Most lists of SEO tools for agencies rank the same big names and stop at “great for teams.” What an agency actually runs into is a number: one project, ten tracked keywords, a 100-page audit, a single login. We set up one client-style project in Semrush, SE Ranking, Mangools and Ubersuggest on the same day and wrote down every cap that would matter once you have five, ten or thirty clients.
Why Agencies Need a Different Kind of SEO Tool Comparison
An agency doesn’t buy an SEO tool for one website. It buys a set of limits that has to stretch across every client: how many sites fit in one plan, how many keywords you can track for each, how many pages one audit covers, and how many people can log in. Semrush’s own plan page shows how fast those limits change: its SEO plan monitors 5 websites, while Pro+ monitors 15 and Advanced 40 (Semrush pricing).
That’s why a general “best SEO tools” list doesn’t answer an agency’s question. A tool can have the best keyword data on the market and still be the wrong pick if it caps you at one project. For the all-purpose version of this comparison, see our same-day test of four SEO suites on one small site. This guide sticks to the limits that grow with your client list.
So which numbers did we actually see? Everything in the testing sections comes from our own accounts on October 21, 2026. Everything about seats, white-label reports and paid plans comes from each vendor’s official pages, which we read on October 24, 2026, and we label it that way.
Key Takeaways
SE Ranking gave us the most room for client work in its no-card trial, and its Growth plan lists 30 projects and 3 manager seats (SE Ranking pricing). Semrush has the widest research toolset but charges for every extra user, Mangools is the lightest way to send branded ranking reports, and Ubersuggest’s free plan stops at a single project.
Quick Verdict: Which SEO Tool Fits Which Agency Size
SE Ranking fits most small agencies best, because its Core plan already covers 10 projects and its Agency Pack adds white-label reports for $69 a month on annual billing (SE Ranking pricing). The other three each win a narrower case. Here’s the short version, based on our test and the official plan pages:
| Your situation | Pick | Why, from our test and the official pages |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer with 1 to 3 client sites and almost no budget | Mangools | The free plan tracked 1 domain with 50 keyword slots; paid plans track unlimited domains, and SERPWatcher sends white-label ranking reports |
| Small agency with 5 to 10 clients that wants one tool for everything | SE Ranking | The trial covered 5 websites and 750 keywords; Core lists 10 projects and 2,000 keywords tracked daily |
| Agency with 10 to 30 clients | SE Ranking Growth or Semrush Pro+ | Growth lists 30 projects and 3 manager seats; Pro+ lists 15 websites and 1,500 keywords |
| Agency that sells keyword and competitor research as a service | Semrush | The widest research toolset of the four, with at least 3,000 reports a day on paid plans, but 1 user per plan |
| Two people sharing a few client sites on a tight budget | Ubersuggest | Business lists 2 users and 7 projects; the free plan allows only 1 project |
Is there a single winner? No. The right tool depends on how many clients you serve and what you send them each month. The rest of this guide shows where each number comes from, so you can check it against your own client list.
What an Agency Needs From an SEO Tool
An agency needs six things from an SEO tool: enough projects for every client, enough tracked keywords per project, audits that crawl a whole client site, a seat for each person who logs in, reports you can send under your own name, and, more and more, tracking in AI answers. Semrush’s pricing page, for example, lists 500 tracked keywords on its SEO plan and 5,000 on Advanced (Semrush pricing).
Here’s what each of the six means in practice:
- Projects or websites. Most tools hang their limits off a project, usually one domain. If a plan says 5 projects, that’s 5 clients, not 5 pages.
- Tracked keywords. Check whether the cap is per account or per project, and whether a second city or device counts as a second keyword.
- Audit pages. A client with a 3,000-page shop needs a crawl budget of at least 3,000 pages per audit, every time you rerun it.
- Seats. A seat is one named login. Some tools include one; others include several, and extra seats are often priced monthly.
- Client reporting. White label means a report or dashboard that shows your agency’s logo and domain instead of the tool’s. It’s usually a paid extra.
- AI search tracking. Clients now ask whether ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews mention them. Trackers count these as prompts, a separate limit from keywords.
How to read a plan page yourself
Plan pages change often, so how do you check a cap before you buy? Here’s a quick routine. First, open the plan comparison table, not the plan cards; the cards list highlights and the table lists caps. Second, find the words “per project” or “per account” next to every keyword and page limit. Third, look for an add-ons block: extra users, extra projects and white-label reporting usually live there, not in the plan itself. Finally, note the billing period, because several agency add-ons are sold on annual billing only. If your team is newer to these tools, our step-by-step routine for working with SEO tool reports covers the basics before you compare plans.
How We Tested: One Client-Style Project in Each Tool
We tested all four tools on October 21, 2026, with one work account and the same small marketing website our own team runs, treated the way an agency treats a new client. Each tool got the same tasks: sign up, research one English keyword (“generative engine optimization” in the US database), run a site audit, check backlinks, set up rank tracking for that keyword, and record every limit shown on screen.
Three tools ran on free plans (Semrush, Mangools and Ubersuggest), and SE Ranking ran its 14-day trial, which needed no card. We didn’t start Semrush’s Pro+ trial or Ubersuggest’s 7-day trial, and we didn’t buy any plan. If you plan to trial Semrush before a client pitch, our rundown of how Semrush’s 7-day trial turns into a paid plan covers the cancel window.
What did we not test? Quite a lot that agencies care about. None of our accounts added a second user, invited a client, built a white-label report or connected a custom domain. Most of those features sit on paid plans or add-ons, so the sections on seats, pricing and white-label reports rely on official pages, and they say so. None of the four rank trackers had returned a ranking when we wrote our test notes, so this guide doesn’t judge tracking accuracy.
Projects and Websites: From One Project to Five Sites
The free and trial plans we used held between one and five client sites: Ubersuggest’s free plan showed 1 project, Mangools’ free plan tracked 1 domain, and SE Ranking’s trial billing page read “Websites: 1 / 5” after we added ours. Semrush’s free account includes “1 demo project,” per its pricing page.
Paid plans are where agency math starts. Here’s how the official pages list project caps on the plans an agency would actually buy:
| Tool | What we saw on a free plan or trial | Paid project or site caps (official pages) |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush | Free account: 1 demo project | SEO and Starter: 5 websites; Pro+: 15; Advanced: 40 |
| SE Ranking | Trial: 5 websites | Core: 10 projects; Growth: 30; Agency Pack add-on: 30 projects |
| Mangools | Free: 1 tracked domain | Basic, Premium and Agency: unlimited tracked domains |
| Ubersuggest | Free: 1 project | Individual: 1; Business: 7; Enterprise: 15 |
Sources: Semrush pricing, SE Ranking pricing, Mangools pricing and Ubersuggest pricing, read October 24, 2026.
One mismatch is worth knowing. SE Ranking’s pricing page FAQ describes the trial as “up to 10 projects,” while our own billing page said 5 websites. Trust the billing page inside your account, because that’s the limit it enforces.
Why does Mangools look so generous here? Because it caps keywords, not domains. Basic tracks 200 keywords across “∞ domains,” so ten clients share those 200 slots. A project count only tells you half the story; the next limit tells you the other half.
Tracked Keywords at Scale: 10, 25, 50 or 750
Tracked-keyword caps were the biggest spread in our test: Semrush’s free Position Tracking showed “Keyword limit 1/10,” Ubersuggest showed “1/25,” Mangools showed 49 slots left after one keyword, and SE Ranking’s trial showed “1 of 750 remaining keywords limits will be used”. That’s a 75-fold gap between the smallest and largest cap.
What does that mean for a client list? Ten keywords is enough to try a tracker, not to run a client campaign. On free plans, only Mangools and Ubersuggest leave room for even one small client, and only for one.
Paid plans scale differently. Semrush lists 500 keywords tracked daily on SEO and Starter and 1,500 on Pro+. SE Ranking’s Core lists 2,000 and Growth 5,000. Mangools’ Basic covers 200, Premium 700 and Agency 1,500, with daily updates only on Agency. Ubersuggest counts per project: 125 on Individual, 150 on Business and 300 on Enterprise, per its pricing page.
The per-location catch
SE Ranking counts every keyword and search engine pair as a separate keyword since its October 2024 plan update, according to its billing FAQ. Track one term in two cities and you’ve used two slots. Ubersuggest works the same way for competitors: its competitor tracking guide says “tracking two competitors across three locations counts as six competitors.”
So how many keywords does an agency really need? Multiply clients by terms by locations by devices. If the result is bigger than the cap, the plan is too small, whatever its headline says. For a closer look at the trackers themselves, our setup screens and keyword caps of four rank trackers compares them side by side.
Audit Page Caps for Client Sites
Audit caps decided how much of a client site each tool could check: Semrush’s free Site Audit stopped at 100 pages, Ubersuggest’s at 150, and SE Ranking’s trial crawled 1,000 pages, leaving its counter at “1,000/5,000”. Mangools has no crawler-based audit at all; its SiteProfiler shows domain metrics instead.
Here’s what each audit returned on the same site, the same day:
| Tool | Pages crawled | Score shown | Issues shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush (free) | 100 of 100 | Site Health 89% | 97 errors, 159 warnings |
| SE Ranking (trial) | 1,000 of 1,000, account limit 5,000 | Health Score 94 | 2,230 issues (6 errors, 29 warnings, 2,195 notices) |
| Ubersuggest (free) | 150, then an upgrade prompt | On-Page SEO Score 90 | 70 SEO issues |
| Mangools (free) | No crawler audit | Domain Authority 3 in SiteProfiler | Not applicable |
Why do the issue counts differ so much? Partly because each tool crawled a different share of the site, and partly because each one counts issues its own way. Notices are SE Ranking’s lowest-priority category, and they make up 2,195 of its 2,230 issues, so don’t read the raw totals as a ranking of site quality.
For agency work, the useful number is the crawl budget on paid plans. Semrush lists 100,000 pages to crawl per month on SEO and Starter, SE Ranking’s Core lists 250,000 pages a month, and Ubersuggest lists 1,000 to 10,000 page scans per project. If your clients run large shops, check the per-project cap, not just the monthly total. For a deeper look at what each crawler found, see our crawl-by-crawl look at three site audit tools.
One more thing from our test: SE Ranking started its audit on its own as soon as we created the project. That’s handy when you onboard a client, but the first crawl had used 1,000 of the 5,000 trial pages before we changed a single setting.
Client Onboarding: Competitors, Locations and Setup Steps
Onboarding a client took one guided flow in each tool, and the two longest ones made choices for us: SE Ranking suggested 5 competitors with a “Competitor limits 0/5” counter, and Ubersuggest’s five-step setup pre-selected 2 of 16 suggested competitors. Both also defaulted the location to the country we were browsing from, not the client’s market.
Here’s what setup looked like in each tool:
- SE Ranking: website details, competitors, then keywords and prompts. The prompts box wouldn’t let us launch until we added at least one AI prompt (“You need to enter some prompts to track results within the platform”). The location defaulted to our browsing country, and we switched it to the US.
- Ubersuggest: segmentation, business summary, competitors, AI prompts and keywords, then an “experts help” pop-up. The setup wrote a business summary of the site in Traditional Chinese, set the project to the market we were browsing from, and its rank tracking stayed on that market.
- Semrush: Position Tracking asked for search engine, device, country and language up front, so the US market was set before we added a keyword.
- Mangools: SERPWatcher asked for the domain, location and device, then told us it had found 2 keywords the site already ranked for. Tracking started in three steps.
What should an agency take from that? Check the country, language and competitor list before you add a single keyword, every time. A client report built on the wrong market is worse than no report, and in Ubersuggest the tracker kept the market chosen during setup. Our record of how Ubersuggest’s free plan handled project setup shows each step.
How many competitors can you follow per client? On paid plans, Ubersuggest lists 5, 10 and 15 per project, and SE Ranking showed a 5-competitor limit in our trial.
AI Search Tracking for Clients
Three of the four tools showed AI search tracking during setup: SE Ranking’s trial counted “1 of 20 remaining prompt limits,” Ubersuggest’s free project showed a “10 prompts limit,” and Mangools’ free plan listed 1 AI Watcher monitor with 5 prompts. Semrush’s engine menu offered ChatGPT and Gemini, but prompt tracking there requires the paid AI Visibility Toolkit, per Semrush’s Prompt Tracking guide.
That Semrush detail trips people up. Seeing ChatGPT and Gemini in the Position Tracking menu doesn’t mean a free account tracks AI answers. Semrush’s knowledge base ties prompt tracking to the AI Visibility Toolkit, and its Starter, Pro+ and Advanced plans include that toolkit. Our guide to Semrush Position Tracking setup and limits walks through the menu.
Here’s how AI tracking looked in each tool on our test day:
| Tool | AI tracking we saw | Paid AI tracking (official pages) |
|---|---|---|
| SE Ranking | 20 prompts in the trial; widgets for AI Overview, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity | Core: 100 prompts daily; Growth: 250; AI Search add-on: 200 more |
| Ubersuggest | 10 prompts in project setup | 10 to 20 tracked prompts per project, depending on the plan |
| Mangools | AI Watcher: 1 monitor, 5 prompts | Every paid plan: 500 monitored prompts |
| Semrush | ChatGPT and Gemini in the engine menu | Starter: 50 prompts daily; Pro+: 100; Advanced: 200 in the help center |
Is AI tracking worth paying for yet? For clients who ask about it, yes, because it’s the one report they can’t build by hand. We can’t tell you which tracker is most accurate: none of our prompt results had come back when we wrote our notes. Our comparison of four AI search visibility trackers covers dedicated tools built only for this job.
One habit helps. Write each client’s prompts the way their customers ask, as full questions, and keep the list short at first. On a 20-prompt trial, five clients get four prompts each.
Agency Pricing: List Prices We Saw and What Each Plan Adds
The paid prices we saw inside our accounts were Semrush Starter at $199 a month, Pro+ at $299 and Advanced at $549, and SE Ranking Core at $103.20 a month and Growth at $223.20, both billed annually. Semrush’s public page also lists a cheaper SEO plan at $139.95 a month, which the in-app page left out, as our plan-by-plan breakdown of what Semrush costs explains.
For an agency, the plan price is only the start. Seats and client limits decide the real bill. Here’s what the entry agency-sized plans include, from the official pages:
| Tool and plan | Price | Sites or projects | Users or seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush Pro+ | $299/month (in-app) | 15 websites | 1 user included; extra users from $45/month, scaling with the plan tier |
| SE Ranking Growth | $223.20/month billed annually (in-app) | 30 projects | 3 manager seats; extra seats sold separately |
| Mangools Agency | $97.70/month billed annually | Unlimited domains, 1,500 keywords | 5 extra seats available |
| Ubersuggest Enterprise | Varies by region | 15 projects | 5 users; add-ons for more users and projects |
Sources: our test notes for the in-app prices; Semrush Subscriptions and Toolkits, SE Ranking pricing, Mangools pricing and Ubersuggest pricing, read October 24, 2026.
Why we won’t quote one Ubersuggest price
Ubersuggest’s prices change with the country you open the page from, and we read it from outside the US. So we list its limits and skip a dollar figure. Our guide to Ubersuggest’s paid tiers and lifetime deals shows both price sets we found and how to check the one you’ll pay.
Seats change the comparison
Seats are where the cheap-looking plan stops being cheap. Semrush includes 1 user on every plan, and its knowledge base says extra users start “at $45 per month and scales with your plan tier.” SE Ranking’s Growth includes 3 manager seats, and its pricing FAQ warns that “Only one active session is allowed at a time,” so shared logins don’t work there either.
Do you want Semrush data inside your own client dashboards? Then you need Advanced, the only plan whose comparison table lists API access, and the API units are bought on top. Our walkthrough of how Semrush API units are bought and spent explains the packages.
What about Moz? We haven’t run Moz Pro through our task list, so treat it as official pricing only: Medium costs $179 a month with 2 users and 10 tracked sites, and Large costs $299 with 3 users and 25 sites (Moz Pro pricing). Our Moz Pro plans, costs and trial breakdown walks through the rest. For Mangools’ and SE Ranking’s full plan ladders, see our look at Mangools’ KWFinder, LinkMiner and SERPWatcher on the free plan and our guide to SE Ranking’s Core and Growth limits for client work.
Which plan gives the most client room per dollar? On the official limits, SE Ranking Growth covers 30 projects and 3 seats for $223.20 a month on annual billing. That’s our arithmetic from published caps, not a test of paid plans.
Client Reporting and White Label: What the Official Docs Say
All four tools let you share data with clients, but only three list true white-label reports, and each sells them differently: Semrush charges $20 a month per Pro Report, SE Ranking bundles white label into a +$69 monthly Agency Pack on annual billing, and Mangools builds it into SERPWatcher (Semrush My Reports, SE Ranking pricing). We didn’t build a report in any of them; this section comes from official pages only.
Semrush: My Reports, priced per report
Semrush’s My Reports Suite sells a Base Report at $10 a month per report and a Pro Report at $20. Only the Pro Report adds “Branding and white-labeling,” a custom domain and sharing by link, per the My Reports guide. The same guide says paid subscriptions include 3 Base reports for the first toolkit, and the free plan includes 1.
Older guides still mention the Agency Growth Kit and its Client Portal. Semrush’s Agency Growth Kit sunsetting page says the kit, its Client Portal and its CRM were discontinued, with cross-toolkit reporting moved to My Reports. The Agency Partners Platform, a directory listing for agencies, now costs $90 a month on its own.
SE Ranking: the Agency Pack
SE Ranking’s Agency Pack costs +$69 a month and is sold on annual billing only. The pricing page lists 30 projects, 30 client seats, white label “for platform and reporting,” unlimited scheduled reports and a Lead Generator. Its White Label page adds that you can change the platform’s colors, logo and domain and share “read-only seats” with clients.
One detail differs between pages. The separate Agency Pack page lists “10 Client seats” at the same $69 starting price, while the pricing page lists 30. Ask sales which figure applies before you promise client logins.
Mangools: white-label ranking reports in SERPWatcher
Mangools’ white-label reports page says SERPWatcher reports can carry your logo, colors, company name and contact info, go out by email weekly or monthly, and run on your own subdomain. There’s also a Looker Studio connector. These reports cover rankings only, since Mangools has no crawler audit. The page’s title calls them “Free White Label SEO Reports,” so check which branding settings your own plan unlocks before you sell them to a client.
Ubersuggest: PDF and CSV exports
Ubersuggest’s export guide lists PDF exports of the dashboard and Rank Tracking, plus CSV files for keyword lists. We found no white-label report option on its pricing page, its agencies page or in that guide, so plan to add your branding outside the tool.
So which reporting setup fits you? If clients only want rankings, Mangools is the lightest. If they want audits and rankings under your brand, SE Ranking’s Agency Pack covers both. If you already pay for Semrush, a few Pro Reports may cost less than switching.
Which SEO Tool Fits Your Agency
SE Ranking is the safest default for an agency with 5 to 30 clients, because its plans list 10 to 30 projects, it includes 3 manager seats on Growth, and its trial gave us 750 tracked keywords with no card (SE Ranking pricing). That’s our judgment from the test and the official limits, not a ranking of data quality.
Where does your agency sit? Here’s how we’d sort agencies:
- Solo freelancer, 1 to 3 clients: start on Mangools’ free plan and Ubersuggest’s free account, then move to Mangools Basic when rankings are the main report. Add a free Semrush account for one 100-page audit per site. Our free SEO plans compared cap by cap shows how far each free plan stretches.
- Small agency, 5 to 10 clients: SE Ranking Core, and the Agency Pack once clients ask for branded reports.
- Growing agency, 10 to 30 clients: SE Ranking Growth for its 30 projects and 3 seats, or Semrush Pro+ if your team lives in keyword and competitor research.
- Research-heavy agency: Semrush. Budget for extra users and Pro Reports from day one.
- Two-person shop on a tight budget: Ubersuggest Business, with 2 users and 7 projects, if you can live without white-label reports.
Before you pay, run the same check we did. Set up one real client project on a free plan or trial, add their actual keyword list, and see which limit you hit first. Then price the plan that clears that limit with every seat and add-on included. Honestly, that one afternoon will tell you more than any list, ours included.
References
- Semrush: SEO + AI Search pricing
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Subscriptions and Toolkits
- Semrush Knowledge Base: My Reports
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Agency Growth Kit Sunsetting
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Prompt Tracking on Semrush
- SE Ranking: Pricing
- SE Ranking: Agency Pack
- SE Ranking: White Label SEO Software
- SE Ranking Help Center: Payment and billing details FAQ
- Mangools: Plans and Pricing
- Mangools: White-label SEO reports in SERPWatcher
- Ubersuggest: Pricing
- Ubersuggest Help Center: How to Track Competitors in My Project
- Ubersuggest Help Center: Exporting Reports with Ubersuggest
- Moz: Moz Pro pricing