SE Ranking vs SEMrush: Which SEO Tool is Best?

Last Updated on August 18, 2025 by Ewen Finser

In this SE Ranking vs SEMrush comparison, we explore the key differences between two leading SEO tools. Our goal? Help you decide which tool will work better for your business.

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for an all-encompassing SEO suite that meets all your digital marketing needs, SEMrush is your best option. With that said, SE Ranking is a fantastic budget alternative that’s consistently adding new features.

If you’ve been working in SEO for even a short time, you’ve likely been recommended a host of tools to make your job easier. 

SEMrush is one option you’ve probably heard of. An all-in-one suite that’s more than just an SEO tool; It can help with paid ads, social media marketing and many other digital marketing needs. It’s the Swiss army knife of the industry, and its pricing reflects that.

Yes, SEMrush is trusted by thousands of SEO practitioners. But I can understand if you also want to explore alternatives that offer a decent range of features for a more affordable fee, such as SE Ranking. This is an up-and-coming tool which offers incredible value for money and is constantly improving.

Here’s all you need to know about both tools before you commit.

SE Ranking vs SEMrush – Overview  

SE Ranking 

SE Ranking might be newer and smaller than SEMrush, but millions of SEO professionals have jumped on its hype train since it launched in 2013. It includes most features expected from a basic SEO suite, including tools to discover new keywords, backlinks and ranking opportunities. 

What’s more, it allows you to perform these tasks more intuitively compared to its competitors. I found its local SEO and competitor analysis tools to be particularly comprehensive.  

SEMrush 

SEMrush launched in 2008 and quickly established itself as one of the most comprehensive SEO suites on the market. It has maintained that reputation in 2025 and continues to add more useful features. 

It allows you to customize your SEO research in many ways, whether you’re looking for new keyword opportunities, tracking your rankings, monitoring your traffic or researching competitors. 

You can also use SEMrush to boost your social media marketing and paid advertising efforts. It’s the premium SEO tool of 2025, but that comes with premium pricing. 

SEMrush is far more expensive than SE Ranking, and many people won’t need its huge range of features.

With that in mind, let’s analyse the main features offered by each tool, so you can discover which is likely to be more suitable for you. 

SE Ranking vs SEMrush – Main Features 

Ease of Use 

SE Ranking Ease of Use 

Fortunately, you don’t have to pay a dime to get a taste of SE Ranking’s features. There’s a 14-day free trial period for all new users.

Once you get started, you’ll quickly notice how easy it is to navigate the dashboard. SE Ranking simplifies everything really well.

It starts off by requesting your site details and targeted keywords, then proceeds to conduct a quick audit of your site’s SEO health.

The whole system has been organised neatly to eliminate the need for an onboarding process. There’s barely any learning curve, and you should be able to find your way around with no problems. 

The main menu categorises all the main features into:

• Projects
• Research
• Backlinks
• Audit
• AI search
• Content Marketing
• Local Marketing
• Report Builder 

If you’re a beginner, you may want to navigate to the ‘Marketing Plan’ feature, which recommends a ‘to-do list’ of marketing tasks in chronological order. This feature holds your hand in a comforting way that digital marketing newbies will appreciate. 

SEMrush Ease of Use 

With SEMrush, your first tasks involve listing your website’s URL and your specific goals for the software. 

From here, it recommends the most suitable pricing package for you. Unlike with SE Ranking, you’ll need to enter some credit card details to launch your free trial. SEMrush only offers a 7-day trial compared to 14 days with SE Ranking.

The SEMrush dashboard has a lot going on, and it’s not obvious where to start. The main menu has an overwhelming 23 options grouped into seven categories. The tools are simple enough for experienced SEO practitioners, although beginners could occasionally get stuck.

It’s great that SEMrush has so many features to offer, but it should find an easier way to organise them.

Ease of Use Verdict: SE Ranking wins 

Keyword Research 

SE Ranking: Keyword Research 

For each keyword searched, SE Ranking gives you a list of the top ranking websites, related keywords, a difficulty rating and many more useful statistics. 

You’ll also find a detailed analysis of the web pages currently ranking well for this keyword, including its monthly traffic, backlinks and domain trust score. This information helps you calculate your chances of usurping your competitors in the search rankings. 

SEMrush: Keyword Research 

The SEMrush Keyword Research tool does a lot of the same things we’ve already explored with SE Ranking while offering more comprehensive data.

When you type a keyword into the tool, you’ll be offered hundreds of related keywords, including question keywords that help you rank in the featured snippets and FAQ sections of search results pages.  

On top of that, the Keyword Strategy Builder builds a suggested hierarchy of pillar pages and subpages to help you establish authority for important keywords. This is just skimming the surface of the useful features offered within this tool. To learn more, you’ll have to try it out for yourself.    

Keyword Research Verdict: SEMrush wins 

SE Ranking Site Auditing 

SE Ranking: Website Audit Tool 

The website audit tool crawls your website to measure its SEO health and highlight any errors that might be harming your rankings. Some of what SE Ranking analyses include user experience, image optimisation, meta-tags, headers, content, parameters per page, XML sitemap files and other basic factors.  

The tool then awards your website a score to reflect its overall SEO health. You can narrow down your audit results to focus on a specific webpage as well.

SE Ranking: Backlink Checker 

The Backlink Checker allows you to map out your entire link framework and identify any issues. You’ll identify all the links pointing to your domain, the domain authority of each link and the anchor text being used.

You’ll also receive a list of toxic backlinks to nullify using Google’s Disavow tool.  

SEMrush Site Auditing 

SEMrush: Site Audit Tool 

The SEMrush Site Audit Tool also crawls your website to evaluate its SEO health and diagnose potential problems. Once again, you can expect a superior amount of data to help you improve the health of your website.    

It scans image optimisation, meta-tags, headers, content, external links, internal links, URL, code scripts, link attributes, sitemap, robots.txt, and a lot more. You can check these for individual pages or the entire website.

SEMrush: Backlink Audit Tool 

You can use SEMrush to improve your backlink strategy through several tools. The Backlink Analytics tool will give you all the key information on the links pointing to your domain. The Backlink Audit tool conducts a deep evaluation and identifies links that may be harming your SEO. 

The Link Building Tool helps you identify easy opportunities to gain more backlinks based on the keywords you want to target, while the Bulk Analysis tool helps you do the same by analysing your competitors’ backlinks.

This is another area where SEMrush goes above and beyond to help you fulfil your website’s potential in search engine rankings. 

Site Auditing Verdict: SEMrush wins 

Extras

SE Ranking: Extras

The Content Marketing tool helps you write keyword-rich content based on the terms you want an article to rank for. It can also edit your existing articles and ensure they are SEO-friendly. You can also create complete articles using AI with the click of a few buttons. 

SEMrush Extras

SEMrush has a whole suite of Content Marketing tools available for an additional $60/month. These include the Topic Finder, SEO Brief Generator, AI Article Generator and Content Optimiser.

There are also social media management tools available for another $20/month. You can use these tools to create engaging content, find trending content, track your posts and analyse other brands’ social strategies.

Extras Verdict: SEMrush wins

SE Ranking vs SEMrush SEO Software – Pricing 

SE Ranking Pricing

SE Ranking offers three pricing tiers: Essential, Pro and Business. You can upgrade the two costlier tiers if you need to track more keywords. All prices listed are based on annual payments, which come with a 20% discount compared to paying monthly.

1. Essential tier – $52/month for up to 500 keywords tracked daily. This tier is for individuals with up to five websites. It includes most of the basic tools mentioned in this review.
2. Pro tier – $95.20/month for up to 2,000 keywords tracked daily or $159.20/month to upgrade to 3,500 keywords. This is more suitable for agency owners as it allows three manager seats and 30 projects. It includes all of the features in the Essential tier plus: 

• On-page and SERP analysis
• Content marketing and Local SEO toolkits
• AI data insights
• Agency Pack (with annual subscription)
• AIO Tracker and Research
• LLM Tracker
• Looker Studio Integration 
• Share of Voice Metric 

3. Business tier – $207.20/month for up to 5,000 keywords tracked daily, $327.20 to upgrade to 10,000 keywords or $479.20 for 20,000 keywords. This is more suitable for enterprises or large agency owners, as it allows five manager seats and unlimited projects. It includes all of the features in the Pro tier plus: 

• Project API
• LLM Visibility Research
• Maximised data reach
• Keywords Database expansion
• Dedicated Customer Support
• Team Training
• Historical data (all time)

SEMrush Pricing

SEMrush offers three pricing tiers: Pro, Guru and Business. These are costlier than SE Ranking, and several features are only available as paid add-ons on top of these. Each tier has usage limits on various features, including: 

• Projects
• Keywords to track daily
• Pages to crawl per month
• Pages to crawl per project
• Keyword metric updates per month
• and more

…so it’s worth checking these on the pricing page before you commit to a plan. All prices listed are based on paying annually, which grants you a 17% discount compared to monthly payments.

1. Pro tier – $117.33/month for up to 500 keywords tracked daily. This tier is for individuals with up to five websites. It includes most of the basic tools mentioned in this review.
2. Guru tier – $208.33/month for up to 1,500 keywords tracked daily. This tier is for small business owners with up to 15 projects. It includes all of the features in the Pro tier plus:

• Historical data
• Multi-location and device data
• ChatGPT Search tracking
• Content marketing tools 

3. Business tier – $416.66/month for up to 5,000 keywords tracked daily. This tier is for larger agencies with up to 40 projects. It includes all of the features in the Guru tier plus:

• Share of Voice
• Extended limits
• API access
• Migration from third-party tools

Pricing Verdict: SE Ranking wins

The Bottom Line: Which is Better Between SE Ranking Vs SEMrush?  

SEMrush remains the best SEO suite out there in my opinion, although it’s also one of the priciest. SE Ranking is a solid bet too. Plus it’s easy for beginners to pick up, while being an affordable option that punches way above its weight class. 

While I’ll declare SEMrush the overall winner, I know plenty of people who believe SE Ranking provides better value for money, and it’s hard to argue with them.

Here are other related articles on SEO Software & Keyword Ranking Tools:

• Full SE Ranking Review 
• SEMrush vs Majestic: Which SEO Tool is Better?
• SEMrush vs Serpstat SEO Platform Compared
• SEMrush vs Long Tail Pro Compared
• SEMrush vs SEO PowerSuite Compared
• AccuRanker vs SEMrush: Which is the Best Competitor Research Tool?
• Ahrefs vs SEMrush: The Best Tools for SEO
• Best Alternatives to SEMrush
• Serpstat Review
• AccuRanker Review
• MarketMuse Review
• Ahrefs vs Spyfu
• Best Keyword Rank Tracker Tools (Keyword Tracking Tools)