Mention vs Semrush
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentMention compared with Semrush
Semrush includes brand monitoring and a media monitoring app inside a much larger SEO and marketing platform, which makes it the cheaper answer for a team that already pays for Semrush and needs listening as a secondary function. Mention is the deeper instrument: more source types, longer Boolean queries, better sentiment workflow, and reporting built for comms rather than search. Teams monitoring seriously outgrow the bundled option; teams monitoring casually never need to leave it.
Choose Mention if
Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation.
Choose Semrush if
Marketing teams and agencies that run paid and organic together, need competitive intelligence across advertising as well as search, and want AI answer visibility tracking bundled into the same subscription rather than bought separately.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Mention | Semrush |
|---|---|---|
| Category | PR | SEO |
| Starting price | From $599 per month on an annual contract, quoted through a demo (free trial) | $139 per month (SEO plan, monthly billing) or $117.33 per month billed annually (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts. | Self-serve tiered subscription repackaged in 2026 around SEO and AI Search bundles, metered on websites, daily-tracked keywords, and daily AI prompt checks, with per-seat charges for additional users. |
| Free plan | No | One demo project, 10 daily reports across tools, and limited AI Visibility features. Enough to evaluate the interface and run occasional lookups, not enough to work in. |
| Free trial | A trial exists but is gated behind a demo request rather than a public signup | 7 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Mid-market and larger comms, PR, and brand teams that need broad multi-source listening with Boolean precision, competitor share of voice, and white-labelled reporting, and that can commit to an annual contract bought through a sales conversation. | Marketing teams and agencies that run paid and organic together, need competitive intelligence across advertising as well as search, and want AI answer visibility tracking bundled into the same subscription rather than bought separately. |
| Setup time | A first alert takes minutes, and results begin arriving immediately. Getting a feed that is actually worth reading takes longer: expect a week or two of tuning Boolean exclusions, language and country scoping, and source filters before the noise ratio settles. Onboarding is scheduled with the account manager rather than self-directed. | An hour to set up properly: create your project, verify the domain, connect Google Analytics and Search Console, start the first Site Audit crawl, and load Position Tracking with your target keywords and competitors. AI prompt tracking takes another half hour if you use Prompt Research rather than inventing prompts. |
| Learning curve | Low for reading a feed, moderate for writing good queries. The 2,000 character advanced alert is powerful and unforgiving; a poorly written one either floods the account and burns mention quota or silently misses the coverage that mattered. Plan for someone to own query maintenance rather than treating alerts as set and forget. | Steep, mainly because of breadth. Every individual tool is understandable, but there are dozens of them and the navigation assumes you know which one you want. Expect a week before a new user stops getting lost, and plan to formally ignore several toolkits. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS app, Android app, Desktop notifications, REST API (paid add-on) | Web application, Chrome extension (SEO toolbar), Looker Studio connector, Mobile apps for reporting, REST API |
| Compliance | GDPR | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 (verify current attestation with the vendor) |
| Founded | 2012 | 2008 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Ownership | Acquired by Agorapulse (2025), previously owned by Mynewsdesk (2018 to 2025) | Subsidiary of Adobe Inc. following a $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition completed in April 2026 |
Strengths and limitations
Mention
Strengths
- Broad source coverage in one index: social platforms, news, blogs, forums, and more than seventy-five review sites, rather than social alone.
- Advanced Boolean alerts with a 2,000 character query allowance, which is the difference between a signal feed and a noise feed for ambiguous brand names.
- Unlimited users on the Company plan, so read access can be given to support, legal, and executives without a per-seat calculation.
- White-label scheduled reporting that makes listening a saleable agency deliverable rather than an internal cost.
Limitations
- The self-serve tiers are gone. Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus were discontinued for new customers in July 2025, so a small business cannot buy Mention at its historic price point regardless of what third-party pricing pages still say.
- The only published route to purchase is a demo request; there is no public signup and no clearly documented open trial, which makes cheap evaluation impossible.
- Historical data is not included at any tier. A new alert starts collecting from creation, and backfilling up to two years is a separate paid add-on.
- API access is also an add-on rather than a plan feature, which raises the real cost of any integration project above the headline price.
Semrush
Strengths
- By far the broadest coverage of any self-serve SEO tool: organic, paid, local, social, PR, content, and market research in a single subscription.
- AI search visibility is bundled into paid plans across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, rather than sold as a four-figure add-on.
- Advertising Research is genuinely unmatched among SEO suites and is the clearest reason to choose Semrush over Ahrefs.
- Database scale and refresh cadence are published openly, including the honest admission that keyword updates range from daily to monthly by term popularity.
Limitations
- Additional users from $45 per month each on every tier make Semrush expensive for teams and cheap only for lone operators.
- Backlink data is large but is not the reference index; when Ahrefs and Semrush disagree, most practitioners believe Ahrefs.
- The breadth is genuinely overwhelming, and small teams routinely pay for toolkits they open once during onboarding and never return to.
- The 2026 repackaging is recent enough that plan-to-feature mapping is still confusing, particularly for customers migrating off legacy Pro, Guru, and Business plans.
Pricing compared
Mention
A single Company plan sold through a demo on an annual contract, priced by mention volume and alert count rather than by seat. Users are unlimited. Historical data backfill and API access are paid add-ons quoted separately. The self-serve Solo, Pro, and Pro Plus tiers were discontinued for new customers in July 2025 and are grandfathered only for existing accounts.
- CompanyFrom $599
- Historical data add-onQuoted
- API access add-onQuoted
- Legacy self-serve tiersNo longer sold
As a listening engine at the $600 to $1,500 a month level, Mention is competitive: broad source coverage, real Boolean control, unlimited seats, and reporting an agency can put a client logo on. The problem is the shape of the offer rather than the number. A tool that built its reputation on a $49 entry point now requires a demo, an annual commitment, and two paid add-ons before it does what a buyer assumes it already does. For a small business that reads about Mention in a listicle and expects a card-and-go signup, the value question does not really arise, because that route no longer exists. For a mid-market comms team already budgeting five figures a year for monitoring, it is a reasonable buy that undercuts the traditional media intelligence vendors by a wide margin.
Semrush
Self-serve tiered subscription repackaged in 2026 around SEO and AI Search bundles, metered on websites, daily-tracked keywords, and daily AI prompt checks, with per-seat charges for additional users.
- Free$0
- SEO$139
- Starter$199
- Pro+$299
- Advanced$549
- EnterpriseCustom quote
Semrush is the best value in this category for a team that will actually use three or more toolkits, and mediocre value for anyone who will not. At $199 the Starter plan includes AI visibility tracking across five engines, which at Ahrefs costs $129 plus $199 to $699 on top; that comparison alone justifies the plan for anyone whose board is asking about AI answers. The counterweight is seats. Every extra login is $45 per month, and the pricing is designed around a single power user with reports flowing outward rather than a team working inside the tool. If your use case is keyword research and rank tracking for one small site, this is roughly three times more platform than you need and you should look at SE Ranking, Mangools, or Ubersuggest instead.
Editorial verdict on each
Mention
Mention still does the thing it became known for, and does it well: a broad, fast index across social, news, forums, and review sites, with Boolean control good enough to make an ambiguous brand name workable and reporting polished enough to bill a client for. What changed is who is allowed to buy it. The self-serve tiers that made Mention a default recommendation for small businesses were retired in July 2025, publishing and replying were removed in January 2026, and the only published route now is a demo leading to an annual Company contract from $599 a month with historical data and API access priced on top. For a mid-market comms team that would otherwise be quoted five figures by a traditional media intelligence vendor, that is a fair deal and worth a bake-off against Agility PR. For the small business this directory is written for, Mention is now a tool to know about rather than one to buy, and Brand24 or a monitoring module inside a platform you already pay for will get you further for the money.
Read the full Mention profileSemrush
Category LeaderSemrush is the most complete self-serve marketing visibility platform available, and the 2026 repackaging made it the sensible default for anyone whose leadership is asking about AI answers: prompt tracking across five engines starts at $199 per month, where the equivalent at Ahrefs is a separately billed add-on running to $699. The dataset is large, the refresh cadence is documented honestly, and the free plan plus seven-day no-card trial means you can check the claims yourself. Two caveats matter. Seats at $45 each make this a tool for one power user with reports flowing outward, not a team workspace. And Adobe's $1.9 billion acquisition, completed in April 2026, means the vendor you are signing a three-year deal with is now a division of a company with very different pricing instincts. Buy it if you will use the breadth. Buy something cheaper if you will not.
Read the full Semrush profileMention profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; Semrush last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.