and AI PR toolkits. The Agency Partners Platform add-on gets 14 days.
- Exports: “exporting data is disabled during the trial period,” even on plans that normally include exports.
- One per toolkit: “Each toolkit trial can be activated once per account.”
- After the trial: “your account converts to the plan you selected unless you cancel.”
Entering a card for a trial triggers a small check. Semrush’s pricing FAQ says it charges “a nominal amount” to confirm the card and refunds it right away, and the Billing FAQ puts that check at $1. The same FAQ warns that virtual cards aren’t accepted.
Want to try a paid plan without the $299 default? The pricing page has a “Try for free” button on each plan card, including the $139.95 SEO plan. Pick the plan you’d actually buy, so the trial shows you the limits you’d live with. For which products get 14 days instead of 7, how to cancel in time and why a converted trial can’t be refunded, see our guide to Semrush trial lengths, limits and cancellation.
Add-Ons That Raise the Bill: Extra Users, API Units and Local
Every Semrush plan includes 1 user, and extra users cost $45 a month on SEO and Starter, $80 on Pro+ and $100 on Advanced (Semrush pricing). For a team of three on Pro+, that’s $160 a month on top of the plan.
Users aren’t the only add-on. Here’s what the pricing page and help center list:
| Add-on | Price | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Additional user (SEO, Starter) | $45/month | A separate login with access to your limits |
| Additional user (Pro+) | $80/month | Same, on Pro+ |
| Additional user (Advanced) | $100/month | Same, on Advanced |
| Additional user (Social, Local or Content only) | $20/month | Accounts without the SEO Toolkit |
| Base Report | $10/month per report | Scheduled PDF reports from Semrush data |
| Pro Report | $20/month per report | Adds white-labeling and 20+ integrations |
| Lead Generation | $90/month | A listing on the Semrush Agency Partners platform |
Sources: Semrush pricing and Subscriptions and Toolkits. View-only access to folders is free for any user.
API units
Only the Advanced plan includes API access in the comparison table. Semrush’s API guide explains the catch: after you upgrade, “the number of units will still be zero,” and you buy units in packages of 2,000,000, 5,000,000, 10,000,000 or 20,000,000. Unused units expire at renewal. Our Semrush API guide walks through how units are spent.
Local is priced per location
The Local Toolkit costs $30 or $60 a month per location, so a business with three locations on Local Pro would pay $180 a month for Local alone. Semrush says Local plans “can be added to any Semrush subscription or purchased separately.”
Why does this matter for your budget? Because the plan price is rarely the final bill. Add users, a report or a location, and the monthly total can climb well past the number on the plan card.
Monthly vs Annual Billing: What You Save
Annual billing “saves up to 17% compared to monthly billing,” according to Semrush’s Subscriptions and Toolkits guide, and the pricing page’s Annually tab shows the effective monthly rates. Here’s the math on a full year:
| Plan | 12 months at monthly price | Annual plan (12 × monthly rate) | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | $1,679.40 ($139.95 × 12) | $1,407.96 ($117.33 × 12) | $271.44 (about 16%) |
| Starter | $2,388 ($199 × 12) | $1,982.04 ($165.17 × 12) | $405.96 (about 17%) |
| Pro+ | $3,588 ($299 × 12) | $2,978.04 ($248.17 × 12) | $609.96 (about 17%) |
The monthly rates come from the pricing page; the yearly totals and savings are our own arithmetic.
There are two catches. First, an annual plan is paid upfront: Semrush says “It isn’t a monthly payment plan spread over 12 months” (Semrush). Second, anything you add later, such as a toolkit or a user, is charged as a one-time prorated amount for the rest of your annual term, per the Billing FAQ.
There’s also a refund difference. Semrush’s Cancellation and Refund Policy offers “a one-time, 7-day money-back guarantee” only on initial subscriptions of twelve months or longer and on initial add-on purchases. It states plainly: “refunds are not available for month-to-month subscriptions.”
So which should you pick? If you’ve used the free account or a trial and know Semrush fits, annual saves real money and comes with a 7-day refund window. If you’re still unsure, monthly costs more but lets you stop after one month.
Why Semrush Costs More Than Many SEO Tools
Semrush costs more because even its entry plan bundles large limits, 3,000 reports a day and 100,000 crawled pages a month, plus AI visibility tracking from Starter up (Semrush pricing). You’re paying for capacity that a single-site owner may never use.
Here’s our reading of where the money goes, based on the plan limits above:
- Volume. The jump from 10 reports a day on the free account to 3,000 on the SEO plan is the core of what you buy. Agencies running research all day need that; a blogger checking one site doesn’t.
- Breadth. One subscription covers keyword research, site audits, backlinks, rank tracking and competitor research. Many cheaper tools cover one or two of those jobs.
- AI search tracking. Starter and above track prompts in AI answers, a newer feature that lifts the price from $139.95 to $199.
- Separate toolkits. Local, Content, Social and the rest are priced on top, so a full marketing stack in Semrush adds up quickly.
Is Semrush expensive for what it does? For a team using several of those jobs every day, the per-task cost is reasonable. For a solo creator who needs a monthly audit and a few rankings, the free account or a cheaper tool usually makes more sense. That’s a judgment, not a test result: we haven’t compared paid plans side by side. For cheaper SEO suites we’ve opened ourselves, see our list of the best Semrush alternatives. Our SE Ranking review and Mangools review show what two of those cheaper suites let you do on a trial or free plan.
Did Semrush raise its prices? Its pricing page shows only current prices, so check the live page against any quote you’ve seen. What’s visible today is mostly a naming change: the SEO plan carries the same $139.95 monthly price and limits as the older Pro tier.
Cheaper Paths: Free Tools, Trials and Why Group Buys Are Risky
The cheapest legitimate ways to use Semrush are its free tools, which need no sign-up, the free account at $0, and 7-day trials of paid plans (Semrush Free Tools). None of them requires paying, and only the trial requires a card.
Here’s how they differ:
- Free tools, no account. Semrush’s free tools page lists single-purpose checkers, including a Keyword Rank Checker, Backlink Checker, Website Traffic Checker, SEO Checker and AI Search Visibility Checker, and says “No sign-up required.”
- Free account. Sign up, press “Skip trial,” and you get 10 reports a day, 1 demo project, a 100-page audit and 10 tracked keywords.
- Trial. Seven days of a paid plan’s limits, with exports turned off. Set a reminder before day 7.
We used the second path ourselves: Google sign-in, three survey questions, then “Skip trial.” For a wider list of free options beyond Semrush, see our guide to building a free SEO stack.
Why a Semrush group buy is a bad deal
A “group buy” is a reseller selling shared access to one paid Semrush account. Semrush’s Terms of Service rule that out directly: “Each Authorized User must use their own login credentials,” and “two or more individuals may not share a single Authorized User’s Account.”
The same terms say that if Semrush “detects repeated accesses to the same Account from various locations, devices, IP addresses,” it “may immediately suspend or terminate such Account.” The terms also bar users from reselling or time-sharing the service. So what are you actually buying from a group-buy seller? Access that can disappear without notice, on an account where someone else sees every domain and keyword you research.
If price is the problem, the free account and the $139.95 SEO plan are the honest routes. Don’t expect a better deal through an affiliate link: Semrush gives its affiliates no exclusive discounts, as our guide to the Semrush affiliate program’s rules and payouts explains, so a “partner-only” coupon isn’t a cheaper path. Semrush also says it doesn’t offer a lifetime plan or individual student plans, though accredited colleges can join its Semrush for Education program for free access for 3 months (Semrush).
Which Semrush Plan Fits Which User
The free account fits one small site, the $139.95 SEO plan fits a freelancer or small business with up to 5 sites, and Pro+ at $299 fits an agency that needs 15 sites and 1,500 tracked keywords (Semrush pricing). The rest of this section is our judgment from the limits and prices above.
- Bloggers and solo creators: stay on the free account until a limit stops you. In our test, it covered an audit, a backlink check and keyword lookups for one site.
- Small businesses with one or two sites: the SEO plan. It lifts you to 3,000 reports a day and 500 tracked keywords without paying for AI tracking you may not need.
- Brands that care about AI answers: Starter, for its 50 tracked prompts and AI brand reports. It’s $59 more per month than SEO for the same SEO limits.
- Agencies and growing teams: Pro+, for 15 websites, historical data and multi-location tracking. Budget $80 a month per extra user.
- Large teams that need the API: Advanced, priced on request. Get the prompt limit and API unit costs in writing.
- Local businesses: consider the Local Toolkit, at $30 or $60 per location, alongside or instead of a full plan.
Running several client sites? Our guide to SEO tools for agencies compares client limits and pricing across tools. Whatever you pick, start the trial on the plan you’d actually buy and test it on your own site before day 7.
Further Reading
- Semrush SEO tools review: what a free account gets you
- Semrush keyword research review: what the free plan shows
- Semrush Site Audit review: what a free audit found
- Best Semrush alternatives: cheaper SEO tools we tested
- Semrush API guide: pricing, API units and how to get started
References
- Semrush: SEO + AI Search Plans and Pricing
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Subscriptions and Toolkits
- Semrush Knowledge Base: SEO Toolkit Pricing and Plans
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Semrush One
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Billing FAQ
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Canceling Your Subscription
- Semrush Knowledge Base: API
- Semrush: Cancellation and Refund Policy
- Semrush: Terms of Service
- Semrush: What Can You Do with a Free Semrush Account?
- Semrush: Free SEO Tools
- Semrush: AI Visibility pricing
- Semrush: Local pricing
- Semrush: Content pricing
- Semrush: Traffic & Market pricing
- Semrush: Social pricing
- Semrush: Advertising pricing
- Semrush: AI PR pricing