The broadest marketing dataset in SEO, now repackaged around AI visibility and owned by Adobe
Semrush is an all-in-one online visibility platform covering SEO, paid search, content, local listings, social, and competitive market research, built on a database the vendor publishes as 28.8 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domains, and 142 geographic databases; since a 2026 repackaging its paid plans bundle AI search visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, and the company was acquired by Adobe in a $1.9 billion all-cash deal completed in April 2026.
Overview
Semrush is the widest SEO platform on the market, and width is both the pitch and the problem. Where Ahrefs concentrates on organic search data, Semrush spans keyword research, backlink analysis, technical auditing, rank tracking, paid search and display intelligence, local listing management, social scheduling, content generation, digital PR outreach, and market traffic analytics. The company publishes its dataset openly: 28.8 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domains, 142 geographic databases, 500TB of raw traffic data, and a crawler processing roughly 10 billion web pages daily. Keyword refresh varies from daily to monthly depending on how popular the term is, which the vendor documents rather than hides.
The 2026 packaging is a genuine break from what buyers remember. The old Pro, Guru, and Business ladder is gone, replaced by an SEO plan at $139 per month and three combined SEO plus AI Search plans at $199, $299, and $549. What separates them is largely how many AI prompts you track daily: 50 on Starter, 100 on Pro+, 200 on Advanced, alongside 500 to 5,000 daily-tracked keywords and 5 to 40 websites. Semrush also tracks AI brand sentiment, prompt research across a corpus it puts at 317 million AI prompts, and LLM citations in its backlink tooling, which is a more integrated answer to the AI visibility question than Ahrefs' separately priced Brand Radar.
In April 2026 Adobe completed a $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition, folding Semrush into Experience Cloud. For enterprise buyers that is reassuring. For a small business it introduces the standard post-acquisition uncertainty: pricing tends to drift upward, roadmap attention tends to follow the enterprise segment, and the cheerful self-serve product that got you here is now a line item inside a much larger marketing suite. Nothing has broken yet, but a three-year commitment is a different bet than it was in 2025.
For the small-business buyer the honest framing is this: Semrush is the best value in the category if you will genuinely use three or four of its toolkits, and poor value if you only want keyword research and rank tracking. At $139 to $549 per month with additional users starting at $45 each, it is not a casual purchase, and a large fraction of what you are paying for is competitive advertising intelligence and market data that a five-person company will open twice and never return to.
Best for
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.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone who only needs keyword research and rank tracking; you will pay $139 to $299 per month for a platform whose breadth you never touch, when Mangools or SE Ranking cover the same jobs for a fraction of it.
- Teams with several people who need logins; additional users start at $45 per month each on every tier, so a four-person team on Pro+ pays $434 per month before add-ons.
- Buyers who want backlink data they can defend in an argument; Semrush's index is large but Ahrefs' crawl is the one practitioners treat as arbiter when the two disagree.
- Small businesses that want stable, predictable vendor behaviour; Semrush is now an Adobe subsidiary inside Experience Cloud, and post-acquisition price and packaging changes are a realistic risk on a multi-year horizon.
- Writers and content editors looking for draft grading; the content tooling generates and checks articles but is not a substitute for Clearscope or Surfer SEO as an editorial quality gate.
How it works
- 1
You create a project for your domain, which switches on Site Audit, Position Tracking, On Page SEO Checker, and the reporting layer for that property. Plan tier decides how many projects you get, from 5 websites on SEO and Starter up to 40 on Advanced, and how many keywords are tracked daily, from 500 up to 5,000.
- 2
Research runs outside projects. Domain Overview, Organic Research, Keyword Magic Tool, and Backlink Analytics accept any domain or keyword and query Semrush's own database, so competitor analysis does not consume your project slots. This is where most users spend their time and where the 142 geographic databases matter, because a UK query and a US query are separate datasets with separate volumes.
- 3
AI visibility works on a prompt loop rather than a keyword loop. You register prompts a buyer might type into an assistant, and Semrush checks them daily against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, reporting whether you were mentioned, which sources were cited instead, and how the models describe your brand relative to competitors. Prompt Research suggests prompts from Semrush's own corpus rather than making you guess.
- 4
Everything then routes into the reporting layer: scheduled PDF reports, branded client dashboards, and a Looker Studio connector. Agencies buy the extra report bundles at $10 or $20 per month rather than paying for another seat, which is one of the few places the pricing model is friendly.
Feature breakdown
27 features in 5 modulesKeyword and competitive research
The largest cross-channel research dataset of any self-serve SEO tool.- Keyword Magic Tool
- Queries a database Semrush puts at 28.8 billion keywords across 142 geographic databases, with volume, difficulty, intent classification, and SERP features per term.
- Organic Research
- Full organic keyword footprint, estimated traffic, position changes, and top pages for any domain, which is the standard opening move for competitor analysis.
- Keyword Gap
- Compares up to five domains at once and surfaces terms competitors rank for that you do not, segmented by shared, missing, weak, and untapped.
- Advertising Research
- Competitors' paid search keywords, ad copy history, and estimated spend, which no organic-only tool provides and which is a real reason to prefer Semrush over Ahrefs.
- Traffic Analytics and Market Explorer
- Estimated traffic, audience overlap, and market share sizing built on 500TB of raw traffic data, aimed at strategy work rather than day-to-day SEO.
- Keyword refresh cadence documented
- Semrush states global keyword databases update on a cadence from daily to monthly depending on term popularity, which is unusually candid about where the data is stale.
AI search visibility
The 2026 repackaging's centrepiece, and included rather than sold as an add-on.- AI Visibility tracking
- Monitors brand mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, at 50 prompts daily on Starter, 100 on Pro+, and 200 on Advanced.
- AI Brand Sentiment
- Reports how large language models describe your brand and competitors, not just whether you are mentioned, which is the more useful half of the question.
- Prompt Research
- Suggests prompts real users send to AI tools from a corpus Semrush puts at 317 million, so you are not guessing at what to track.
- LLM citation tracking in backlinks
- Backlink Analytics now surfaces which of your pages are cited by AI answers alongside conventional links, tying the two visibility models together.
- Included in paid plans
- Unlike Ahrefs, where equivalent capability costs $199 to $699 per month extra, AI visibility is bundled from the $199 Starter tier and appears in limited form on the free plan.
Site health and rank tracking
Competent, daily-refreshed monitoring with strong client reporting.- Site Audit
- Technical crawl covering crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, and markup, with issue severity grouping and change tracking between crawls.
- Position Tracking
- Daily rank tracking of 500 keywords on SEO and Starter, 1,500 on Pro+, and 5,000 on Advanced, with device and location targeting and competitor comparison.
- On Page SEO Checker
- Page-level recommendations derived from what currently ranks, covering content, technical, and backlink actions on the specific URLs you are trying to move.
- Listing Management
- Distributes and monitors local business listings across directories, which matters for multi-location businesses and is absent from most organic-only suites.
- Marketing reports and dashboards
- Scheduled branded PDF reports and client dashboards, with additional report bundles sold cheaply at $10 or $20 per month rather than requiring another seat.
Content and outreach
Useful production tooling that does not replace a dedicated content optimizer.- AI content creation
- Generates SEO-ready drafts and briefs from target keywords inside the platform, aimed at volume production rather than editorial polish.
- Topic Research
- Clusters subtopics, questions, and headlines around a seed theme to build a content plan rather than a keyword list.
- Digital PR and link building
- Prospecting and outreach workflow for earning links through media coverage, with campaign tracking built in.
- Backlink Audit and disavow
- Scores link toxicity and generates a disavow file, which is the kind of housekeeping tool small sites need once and then forget about.
- Social toolkit
- Scheduling, publishing, and competitor social benchmarking, included in the platform rather than requiring a separate social tool for light use.
Plans, seats, and developer access
Where the money actually goes.- Free plan
- One demo project and 10 daily reports across tools, with AI Visibility features included, which is a genuinely usable evaluation path rather than a marketing stub.
- Seven-day free trial
- A full trial with no credit card required, which Ahrefs does not offer at all.
- Additional users
- Priced from $45 per user per month across every tier, so seat count is the single biggest driver of effective cost for a team.
- Add-on reports
- Base reports at $10 per month and Pro reports at $20 per month let agencies scale client reporting without buying seats.
- Lead Generation add-on
- A $90 per month widget-based add-on aimed at agencies capturing inbound audits from their own sites.
- API access
- Sold in API units on top of a top-tier subscription; Semrush does not publish unit prices on the pricing page and directs buyers to their subscription settings or sales, so treat programmatic access as a quoted purchase.
Use cases
4 documentedAgency running SEO and paid search for the same client
The organic team and the ads team use different tools, nobody can see where paid and organic overlap, and monthly reporting is assembled by hand from three exports.
One Semrush subscription covers organic research, Advertising Research, Position Tracking, and Site Audit, with branded scheduled reports and cheap add-on report bundles instead of extra seats.
Ecommerce marketer worried about AI answers
Category pages are losing informational traffic to AI Overviews, and leadership wants to know whether the brand appears when buyers ask ChatGPT for recommendations.
Prompt Research suggests the prompts worth tracking, AI Visibility checks 50 to 200 of them daily across five engines, and AI Brand Sentiment reports how the models actually describe the brand.
Multi-location service business
Six locations with inconsistent directory listings and no visibility into which ones rank locally.
Listing Management pushes consistent data to directories while Position Tracking reports local rankings per location, in the same subscription as the rest of the SEO work.
Startup marketer building a content plan from nothing
No existing search presence, a long list of assumed topics, and no idea which competitors are winning what.
Keyword Magic Tool and Keyword Gap turn assumptions into a ranked list, Topic Research clusters it into briefs, and the free plan or seven-day trial proves the value before committing to $139 per month.
Pricing
from $139 per month (SEO plan, monthly billing) or $117.33 per month billed annuallySelf-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.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month |
Better than most free tiers in this category, and the sensible first step before the trial. |
| SEO | $139 per month, or $117.33 billed annually |
The classic SEO suite without the AI visibility layer. Choose this only if AI answers are genuinely not your problem. |
| Starter | $199 per month, or $165.17 billed annually |
The first tier where AI visibility is real. The $60 step up from the SEO plan buys the whole AI layer. |
| Pro+ | $299 per month, or $248.17 billed annually |
|
| Advanced | $549 per month, or $455.67 billed annually |
|
| Enterprise | Custom quote annual contract |
Quote-based and sales-led, which is the only part of the range that is not self-serve. |
Add-ons
- Additional users (From $45 per user per month): Applies on every tier, including the $549 Advanced plan.
- Lead Generation ($90 per month): Embeddable audit widget aimed at agencies capturing inbound leads.
- Base Report ($10 per month): Extra scheduled client reports without buying another seat.
- Pro Report ($20 per month): Higher-tier report bundle for agencies with many clients.
- API units (Not publicly listed): Purchased through subscription settings or sales; there is no published unit price on the pricing page.
Billing notes
- Annual billing saves about 17 percent across all four self-serve tiers, so the advertised headline prices are the monthly rate and the annual rate is genuinely lower rather than a bait figure.
- Additional users start at $45 per month each on every plan. This is the dominant hidden cost for teams and turns a $299 plan into a $434 plan at four people.
- The 2026 repackaging replaced the old Pro, Guru, and Business ladder. Existing customers on legacy plans should model the new tiers carefully before migrating, because feature-to-tier mapping changed.
- AI prompt tracking is bundled rather than sold separately, which makes Semrush materially cheaper than Ahrefs plus Brand Radar for the same job.
- Extra client reports are sold at $10 and $20 per month, which is unusually cheap and is the correct way for agencies to scale reporting rather than adding seats.
- API access requires the top self-serve tier and separately purchased units, with no published pricing, so treat it as a sales conversation rather than a checkbox.
- Adobe completed its $1.9 billion acquisition in April 2026. Nothing has changed commercially yet, but multi-year commitments now carry acquisition-related pricing risk.
Value assessment: 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.
Strengths & limitations
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.
- A real free plan plus a seven-day no-card trial, so you can evaluate properly before spending anything, which is not true of Ahrefs.
- 142 geographic databases make international and multi-market work practical without buying regional tools.
- Cheap add-on report bundles at $10 and $20 per month give agencies a way to scale client reporting without seat inflation.
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.
- API pricing is not published anywhere on the site, which for a self-serve product is a meaningful transparency failure.
- Adobe's April 2026 acquisition introduces roadmap and pricing uncertainty that did not exist when Semrush was an independent public company.
- The content tools generate acceptable drafts but do not function as an editorial grading layer, so serious content teams still buy Clearscope, Surfer SEO, or Frase alongside.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesSemrush vs Ahrefs
from $29 per month (Starter), or $129 per month for LiteAhrefs has the better crawl and the more trusted backlink index; Semrush has advertising intelligence, local listings, social, market data, and bundled AI visibility. On AI answers the cost comparison is stark: Semrush includes prompt tracking from $199, while Ahrefs charges $129 plus $199 to $699 for Brand Radar. Pick Ahrefs when data credibility is the product you are selling; pick Semrush when you need one platform for a whole marketing function.
Full Semrush vs Ahrefs comparisonSemrush vs Moz Pro
from $49 per month (Starter), or $39 per month billed annuallyMoz Pro is the calmer, cheaper, and far narrower option, with a clear interface and a well-known Domain Authority metric but a smaller index and much less AI-era tooling. Semrush costs roughly double and delivers several times the surface area. Buy Moz if you want understandable SEO fundamentals at a fair price; buy Semrush if you need paid search intelligence and AI visibility in the same subscription.
Full Semrush vs Moz Pro comparisonSemrush vs SE Ranking
from 87.20 euros per month billed annually (Core), or 109 euros billed monthlySE Ranking covers most of Semrush's SEO jobs, including rank tracking, audits, keyword research, and white-label agency reporting, at a fraction of the price and with far friendlier seat terms. Semrush wins on dataset size, advertising research, and depth of AI visibility. Agencies serving many small clients on a budget should start with SE Ranking; teams that need cross-channel competitive intelligence should pay for Semrush.
Full Semrush vs SE Ranking comparisonSemrush vs Ubersuggest
from $29 per month (Personal), or $290 one time for a lifetime Individual licenceUbersuggest is priced for people who cannot justify a triple-digit monthly SEO bill, with a lifetime purchase option and a deliberately simple feature set. Semrush is an order of magnitude more capable and more than an order of magnitude more expensive over five years. Solo site owners and local businesses should take Ubersuggest; anyone whose job title contains the word marketing should look at Semrush.
Full Semrush vs Ubersuggest comparisonSemrush vs SISTRIX
from 119 EUR per month (START)Sistrix is the European specialist, built around the Visibility Index and unusually strong historical data for German, Spanish, Italian, and other continental markets. Semrush covers 142 databases but Sistrix's depth in its core countries and its long-run index history are hard to match. Buy Sistrix if your market is continental Europe and longitudinal visibility matters; buy Semrush if you need global coverage plus paid, social, and AI tooling.
Full Semrush vs SISTRIX comparisonSemrush vs Frase
from $39 per month (Starter, billed yearly; $49 monthly)These solve different problems. Frase is a content brief and optimization tool starting around $39 per month that grades drafts against the SERP; Semrush is a research and monitoring platform whose content generation is a convenience rather than an editorial gate. Small content teams often run Frase alongside a cheaper SEO suite and spend the difference on writers, which is frequently the better allocation.
Full Semrush vs Frase comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- 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
- 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.
- Onboarding
- Fully self-serve on all four paid tiers, with a free plan and a seven-day no-card trial in front. Semrush Academy offers free certification courses that are the fastest way to get a team productive. Enterprise adds a dedicated account manager.
- Migration notes
- Position Tracking history begins when you add keywords, so there is no way to backfill your own rank history from another tool. Existing customers on legacy Pro, Guru, and Business plans should map features to the 2026 tiers before switching, since the packaging changed substantially. Exports are straightforward and the Looker Studio connector makes ongoing reporting portable.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web applicationChrome extension (SEO toolbar)Looker Studio connectorMobile apps for reportingREST API
- API
- REST API sold in API units on top of a top-tier subscription. Unit prices are not published on the pricing page; Semrush directs buyers to subscription settings or its sales team.
- Compliance
- GDPRCCPASOC 2 (verify current attestation with the vendor)
- Data residency
- No customer-selectable regional hosting is advertised for the self-serve product.
- SSO
- Available on Enterprise; not advertised on the self-serve tiers.
- Security notes
- As of April 2026 Semrush is a wholly owned Adobe subsidiary within Experience Cloud, which over time should raise the standard of published security and compliance documentation but also means data handling terms may be restated under Adobe's agreements. Buyers with vendor review processes should request current documentation directly rather than relying on pre-acquisition material.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportLive chatPhone supportDedicated account manager on Enterprise
- Documentation
- Large knowledge base including a published data and metrics page documenting database sizes and refresh cadence, plus Semrush Academy free certification courses.
- Community
- Very large user base reported at more than 28 million registered users, with extensive third-party training material, an active blog, and regular webinars.
Company
- Founded
- 2008
- Headquarters
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Ownership
- Subsidiary of Adobe Inc. following a $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition completed in April 2026
- Founders
- Oleg Shchegolev, Dmitry Melnikov
- Employees
- Over 1,000
- Funding
- Raised venture funding including a 2018 round led by Greycroft and e.ventures, listed on the NYSE in March 2021, and was acquired outright by Adobe for $1.9 billion in cash in a deal completed 28 April 2026.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | $40M | 2018 | Led by Greycroft and e.ventures. |
| IPO | Approximately $140M | 2021 | Listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SEMR. |
| Acquisition | $1.9B | 2026 | Acquired outright by Adobe in an all-cash transaction completed in April 2026 and folded into Adobe Experience Cloud. |
Timeline
- 2008Founded by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov as a competitive research tool for search marketers.
- 2016Expands from keyword and advertising research into a full platform with site audit, position tracking, and backlink analytics.
- 2021Goes public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SEMR.
- 2023Adds AI content generation and the ContentShake tooling as generative writing enters mainstream marketing workflows.
- 2025Launches AI visibility tracking and prompt research as AI answers begin absorbing informational search traffic.
- 2026Repackages self-serve pricing around SEO and AI Search bundles at $139 to $549, and is acquired by Adobe for $1.9 billion in a deal completed in April.
Integrations
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics 4
- Google Ads
- Google Looker Studio
- Google Business Profile
- Google Sheets
- WordPress (SEO Writing Assistant plugin)
- Google Docs
- Trello
- Zapier
- Adobe Experience Cloud (post-acquisition)
- REST API
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Semrush?
Semrush is an all-in-one online visibility platform covering SEO, paid search, content, local listings, social media, and competitive market research. It runs on its own database, published as 28.8 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domains, and 142 geographic databases, and now includes AI search visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.
How much does Semrush cost in 2026?
The SEO plan is $139 per month, Starter is $199, Pro+ is $299, and Advanced is $549, each about 17 percent cheaper billed annually. There is a free plan with one demo project and 10 daily reports, and a seven-day trial with no credit card required. Additional users start at $45 per month each on every tier, and Enterprise is quote-based.
Did Adobe buy Semrush?
Yes. Adobe completed a $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition of Semrush Holdings in April 2026 and folded the platform into Adobe Experience Cloud. The self-serve product is unchanged so far, but buyers signing multi-year commitments should factor in the usual post-acquisition risk of price and packaging changes.
Does Semrush track AI search visibility?
Yes, and it is bundled rather than sold separately. Starter includes 50 AI prompts tracked daily, Pro+ includes 100, and Advanced includes 200, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. It also reports AI brand sentiment, suggests prompts from a corpus of around 317 million, and surfaces LLM citations inside backlink analytics. Ahrefs charges $199 to $699 per month extra for comparable capability.
How many keywords can I track and how often are they refreshed?
Rank tracking is daily on every paid tier, at 500 keywords on the SEO and Starter plans, 1,500 on Pro+, and 5,000 on Advanced, with device and location targeting. The separate keyword research database updates on a cadence ranging from daily to monthly depending on how popular each term is, which Semrush documents publicly rather than obscuring.
How expensive are extra Semrush users?
Additional users start at $45 per month each and apply on every plan including Advanced. A four-person team on Pro+ therefore pays $299 plus three seats at $45, which is $434 per month. If your reason for extra seats is client reporting rather than daily use, the $10 and $20 per month add-on report bundles are much cheaper.
Is Semrush better than Ahrefs?
They are optimised for different jobs. Ahrefs has the deeper crawl and the backlink index practitioners trust as arbiter. Semrush has advertising research, local listing management, social tooling, market traffic data, and bundled AI visibility. If your work is competitive link and keyword analysis, Ahrefs. If your work spans paid and organic across a whole marketing function, Semrush.
Does Semrush have a free version?
Yes. The free plan gives one demo project, 10 daily reports across tools, and limited AI Visibility features, which is enough to evaluate the interface and do occasional lookups. There is also a seven-day full trial that does not require a credit card, so you can test a paid tier properly before committing.
Can I use the Semrush API?
API access is available in API units on top of a top-tier subscription, but Semrush does not publish unit pricing on its pricing page and directs buyers to their subscription settings or the sales team. For a small business, exports, the Looker Studio connector, and scheduled reports cover most automation needs without an API conversation.
Is Semrush worth it for a small business?
It depends entirely on how many of its toolkits you will use. If you run paid and organic together, manage local listings, and need AI visibility reporting, $199 to $299 per month is defensible against buying three separate tools. If you only need keyword research and rank tracking for one site, you are paying for platform you will never open, and SE Ranking, Mangools, or Ubersuggest will do the job for a fraction of the money.
Editorial verdict
Semrush 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.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.
Awards & badges
1 heldSemrush holds 1 award from the SaaSTracker editorial program. Badges may be displayed by the vendor; each embed links back to this profile.
Category Leader · SEO & Content Marketing
“The broadest marketing dataset in SEO, now repackaged around AI visibility with Adobe behind it.”
<a href="https://saastracker.org/products/semrush"><img src="https://saastracker.org/badges/embed/semrush/category-leader-summer-2026.svg" width="180" height="180" alt="Semrush: Category Leader, SEO & Content Marketing. SaaSTracker Summer 2026 Awards." /></a>
