11 Best Semrush Alternatives: Free & Paid Competitors [2023 Edition]

Are you looking for the best Semrush alternatives in 2023?

Wanna give a last try to Semrush? Then go for its 14 day trial.

Semrush is an exceptional SEO tool used by over 10 million people worldwide, a few more SEO tools are great alternatives to Semrush.

Before talking about its alternatives, let’s first quickly cover the various excellent features offered by Semrush. That way, you can compare Semrush features with other alternatives listed here.

• Semrush offers you a BIG keyword database which gives you access to over 23 billion keywords.
• It helps you easily discover toxic links on your site so you can use the Google Disavow tool to improve your organic rankings.
• Gives access to content marketing toolkit. It covers everything from topic research to writing, optimization, and tracking your content performance.

Top Semrush Alternatives & Competitors for SEOs

By considering factors like features, user reviews, pricing, and ease of use we’ll cover some of the best alternatives to Semrush (including free alternatives). 

For users who are in a hurry, they will quickly make a decision from our top 3 recommendations:

The very first alternative to Semrush we have in our ultimate list of Semrush alternatives is Serpstat.

Serpstat is one of the best and most affordable Semrush competitors that you can use to easily perform competitor analysis, keyword research, position tracking, site audit, and backlink research (full review here).

Why should you go for Serpstat?

Here are some reasons why Serpstat could be your first choice as a Semrush alternative.

Website loading speed issues: If you don’t know what causes your website speed to load slower and are looking for ways to increase your website speed, the Serpstat website speed feature can help you with that. You can easily find out all the details, like image optimization, browser caching, compression errors, etc to speed up your loading times.

Find broken links: If your site has 404 error pages (also known as dead links or broken link pages), it can literally hurt your SEO rankings and even lead to site penalization if they are excessive. Here’s where the Serpstat site audit feature helps you find all the broken links of your site so you can easily fix them or redirect them to some other working pages on your site.

Great for keyword research: With Serpstat, keyword research becomes much easier as it has databases of every country of the world and increased their number of analyzed domains. It has a huge database of over 7.3 billion keywords worldwide.

Apart from the above features, here’s a list of all the features that you get with Serpstat.

Serpstat Pros:

Serpstat Cons:

Serpstat Pricing: Serpstat offers 4 pricing plans:

Lite: This is the basic plan that costs you $55 per month where you can perform 4,000 queries per day and you can track up 15,000 keywords with this plan.

Standard: This plan costs you $119 per month where you can perform 5,000 queries per day and you can track up to 60,000 keywords with this plan. You can perform in-depth SEO analysis with these plan’s features and limits.

Advanced: This plan costs you $239 per month where you can perform 8,000 queries per day and you can track up 150,000 keywords along with chat support with this plan.

Enterprise: This plan costs you $399 per month where you can perform 12,000 queries per day and you can track up 300,000 keywords along with phone support and chat support with this plan.

SE Ranking is one of the affordable alternatives to Semrush. It offers a wide range of SEO tools including keyword research, website audits, backlink checking, competitor analysis, and more.

Why should you use SE Ranking?

Here are a few major reasons to use SE Ranking over other SEO tools.

Feature packed: SE Ranking is a fully feature-packed SEO toolkit that offers a lot of tools under one roof including;

100% accurate keyword tracking: One major reason most people use SE Ranking is its ability to accurately track keyword rankings. You can track keyword rankings in any location and device across major search engines with 100% accuracy.

Want to find out more about SE Ranking? Read our in-depth SE Ranking review to know more about this amazing tool.

SE Ranking Features:

SE Ranking Pros:

SE Ranking Cons:

SE Ranking Pricing: SE Ranking offers the following three pricing packages. 

1. Essential: This plan costs you $31.20 per month where you get the following features. 

• Create up to 10 websites
• Website audit for 40,000 pages
• Monitor 6000 backlinks
• Track up to 250 keywords 
• On-Page Checker for 10 pages

2. Pro: This plan costs you $71.20 per month where you get the following features. 

• Create an unlimited number of websites
• Website audit for 250,000 pages
• Monitor 30,000 backlinks
• On-Page Checker for 30 pages
• You can monitor up to 100 pages for changes 
• Access to white label reports 

3. Business: This plan costs you $151.20 per month where you get the following features. 

• Create an unlimited number of websites
• Website audit for 700,000 pages
• Monitor 90,000 backlinks
• On-Page Checker for 100 pages
• You can monitor up to 250 pages for changes 
• Access to white label reports and API

Next, we have SpyFu as an alternative to Semrush.

If you’re looking for tools like Semrush, SpyFu is a great choice as it is considered one of the most powerful SEO tools for keyword research & competitor analysis. You can do everything from keyword research to PPC analysis to influencer marketing using the SpyFu SEO tool, making it one of the best affordable alternatives to Semrush.

Why should you consider using this SEO tool?

Here are the two major features that make SpyFu one of the best alternatives to the Semrush tool.

1. Perform expert-level keyword research with SpyFu

With SpyFu, you can easily perform expert-level research for finding profitable keyword ideas that can increase your search engine traffic and website sales.

Discovering the new keywords that are profitable is the key to generating more sales for any website. With SpyFu keyword tools, you can easily find long-tail keywords by keyword volume and keyword difficulty.

2. Ultimate tool for competitor keyword analysis

SpyFu has a special feature called Kombat which you can use to find all the profitable keywords and ad keywords used by your competitors. If you’re still struggling to increase your traffic and sales and if you want to uncover all the hidden keywords used by your competitors on their sites to boost their sales and traffic, Kombat is a great addition for you.

With it, you can find all the hidden keywords that are;

• Used by your competitors
• Keywords that are bought by your competitors
• Your competitors’ PPC ads etc

Pros of SpyFu:

Cons of SpyFu:

SpyFu Pricing:

SpyFu offers 3 pricing plans which are listed below.

1. Basic
2. Professional
3. Team

Let’s briefly talk about SpyFu pricing plans now so you can choose which plan works best for you.

Basic: The basic plan costs you $33 per month (billed annually) and you can do unlimited keyword searches, data exports along with 250 sales leads & domain contacts, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings, and 10k top lists results.

Professional: This is perfect for medium-sized websites and professional bloggers that cost you $58 per month (billed annually) Apart from those features, you’ll also get 500 sales leads & domain contacts, 15k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 50k top lists results along with 10k API rows returned.

Team: This can also work like a Keyword Spy alternative that costs you $199 per month (billed annually) where you’ll get all the features from the Professional plan which is stated above. Apart from that, you’ll also get access to 2000 sales leads & domain contacts, 40k weekly tracked keyword rankings, 75k top lists results, and 10k API rows returned with this plan.

If you’re not happy with their features or pricing, you can cancel anytime via Email, LiveChat, or Phone and SpyFu also offers 30 days money-back guarantee (no questions asked).

Ahrefs is undoubtedly the #1 Semrush competitor. Ahrefs quickly gaining popularity among leading SEO tools and it is considered as one of the most popular Semrush alternatives because it offers similar features at similar pricing plans.

You can perform everything from backlink checking to keyword analysis to competitor research with accurate data (read our complete Semrush vs Ahrefs article).

What makes Ahrefs a great Semrush competitor?

Here are a couple of benefits of using the Ahrefs tool.

The most accurate keyword research tool

Their keyword explorer tool gives you all the metrics like:

• Keyword difficulty
• Monthly average search volume
• Clicks
• Global search volume
• Keyword ideas etc

Get in-depth and highly useful information of any site with their Site Explorer feature

If you want to find out the backlink profile or organic search engine traffic of any website in the world, you can use Ahrefs site explorer tool to do that. It gives you the most accurate information (I know it because I use several SEO tools for keyword tracking, analyzing backlinks, estimating search traffic of a site, etc) possible.

Paid search metrics (PPC keywords, ads, etc): You can easily find all the paid keywords that your targeted website is using on Google AdWords to get more visitors, leads, and sales to their sites. You can also find all the ads showing up on Google search for any of your targeted websites or domain.

Ahrefs Pros:

Ahrefs Cons:

Ahrefs Pricing:

Ahrefs offers 4 pricing options which are mentioned below.

1. Lite
2. Standard
3. Advanced
4. Agency

Let’s talk about them now.

Lite: This basic plan costs you $79 per month where you can create 5 campaigns, add 1 registered user and track 300 keywords.

Standard: This plan costs you $179 per month, perfect for bloggers who want to grow their search engine visibility where you can create 10 campaigns, add 1 registered user, and track 1,000 keywords.

Advanced: This plan costs you $399 per month where you can create 25 campaigns, add 3 registered users and track 4,000 keywords.

Agency: This is their most advanced plan which costs you $999 per month where you can create 100 campaigns, add 5 registered users and track 10,000 keywords.

Read: Best Ahrefs Alternatives to Use in 2023

Are you looking for sites like Semrush? If yes, SEO PowerSuite is for you which is a powerful set of all-in-one SEO tools package which gives you access to keyword research, backlink analysis, site audits, rank tracker, etc at affordable prices.

Why use SEO PowerSuite?

4 Tools in ONE package

SEO PowerSuite is an SEO tool package that gives you access to 4 amazing tools at one price, including the following.

• Rank Tracker: You can get accurate results about where your keywords are ranking on Google search. It includes all the details like ranking data, keyword research, ranking reports, scheduled tasks etc.
• SEO SpyGlass: You can use this tool for backlink audits and competitor analysis. You can figure out all the backlinks of a site, perform anti-penalty audit and get backlink reports etc.
• Website Auditor: You can use this tool as a Semrush competitor for site auditing and complete on site SEO analysis. If you want to get higher rankings and optimize your keywords without getting penalised on Google, this tool can be so handy for you where you can perform website health check, page content optimization and crawling and indexing with reports.
• Link Assistant: If you want to control and manage all your backlinks at one place, this tool is useful for you. If you want bad links or broken links, you can use this tool to find and analyse all of them.

SEO PowerSuite Pros:

SEO PowerSuite Cons:

SEO PowerSuite Pricing:

Apart from the free version, SEO PowerSuite offers 2 pricing plans where you can get lifetime access to their SEO tools.

1. Professional (which costs $299)
2. Enterprise (which costs $699 where you can also export your data)

Moz Pro is the industry-leading SEO package that gives you access to a ton of amazing SEO tools. Moz Pro helps you perform great keyword research to link analysis to page optimization with ease.

What makes Moz Pro a better alternative to Semrush in 2023?

Here are a few of the features that Moz Pro:

Useful page optimization suggestions

One of the most useful things about Moz Pro is its page optimization score. Just enter a keyword that you want to track and analyze the results along with the URL for the original blog post (your own page URL or your competitors) and when you hit the analyze button, the tool will generate a page score of up to 100.

Best in the industry site audits

Moz Pro which also works like a  SpyFu alternative offers an incredible feature called Site Crawl Test which helps you easily audit any of your websites to find and fix all the SEO-related issues to boost your search rankings and traffic.

This feature deals with all the website-related SEO issues such as duplicate content and titles, server redirects, errors in the title tag or URL, meta descriptions, pages blocked with Robots.txt, rel=canonical, etc. So it doesn’t matter which technical website SEO related mistakes your site has, you can easily find and fix them.

Moz Pro Pros:

Moz Pro Cons:

Moz Pro Pricing:

Moz Pro offers 4 pricing options which are listed below.

1. Standard
2. Medium
3. Large
4. Premium

Let’s briefly discuss them now.

Standard: If you’re just starting out and want to try their SEO tools and features, this plan is best for you which costs you $99 per month with limited features.

Medium: With this plan, you’ll get full access to their keyword research tools without any limits which cost you $149 per month.

Large: If you’re running a small business and want to grow your presence on search engines like Google, this plan costs you $249 per month.

Premium: This gives you premium features like a massive crawl budget, and unlimited user seats per account and costs you $599 per month.

Moz Pro has a 30-day money-back guarantee and it also offers a free account for every registered user to Moz tools that give you limited access to MozBar, Keyword Explorer, and Open Site Explorer for backlink research.

BuzzSumo is one of the top SEO and social media tools used by millions of users worldwide to find popular content, find backlink opportunities, influencer outreach, brand monitoring, etc.

Why should you use BuzzSumo over other tools?

The ability to find proven content

Hands down, creating great content that’s proven to work is the fastest way to generate more traffic and sales to any website. Here’s where you need to find proven content that goes viral but how can you figure out which content performs well?

Well, with BuzzSumo the answer is easy. You can find popular content in any industry by sorting out the backlinks, social media shares, etc.

You can sort out the popular content by:

• Facebook shares
• Backlinks count
• LinkedIn shares
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares

Great tool for influencer marketing

With BuzzSumo, you can easily find and analyze influencers in any industry. Just enter a topic or keyword to find all the influencers in your niche to start networking with them. BuzzSumo has great filters to easily filter out all the influencers and sharers by reach, authority, influence, and engagement.

Apart from the above features, BuzzSumo can also be used for competitor research to find out where your content or website stands among your competitors. You can easily find out the most important things like;

• Who is sharing the content
• What content is getting more shares, links or traction
• Which social media sites are generating more shares to your competitors etc.

BuzzSumo Pros:

BuzzSumo Cons:

BuzzSumo Pricing:

Currently, BuzzSumo has 4 pricing plans.

1. Pro
2. Plus
3. Large
4. Enterprise

Pro: This is the basic plan that costs you $79 per month where you can run unlimited content searches and get alerts for up to 5000 mentions.

Plus: a plan that costs you $139 per month where you can run unlimited content searches and get alerts for up to 10,000 mentions.

Large: a plan that costs you $239 per month where you can run unlimited content searches and get alerts for up to 20,000 mentions.

Enterprise: a plan that costs you $499 per month where you can run unlimited content searches and get alerts for up to 50+ alerts and unlimited mentions.

This is a great tool that you can use to perform SEO-related tasks, social media tasks, and PPC with ease.

Is Raven a great SEO tool?

Monitor backlinks with ease

Raven tools link manage helps you easily monitor all of your backlinks at one place so you can eliminate all the bad links that are causing your site damage in search results.

Even it notifies you whenever you get a new incoming link to your site or you’ll get notified whenever someone removes a link to your site – this will be handy in managing all your backlinks profile effortlessly.

Research competitors to outrank them on Google search

The great thing about using Raven tools is that it uses the solid data from incredible SEO tools like Majestic, Moz, Google AdWords, and OpenCalais to give you great information about keywords, backlink,s and competitor analysis (so you don’t have to pay for those premium tools by getting access to Raven tools).

Raven tools Pros:

Raven tools Cons:

Raven tools Pricing:

‘Raven Tools’ has 4 pricing options that include;

1. Start
2. Grow
3. Thrive
4. Lead

Let’s quickly discuss Raven tools pricing plans so you can find the best package that suits your budget and website needs. Raven tools also works like Semrush.

Start: is the basic plan that costs you $99 per month (billed annually) and you can add up to 4 users and it supports monthly crawls up to 400k.

Grow: costs you $169 per month (billed annually) and you can add up to 8 users and it supports monthly crawls of up to 2 million.

Thrive: costs you $249 per month (billed annually) and you can add up to 20 users and it supports monthly crawls of up to 5 million.

Lead: costs you $399 per month (billed annually) and you can add unlimited users and it supports monthly crawls up to 7 million.

Top 3 FREE Semrush Competitors for 2023

Let’s now talk about some FREE Semrush alternatives and competitors you can use in 2023. Although these free alternatives are NOT all-in-one SEO toolkits like Semrush or Ahrefs, they are helpful for keyword research, link analysis, site audits, etc.

Ubersuggest is one of the best freemium keyword research tools out there. If you’re just getting started and looking for freemium tools to find better keywords, Ubersuggest is the perfect alternative to Semrush for you.

To start, enter a domain or keyword on Ubersuggest.

You can also pick a specific country if you’re looking to target a specific target audience. Click on the Search button to continue. Here’s what it looks like;

Let’s take “fitness apps” as our example and here’s what we get.

As you can see above, you’ll see keyword data including;

• Search volume
• SEO difficulty (to rank for that particular keyword)
• Paid difficulty (estimated competition in paid search)
• Cost per click (CPC value of the keyword)

You’ll also notice above that, the average web pages that are already ranking in the top 10 results have an “x” amount of backlinks (which can help you easily identify how easy or hard it is to rank for a particular keyword).

When you scroll down, you’ll see a list of all the keyword ideas for your target keyword phrase.

As you can see, you’ll find different keyword metrics including;

• Keyword trend
• Monthly search volume
• CPC

When you further scroll down, you’ll also get content ideas for your target keywords which includes information of;

• Page title URL (competition for your keyword)
• Estimated visits
• Backlinks (approximate)
• Facebook and Pinterest shares

Did you know that you can now use Ubersuggest for performing site audits?

Yes, here’s how.

Just click on the “Site Audit” icon from the left (see the above image) and enter your domain to continue. Once you hit the search button, it instantly shows you;

• On-page score of your site
• Organic monthly traffic
• Organic keywords (you’re already ranking for)
• Backlinks

So yes, Ubersuggest is one of the best SEO tools like Semrush as it offers you a ton of useful features to find better keywords, perform site audits, analyze backlinks, and so on. Although the data is NOT as accurate as paid tools, it’s worth trying!

Ubersuggest Pros:

Ubersuggest Cons:

If you’re looking to find long-tail keywords, KeywordTool.io is a great free tool for you that generates up to 750 long-tail keywords for every search term.

To get started, visit their site and type any keyword of your choice and hit Enter.

You’ll instantly get a ton of keyword suggestions. For our example keyword, it’s giving us over 500 keyword ideas. Have a look.

As you can see above, their free version provides only long-tail keyword suggestions (with their pro version, you can access additional keyword data including search volume, trend, CPC value, competition, and even more keyword ideas).

Another great reason to use KeywordTool.io for keyword research is it also helps you with “Related questions”.

As you can see above, you’ll find a ton of related questions to use within your posts or FAQ section to get more traffic from Google (to rank for featured snippets, using such questions within your content helps!).

Pros of KeywordTool.io:

Cons of KeywordTool.io:

Keyword Planner is the grandpa (read “oldest”) of all the keyword research tools and it is widely used for Google Ad keyword research. It is 100% free.

Although Keyword Planner does not provide accurate keyword metrics such as average monthly searches but helps you identify a ton of RELEVANT keyword ideas for your ad campaigns, blog posts, etc.

Once you’re on Keyword Planner, enter any keyword of your choice and hit “Get Results”

It instantly shows you a ton of keyword ideas around your target keyword.

As you can see above, you can find useful keyword data including;

• Related keywords (sorted by relevance)
• Average monthly searches
• Competition
• Bid value for the keyword and so on

Pros of Keyword Planner

Cons of Keyword Planner

Read: Best Google Keyword Planner Alternatives for 2023

Here’s a quick comparison of Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, giving you an ultimate understanding of their features and pricing.

Browse more SEO Tools:

• Semrush Free Trial: Try Pro or Guru Account Free for 14 Days Worth Over $300
• SEMrush vs LongTailPro: Comparison of best keyword research tools
• Moz vs Semrush: which is better SEO tool?
• Top Moz Alternatives You can try in 2023
• Spyfu vs Semrush: which is better for competitor research?
• Best Ubersuggest Alternatives to Use in 2023
• Best Screaming Frog Alternatives 2023

Frequently Asked Questions | Free Semrush Alternatives 2023

Final Thoughts on Semrush alternatives free

Semrush is definitely NOT for everyone. That’s why we’ve provided you with a list of Semrush alternative tools you can try.

Although we love Semrush and highly recommend it to everyone who wants to increase their search traffic and sales, we know a few more SEO tools are worth trying.

Did you find the above-mentioned Semrush alternatives helpful? Or did we miss anything from the list? Share your thoughts in the comments below.