Last Updated on December 8, 2023 by Ewen Finser
Ah yes, here we go again. Another SEMrush software review article. Today we take a deep dive into SEMrush Pricing plans to find out which one is the best.
And if you recall, we recently touched on this subject while comparing Serpstat vs SEMrush. But if you missed it, then I hope you at least got a glimpse of either SEO Powersuite vs SEMrush, SEMrush vs Majestic, AccuRanker vs SEMrush, LongTailPro vs SEMrush, SE Ranking vs SEMrush, or maybe my two SEO tool favorites- SEMrush vs Moz, and Ahrefs vs SEMrush.
Each of these comparative reviews explores not only the SEMrush pricing plans, but also their accompanying features. So, all in all, I guess that by now, you’re probably familiar with some of the main tools and capabilities.
Well, if that’s the case, one of the first things you must have noticed about SEMrush is its rather all-inclusive approach to digital marketing. Although the software is predominantly renowned for its SEO research capabilities, the whole SEMrush suite is actually much more than that.
In essence, SEMrush is a pretty holistic toolkit that packs all sorts of intelligent resources for researching, auditing, optimizing, and monitoring your SEO, as well as social media, web content, and paid traffic. Then to top it off, it throws in competitor analysis and tracking to the whole mix of digital marketing tools.
All that, I must admit, is quite a commendable feat by SEMrush. You’d probably never run out of things to do with its tools. Plus, more functionalities translate to additional power.
I use a LOT of tools. Probably more than I need to. There are a few that are truly indispensable. I have a SEMrush tab open EVERY day as I work. Keyword searches, technical audits, competitor analysis? It does it all. Try it out for free.
The Problem With SEMrush Pricing Plans
It’s worth noting, however, that packing all these features has its downsides too. And one of the main ones is the challenge of interpreting the SEMrush pricing plans.
Yes, let’s face it. Although SEMrush comes with only five packages, comparing the accompanying plan features is no walk in the park. Even an experienced digital marketer will admit that SEMrush pricing plans can be confusing at times.
Then get this. Just when we thought we were almost getting a hang of the whole thing, SEMrush pulled off a surprise move by adjusting its pricing plans.
The bombshell, as a matter of fact, was dropped in September 2019 through a press release on the company’s website. Then subsequently, SEMrush proceeded to implement the revised cost parameters in October, starting with its new signups.
That has been the status quo since, and the software is expected to gradually assimilate its old customers into the new system as they renew their subscriptions.
Now, when you add these pricing changes to SEMrush’s extensive list of feature considerations, the process of choosing the best SEMrush pricing plan for your business becomes even more complex. So, you might not be able to make a quick decision by simply skimming through the variables.
Luckily for you though, we’ve got your back. Our SEMrush pricing plan guide goes beyond the basic list of features published on the company’s site, to reveal all the functionalities you’ll find on each package.
What’s more, we take a critical look at the individual SEMrush’s pricing plans- SEMrush Free, SEMrush Pro, SEMrush Guru, SEMrush Business, and SEMrush Enterprise- to help you identify the most suitable package for your needs and budget.
That said, let’s begin with a brief review of what the whole SEMrush platform entails.
SEMrush Pricing Plans: About SEMrush
As we’ve established already, SEMrush is more or less a jack of all trades. That’s why it even describes itself as the “All-in-one Marketing Toolkit for digital marketing professionals”.
Now, at the center of all that is the SEO toolkit. SEMrush is principally built to power your search engine optimization strategy through keyword research (including keyword difficulty metrics, keyword gap tool and keyword suggestions), site audit, SERP position tracking, semantic core collection, backlink monitoring, traffic analytics, as well as in-depth performance insights.
That works-in-hand, with the corresponding paid ad toolkit, which happens to provide an ad builder, PPC keyword research, Google Shopping campaign analytics, negatives optimization, display ad tracking, Google Ad research, and of course, paid traffic analytics.
You also get a content marketing toolkit that’s capable of content analysis, content performance tracking, on-page SEO tool review, plagiarism checking, readability fine-tuning, and keyword optimization.
Then if you’re the type that runs campaigns on social media, you’ll appreciate SEMrush’s social media marketing toolkit. It’s pretty great tool when it comes to monitoring your campaign performance, optimizing campaigns based on benchmarks, scheduling social media posts, plus post boosting.
Last but not least is the famous competitive research toolkit, which collects valuable intel on your competitors across several digital marketing fronts at the same time.
You could, for instance, identify your main organic traffic competitors, as well as the corresponding paid ad rivals. You also get to keep an eye on your competitors’ campaigns across social media, local search, product lists, and international search.
But that’s not all. SEMrush is also capable of generating detailed domain vs domain reports, conducting backlink analysis (for backlink building), identifying new markets and niches, plus keeping tabs on your brand’s web presence.
In short, therefore, you can think of SEMrush as a highly intelligent tool-suite for competitor tracking, organic search optimization, paid search analytics, and social media monitoring.
Ok, fair enough. But, how the heck does it achieve all that?
Well, the truth is, SEMrush is fundamentally driven by big data. Its AI engine relies on a rather expansive network of more than 140 geodatabases, which cumulatively cover over 730 million domains, plus more than 18 billion keywords discoverable with their keyword research tool.
This impressive registry has taken more than a decade to compile, during which time SEMrush has hosted more than 5 million users from different walks of life. Digital marketers happen to take up the largest volume of users, with enterprises and online merchants coming in second and third respectively.
SEMrush Pricing Plans: How Much Does SEMrush Cost?
I’m sorry to break it to you, but SEMrush isn’t the cheapest SEO tool and digital marketing tool-suite. Far from it actually.
On the bright side, however, at least it tries to be transparent by displaying a structured cost schedule, complete with all the SEMrush pricing plans, as well as their corresponding package SEMrush features.
You’ll find all these details on the pricing section of the company’s main site. And when you do, you’re bound to land on these three SEMrush packages:
- SEMrush Pro Plan – $99.95 per month when billed monthly, or $83.28 per month when billed annually.
- SEMrush Guru Plan – $199.95 per month when billed monthly, or $166.62 per month when billed annually.
- SEMrush Business Plan – $399.95 per month when billed monthly, or $333.28 per month when billed annually.
From the look of things, it seems SEMrush is generous enough to award you a 16% discount when you choose to pay for the service every 12 months.
And while there is a decent combination of universal features for all users, each SEMrush pricing plan comes with its fair share of exclusive functionalities.
It’s worth noting, however, that although the main site prioritizes these three subscription packages, SEMrush has more to offer.
If your needs happen to extend beyond the capabilities of the SEMrush Business pricing plan, for instance, you might want to consider subscribing to the custom SEMrush Enterprise.
Then contrastingly, beginners with the least demanding needs have the privilege of avoiding payment altogether by settling for- get this- the SEMrush Free plan.
Yes, I know. Not many people know about this plan since SEMrush rarely promotes it. In fact, you won’t even find it listed on the main pricing schedule.
Nonetheless, the fact is, it exists. And the whole point behind it is giving fresh beginners a glimpse of what to expect from the SEMrush platform.
The only problem, however, is its very limited capabilities.
And with that, let’s now explore all the feature details on each SEMrush pricing plan.
SEMrush Packages (Monthly Pricing, Annual Pricing, and Main Features)
SEMrush Free Pricing Plan
Thankfully, SEMrush Free isn’t one of those timed trial offers. Rather, this plan is permanently free throughout your service period. That means SEMrush allows you to proceed without paying anything or submitting your payment details.
Sadly, however, it comes with a major caveat. You should expect very limited features and weak campaign capabilities.
As a matter of fact, you’ll only be allowed to set up 1 website project. But, on a brighter note, at least the number of supported keywords stretches to 10. This gives you the power to regularly track your website’s ranking performance across 10 keywords (rank tracking).
Then when it comes to sealing potential SEO loopholes, SEMrush Free accommodates no more than 100 webpage audits per month. Just enough for a basic website or blog.
If you ever need additional scrutiny, you might want to supplement the Site Audit tool with the On-Page SEO Checker and backlink audit. This SEMrush pricing plan grants on-page recommendations for 10 keyword entries per month.
It doesn’t end there though. Turns out you could also audit your site’s content. But, get this- you’ll only be allowed to go through 50 pages.
If you think those are few, the Topic Research tool happens to push the limitations to a whole new level. It doesn’t go beyond 2 topic ideas.
And just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, it turns out the SEO Writing Assistant comes with only 1 template. And while the accompanying SEO Content Template tool manages to match that with its own single template, at least it generously accommodates 10 keywords.
The Domain and Keyword Analytics functionalities are also fairly decent, as they’ll proceed to generate up to 10 reports per day, with a maximum of 10 results in each report.
Other than that, the SEMrush Free pricing plan is capable of tracking 5 content URLs, as well as 5 social media profiles. Then when it comes to posting, you get to publish stuff on 2 social media accounts, while scheduling up 10 posts.
SEMrush Pro Pricing Plan
While SEMrush Free is reserved for novice beginners, the SEMrush Pro pricing plan is built for startups, freelancers, and in-house marketers running on a limited budget.
The pricing for monthly subscribers is $99.95, which is payable at the beginning of every month. Otherwise, you can reduce the costs by 16% if you choose to proceed with the annual billing option.
In that case, SEMrush will charge you an upfront fee of $999.40, which basically translates to about $83.28 per month.
Then, in turn, you’ll get more than 40 advanced tools for powering your content marketing, social media marketing, PPC advertising, and search engine optimization.
More specifically, you’ll get:
- Content Marketing Toolkit: As far as content marketing is concerned, you can expect to track up to 5 post URLs, audit 50 pages, generate SEO writing ideas from 1 content template, run 2 topic research queries, and track up to 3 projects. Each project gets 1 keyword, monitoring for 1 location, plus daily reports on your brand’s web presence.
- Social Media Toolkit: SEMrush Pro users get the benefit of using the tool for marketing their brands on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business. They can set up a maximum of 50 social profiles, post on up to 10 accounts, plus leverage SEMrush’s image editor, RSS feeds, Giphy, Bitly shortener, and UTM builder.
- Keyword Research: The Keyword Magic Tool, to begin with, is capable of generating up to 3,000 reports on a daily basis. Each report carries about 10,000 keyword results, which you could further organize using no more than 50 of SEMrush’s Keyword Manager lists.
Then when it comes to PPC campaigns, you could switch over to the PPC Keyword Tool. The research metrics here extend to 500 keywords, with the results displaying even the respective CPC and volume data values.
- Site Audit: The SEMrush Pro pricing plan gives you the power to audit up to 100,000 web pages per month. It’s worth noting, however, that the maximum number of pages the tool can crawl in a single audit is 20,000.
The On-Page SEO Checker further supplements that with recommendations based on what you enter as the target keywords for your pages. And while you’re at it, expect SEMrush to limit the SEO ideas at 500 units per month.
- Competitive Intelligence: Generally, SEMrush Pro users should be able to generate traffic analytics on their competitors at a rate of 3,000 requests per day. This allows them to benchmark their sites using Traffic Overview and Audience Overview metrics, but without any regional filters and historical data.
Such extras are only available through SEMrush’s Competitive Intelligence add-on, which will cost you a whopping $200 for each user per month. It’ll immediately remove all the request and analytics limitations, allowing you to dig into your competitors’ subdomains, destination sites, geographic distribution, bulk analysis, top pages, traffic sources, and user engagement. Plus, you get to filter the metrics by device, region, and historical data.
- Market Research: If you ever need insights about your industry, you might want to pay attention to the Market Explorer data. However, with SEMrush Pro alone, the best you’ll get is an Overview report.
Then if you go ahead and purchase the Competitive Intelligence add-on, SEMrush will top off your market research with Narrow Focus reports, Relevant Sites reports, Market Traffic graphs, and Traffic Source filters based on device, region, and historical data.
- Tracking and Analytics: The SEMrush Pro pricing plan comes with several smart features for tracking your campaigns and analyzing the numbers.
The Position Tracker, for instance, keeps tabs on the SERP performance of up to 5 projects across 500 keywords.
Then when it comes to domain and keyword analytics, you should be able to run up to 3,000 searches (requests) per day, with each instance processing up to 10,000 results.
When all is said and done, SEMrush allows you to create custom PDF reports from the My Reports section of your system. The Pro plan supports 5 scheduled reports, which SEMrush will generate automatically on a regular basis, before sending them to your selected email addresses.
- Other Features: Other capabilities you should expect from SEMrush Pro include a Listing Management tool at $20 a month, traffic analytics API access upon request, mobile rankings tracking (rank tracking), plus one additional user for $70 a month.
SEMrush Guru Pricing Plan
Unlike SEMrush Pro, the SEMrush Guru pricing plan is configured for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as growing marketing agencies. It seeks to accommodate more projects, generate additional reports, and provide all the flexibility that demanding teams might need for their campaigns.
Hence, the most notable extras in this package include extended limits, historical metrics, branded reports, multi-targeting capabilities, plus SEMrush’s content marketing platform.
For that, SEMrush requires you to pay $199.95 per month, which is quite a significant price bump compared to the $99.95 fee on the Pro package.
Nonetheless, SEMrush still applies its standard 16% discount when you proceed with the annual billing system. That means you’ll end up paying $1,999.40 every 12 months, which translates to savings worth $400 per year.
And in terms of monthly pricing, it’s equivalent to $166.62, which sounds like a pretty good deal over the long haul- especially when you consider all the features that come with the plan.
They include:
- Site Audit: The SEMrush Guru pricing plan facilitates audits of up to 300,000 web pages per month. That’s triple what you get from SEMrush Pro.
Interestingly, however, the maximum number of pages the tool can crawl at once remains constant at 20,000.
The On-Page SEO Checker, on the other hand, increases the number of recommendations by 300- consequently pushing the limit for SEO ideas to 800 units per month.
- Keyword Research: The Keyword Magic Tool here is generous enough to create up to 5,000 reports on a daily basis. And that’s not all. SEMrush further increases the volume of results per report to 30,000 keywords, while the Keyword Manager lists are kept at 50.
Things are also promising when it comes to PPC campaigns, as SEMrush Guru gives you the privilege of analyzing up to 1,500 PPC keywords, along with their respective CPC and volume data values.
- Competitive Intelligence: The default request allowance for SEMrush Guru’s competitor research is 5,000 a day. And just like we’ve seen with SEMrush Pro, you’ll only get the basic reports, which come in the form of Traffic Overview and Audience Overview metrics.
Thankfully though, at least you should be able to filter the results using historical data.
Otherwise, the full power of SEMrush Guru’s competitor spying capabilities can only be unleashed when you purchase the Competitive Intelligence add-on for $200 per user per month.
And with that, you can run an unlimited number of requests, as well as spy on your competitors’ subdomains, destination sites, geographic distribution, bulk analysis, top pages, traffic sources, and user engagement.
- Market Explorer: SEMrush Guru’s market research offers pretty much the same range of capabilities as SEMrush Pro’s. You basically get to assess the market via the Market Explorer Overview report.
Then for users who need additional intel, SEMrush happens to stretch further through its Competitive Intelligence add-on. The result is Narrow Focus reports, Relevant Sites reports, Market Traffic graphs, and Traffic Sources filters based on device, region, and historical data.
- Social Media Marketing: The SEMrush Guru social media toolkit is optimized for large scale marketing, giving you the power to launch and track campaigns across several social media sites at once. What’s more, you can freely switch between multiple company accounts.
The precise number of supported social profiles here is 100- across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business. This allows you to keep tabs on tens of your competitors’ social media profiles.
In addition to that, SEMrush accommodates more than 30 of your social media accounts, all of which come with posting privileges.
- Content Marketing: To help you perfect your site’s content, SEMrush Guru gives you a toolkit that can run an unlimited number of topic research queries, track up to 50 post URLs, audit 20,000 pages, come up with SEO writing ideas on 800 keywords, plus monitor up to 15 projects.
Each project supports 3 keywords and 5 locations, with the ability to go as far back as 6 months. And in case you’re wondering, such historical data is usually sourced from Instagram, Twitter, Forums, and the web.
- Tracking and Analytics: The SEMrush Guru pricing plan adjusts the Position Tracker to accommodate up to 1,500 keywords across 15 projects.
Then to sweeten the deal, SEMrush throws in multi-targeting capabilities, allowing you to dive deeper into your projects to track the patterns across several devices and locations.
At the end of the day, you get to view all sorts of domain and keyword analytics (complete with the accompanying historical data), thanks to the generous limit of 30,000 results per request, along with the 5,000 daily requests allowance.
SEMrush Business Pricing Plan
If you thought the price difference between Pro and Guru was huge, this one might shock you. While Guru costs $199.95 per month, SEMrush Business is available at $399.95 a month.
That’s a price difference of $200, meaning you could purchase four Pro subscriptions at the price of one Business package.
The annual billing option, on the other hand, brings the rate down to $3,999.40 per year, which is equivalent to $333.28 per month.
That said, the target market here is large marketing agencies and established enterprises that enjoy an extensive web presence.
SEMrush essentially supplements all the features on the Guru plan with Google Data Studio integration, extended limits and sharing options, API access, and white-label reports.
More specifically, it comes with;
- Site Audit Toolkit: SEMrush Business supports up to 1,000,000 page crawls per month, 100,000 simultaneous instances, along with AMP checks, and On-Page SEO checking for 2,000 keyword ideas per month.
- Keyword Research: The Keyword Magic Tool is capable of generating up to 10,000 daily reports, each with 50,000 keyword results.
The PPC Keyword Tool, on the other hand, stretches its data analysis to cover 6,000 keywords.
- Competitive Intelligence: By default, you should be able to run up to 10,000 competitor requests per day. But, if you want more than just the Traffic and Audience Overview, you have to purchase the Competitive Intelligence add-on for $200 per user per month.
SEMrush will subsequently give you insights into your competitors’ subdomains, destination sites, geographic distribution, bulk analysis, top pages, traffic sources, and user engagement.
Then to top it off, you also get Narrow Focus reports, Relevant Sites reports, Market Traffic graphs, and Traffic Sources filters based on device, region, and historical data.
- Social Media Marketing: With SEMrush Business, you can set up 50 social profiles, as well as track up to 300 social media profiles across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
- Content Marketing: The Content Marketing Toolkit at this level gives you the power to conduct an unlimited number of topic research queries, track up to 50 post URLs, audit 20,000 pages, generate SEO writing ideas on 2,000 keywords, plus set up 25 projects.
- Other Features: Other notable provisions on the SEMrush Business pricing plan include; API access, ranking data imports (rank tracking), up to 10 plagiarism checks per month, unlimited marketing calendars, up to 9 additional users at $140 for each individual per month, white-label PDF reports, and insights into Product Listing Ads.
SEMrush Enterprise Pricing Plan
With Free, Pro, Guru, and Business packages catering to the core market segments, the SEMrush Enterprise plan is reserved for the rather exclusive group of users who happen to exceed the standard parameters. You can think of them as large businesses and agencies with special marketing needs.
Hence, SEMrush doesn’t provide a standard set of features and tools. Instead, you’re required to get in touch with the company’s sales executives, who’ll then set up a custom package based on your specific preferences.
Ultimately, you’ll have yourself a fully personalized system with custom keyword databases, custom limits, and all the add-on features you need.
What’s more, the SEMrush Enterprise pricing plan comes with customer success managers, unlimited page crawling, as well as specialized onboarding, and on-site training.
I use a LOT of tools. Probably more than I need to. There are a few that are truly indispensable. I have a SEMrush tab open EVERY day as I work. Keyword searches, technical audits, competitor analysis? It does it all. Try it out for free.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good SEO score?
The final way to score a site’s SEO is to find out how it is doing in queries. First, in order to gain the best results possible, make sure you sign out of Google.
Here are the scores for Google SERP Position
SEO Strength
1
Excellent
2
Very Good
3-4
Good
5-10
Average
Does SEMrush have a free version?
Yes, with a free account, you can still use a lot of tools, but you will be limited in your ability to pull the full data and use other tools. When you first sign up for SEMrush, you get the option of starting out with a 7-day free trial of either a Pro or Guru subscription.
How much is SEMrush per month?
SEMrush offers three options for monthly subscriptions: Pro for $99.95, Guru for $199.95 and Business starting at $399.95. All three plans are recurring subscriptions.
Overall Verdict – The Best SEMrush Pricing Plan
Now, going by all the features and pricing options we’ve discussed, which of these would you say is the best SEMrush pricing plan?
Well, SEMrush Free might seem like an obvious favorite since you won’t be paying at all. But, when you factor in the corresponding value you stand to get from each of the feature packages, the odds understandably turn against the free option.
And in its place, SEMrush Pro takes the crown for the best overall value for startups and small businesses. It offers just the right balance of features and pricing for a marketer or merchant running a basic website.
Digital marketing agencies, on the other hand, stand to benefit more from Guru and Business. Their generous request limits and multi-project campaigns allow agencies to comfortably manage their clients’ projects.
But, when it comes to large enterprises, the focus shifts to the SEMrush Enterprise package. Organizations with multiple departments and numerous employees would appreciate its extensive flexibility, custom toolkits, and specialized support.
So, in all fairness, SEMrush has a pricing plan for everyone. What you’d consider being the best option depends on the specific user group you fall into.
SEMrush has generously offered our readers a double extended fully featured FREE TRIAL. Play around with the suite for 2 full weeks to see if it's what you need!
Personally, I’ve been using the SEMrush Guru package. What about you? Which set of features would you go for?
Further reading