Semrush: setup, reports, AI visibility and pricing

This is the Semrush guide in our "SEO tools explained" path. It's written for freelancers, agency staff and in-house marketers who already know the SEO basics and want to use Semrush properly, or decide not to buy it. If terms like keyword difficulty or referring domains are new, read Intermediate SEO first.

By the end you'll be able to set up a project on the India database and find the searches and links your competitors have and you don't. You'll turn a keyword list into a page plan, audit and track your own site, and judge what Semrush's AI visibility numbers mean. Five step-by-step tasks use Indian examples: a Delhi dental clinic, a Pune coaching centre, a Kanpur sweet shop and a D2C brand.

There are eight chapters, about 45 minutes in all. Chapters 1 and 2 cover what Semrush is and how to set it up. Chapters 3 to 7 go through the reports, and chapter 8 covers prices, pros and cons and the alternatives, starting with our own free tools. Every price was checked on Semrush's own pricing page on 16 October 2026, and every menu name and limit comes from its help centre. We have no affiliate deal with Semrush or any tool in this guide.

Most of what Semrush shows you is about other people's websites. That's the point of it. Search Console tells you what Google saw on your own site; Semrush tells you what it thinks is happening on your competitor's site, and on any site you type in.

That difference decides whether you need it. If your question is "why did my clicks drop?", Search Console answers it for free. If your question is "which searches bring traffic to the coaching centre down the road, and which sites link to them?", you need a tool with its own data. Semrush is one of the two best-known (the other is Ahrefs).

What's inside

Semrush sells its features as toolkits. The paid plans combine the SEO Toolkit with the AI Visibility Toolkit; Local, Content, Traffic & Market, Social, Advertising and AI PR are separate toolkits you add on.^[1] This guide covers the SEO and AI visibility parts, because that's what most SEO work in India uses.

Here's how the main tools map to this guide, loosely following the workflows in Semrush's help centre:^[2]

One naming change to know before you read older tutorials: the report once called Organic Research is now called Organic Rankings.^[3] Same report, new label.

Where the numbers come from

This matters more than any feature list. Semrush says it gets Google results pages for "hundreds of millions of the most popular keywords" through third-party data providers, and records the sites in the top 100 positions.^[4] Traffic for a domain is then estimated from those rankings and search volumes. Its backlink crawler covers about 10 billion pages a day.

So every traffic figure for a competitor is an estimate built from estimates. Treat it as a direction, not a count. Google is blunt about this: "Third-party tools don't have access to our internal ranking data."^[5] It also warns that some users misread third-party data as "somehow being from Google". Authority Score, KD% and traffic in Semrush are Semrush's own numbers, not Google's.

Semrush is now part of Adobe

Adobe announced on 19 November 2025 that it would buy Semrush for $12 a share in cash, about $1.9 billion in total.^[6] The deal closed on 28 April 2026, and Semrush now sits inside Adobe's customer experience business.^[7]

For a customer, little changed on day one. Semrush's customer FAQ said there would be "no immediate changes to your current services, agreements, or points of contact".^[8] The prices in chapter 8 are what the site showed on 16 October 2026, after the sale. Whether plans or prices change as the two companies merge their products, nobody outside Adobe knows yet.

Who it's for

• Agencies and freelancers who research several clients' competitors every week and need reports to send them.
• In-house SEO teams on sites with hundreds of pages, where Keyword Gap and Site Audit save days.
• Businesses that also run Google Ads, because Domain Overview gives a snapshot of competitors' paid keywords and ad copies (full ad research is the separate Advertising Toolkit).
• Teams asked about AI search, since the Starter plan and above include prompt tracking (chapter 7).

When you don't need it

We'd tell a Kanpur sweet shop, a single-clinic Delhi dentist or a Pune coaching centre with a 20-page site not to buy Semrush yet. Here's why. Your first problems are almost always on your own site: pages not indexed, slow mobile pages, weak titles, an unclaimed Business Profile. Free tools find all of those. Search Console shows the searches you already appear for. Keyword Planner gives volume ranges. Our Free Website Audit checks the technical basics.

Pay when you've fixed the basics and your next question is about competitors, or when a client's fee covers it. Guide 4, chapter 5 gives freelancers the same advice. And the free Semrush account (chapter 2) is enough for a quick look at a few competitors each day.

If you've decided Semrush is worth a try, chapter 2 sets up the account and your first project, starting with the setting most Indian users get wrong: the database.

Setting up Semrush takes ten minutes. Setting it up so the numbers mean something for an Indian business takes one extra click that many people miss. This chapter covers both.

Free account, trial or paid plan

You have three ways in.

The trial rules are worth reading twice. Semrush says exports are disabled during the trial period "even if exports are normally included in the paid version of the plan".^[1] After seven days the trial turns into the plan you chose unless you cancel. And the 7-day money-back guarantee only covers a first subscription with a commitment of 12 months or longer, bought on Semrush.com by credit card.^[10] A monthly plan isn't covered.

Semrush accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express, and doesn't accept virtual cards.^[11] If your Indian card blocks international payments, enable them in your bank's app before you start the trial.

Create your first project

A project is a workspace for one website. Click + Create Project on the Home page, give it a name and, optionally, add a domain.^[12] You can rename a project later. But once you've added a domain and set up a tool with it, the domain can't be changed; you'd create a new project instead.

Projects themselves are unlimited. What's limited is "website monitoring". A slot is used as soon as you set up Site Audit, Position Tracking, Backlink Audit, On Page SEO Checker or Organic Traffic Insights for the project's site.^[12] One project uses one slot however many of those tools you switch on. The free account gets one.

When you create your first project, Semrush sets up Site Audit^[13] and Position Tracking for it automatically.^[14] For later projects you configure each tool yourself.

The database: India or US

Every research report (Domain Overview, Organic Rankings, Keyword Overview, Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Gap) shows data for one country database at a time. Search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC and a domain's estimated traffic are all for that country. India has its own database, with the code IN.^[15]

Here's why it matters. Look up "coaching centre" in the US database and you'll get American volumes and American competitors, which tell a Pune institute nothing. Look up a D2C skincare brand's domain in the US database and its traffic will look tiny, because its customers search from India.

Our rule:

• Indian business selling in India: India database, always.
• Indian business selling abroad (an export manufacturer, an IT services firm): the database of each target country, one at a time.
• Comparing countries: Keyword Overview shows "Global Volume", the total across all of Semrush's country databases.^[16]

The database selector sits beside the search bar in each report. Check it every time you open a new report, especially after following a link from a blog post or a shared report.

Mobile or desktop

Semrush keeps separate mobile databases as well as desktop ones, and India is one of them;^[15] in Domain Overview and Organic Rankings a mobile database shows only the top 20 results.^[17] Most Indian searches happen on phones, so when a report offers a device switch, choose mobile for consumer businesses. For B2B sites, look at both.

Day-one settings

1. Profile: set your billing country to India before any purchase. Changing it later needs support and proof of residency.^[11]
2. Database: India in every research report you open.
3. Site Audit: check the crawl scope and the page limit (chapter 6). The free account audits 100 pages a month.^[18]
4. Position Tracking: set the location to your city, not just "India" (chapter 6). Location and device can't be changed once a campaign starts.^[14]
5. Notifications: keep the weekly Position Tracking email on; it's the cheapest habit in SEO.

Ten reports a day go quickly. Plan your free-account sessions: one Domain Overview per competitor, one Organic Rankings, one Keyword Magic search. Chapter 3 shows what to read in each of those competitor reports.

Competitor research is the main reason people pay for Semrush. You can't see a rival's Search Console, but you can see an estimate of what they rank for, which pages earn it and who links to them. Four reports do most of the work.

Domain Overview: the one-page snapshot

Type any domain, subdomain, folder or URL. Domain Overview shows estimated organic traffic, paid traffic, backlinks and, since the AI features arrived, an AI Visibility Score with mentions and cited pages.^[19] Every number is a link into the detailed report behind it.

Free users get 10 Domain Overview requests a day. Historical data and the Growth and Compare by Countries reports need the higher tiers.^[19]

Organic Rankings: what brings a competitor traffic

Organic Rankings (called Organic Research until recently) lists a domain's keyword rankings, its position changes, its organic competitors and the SERP features it appears in.^[3] The four views you'll use most (the last one is also a tool of its own, Top Pages):

• Positions: every keyword the domain ranks for, with position, volume, KD%, intent and the URL that ranks. It's sorted by traffic already, which shows what actually matters to them.^[21]
• Position Changes: new, lost, improved and declined keywords. Useful after a Google update, or when a competitor suddenly overtakes you.
• Competitors: domains that rank for the same keywords. These are your real search competitors, which may not be the businesses you think of as rivals.
• Pages: which URLs bring the most estimated traffic.^[22]

The Competitors report usually surprises small businesses. A Kanpur sweet shop thinks its competitor is the shop across the road. In search, it's often a food delivery app, a recipe site and a gifting marketplace. You can't beat a delivery app on "sweets near me", but you can beat a recipe site on "kaju katli price per kg in Kanpur" if you sell it.

Keyword Gap: what they rank for and you don't

Keyword Gap compares the keyword profiles of up to five domains side by side.^[23] You put your domain first (Semrush labels it "You"), add up to four competitors, choose organic, paid or PLA keywords, choose the database, and click Compare.

The table at the bottom splits keywords into groups. These are the ones to learn:

Missing

Every competitor ranks; you don't. Usually your clearest content gaps.

Weak

You rank, but lower than all your competitors. Pages to improve.

Untapped

At least one competitor ranks; you don't. A longer list of ideas.

Strong

You rank above all of them. Protect these pages.

Unique

Only you rank. Often your brand and niche terms.

Shared

Every domain ranks. The core of your market.

Two filters make the lists usable. The Position filter finds keywords where you sit on page two (positions 11 to 20), which Semrush itself suggests as a starting list.^[23] The intent filter splits informational from commercial and transactional searches, so a coaching centre can separate "what is JEE Main cut off" (a blog post) from "JEE coaching in Pune fees" (a service page).

Comparing specific folders or URLs, rather than whole domains, and looking at historical data need the higher tiers. On the free account, competitor research counts against the same 10 queries a day.^[24]

Backlink Gap: who links to them and not to you

Backlink Gap works the same way for links. Enter up to five domains and it lists the referring domains linking to each.^[25] Select your domain in the drop-down above the table and filter by Best to see sites that link to all your competitors but not to you.

The Matches column counts how many of the compared domains each referring site links to. A site that links to all four competitors probably links to businesses like yours as a habit: a local directory, an industry association, a news site that writes round-ups. Those are your first outreach targets. Each one still needs a human check, because a site linking to everyone isn't always a site worth a link from.

Keyword Gap gives you a list of searches. It doesn't tell you which ones you can realistically win. That's what KD% and the Keyword Magic Tool are for, in chapter 4. If you're doing this without any paid tool, Guide 2, chapter 1 shows the by-hand method with competitors' sitemaps.

Semrush has three keyword tools that work as a funnel. Keyword Overview looks at one phrase closely. The Keyword Magic Tool finds the long list. Keyword Strategy Builder turns the list into a plan of pages. Here's what each number means and what to do about it.

Keyword Overview: is this one keyword worth it?

Enter a word or phrase and Keyword Overview shows its search volume, intent, number of results, CPC, competition level and a 12-month trend.^[16]

Semrush groups KD% into six bands:^[26]

KD% is Semrush's own model, so a 30 in Semrush and a 30 in Ahrefs aren't the same thing. Guide 2, chapter 1 explains why you compare difficulty only inside one tool. On paid plans, Keyword Overview also shows Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD), which tailors the score to your domain.^[16] For a young site, PKD is the more honest number. The free plan doesn't include PKD.^[27]

Two more features of Keyword Overview are worth knowing. The Bulk Analysis tab checks up to 100 keywords at once.^[16] Local metrics let you choose a city or region instead of the whole country, one keyword at a time, where Semrush has local data for it. Each new location uses one of your "keyword metrics updates".

Keyword Magic Tool: the long list

Enter a seed such as "eggless cake" and the Keyword Magic Tool returns related searches, split into topic subgroups down the left side, with total volume and average difficulty for the whole table.^[27] The filters worth setting every time:

• Questions: only searches that ask something. Ready-made blog and FAQ topics.
• KD%: set a maximum. For a new site, start at "Easy" and below.
• Intent: keep commercial and transactional for service and product pages.
• Include keywords: add your city or area ("Kanpur", "Swaroop Nagar") to find local versions.
• Volume: set a minimum to hide noise, but don't set it high. In India, many profitable local searches show small volumes.

Free users see 10 results per report in the interface and can't export.^[27] Paid users get thousands of rows and exports. That's the difference between a peek and a working list.

Keyword Strategy Builder: from list to pages

Keyword Strategy Builder takes up to 5 seed keywords and builds a content plan. It analyses up to 10,000 keywords and groups them into topics, pillar pages and subpages.^[28] It ranks pages by relevance to your seeds, search volume, keyword difficulty, domain diversity and SERP features. It's only on paid plans; free accounts get 0 structuring actions a month.

Four preset filters help you choose. Best for Strategy balances volume, difficulty and relevance. Quick Conversions keeps transactional and commercial keywords. More Potential Traffic shows the highest volumes. All Pages removes the filter.^[28] From any page you can send its keywords to Position Tracking, export them, or generate an SEO brief.

One caution: a tool's cluster is a suggestion, not a site structure. Check two or three clusters by hand with the test in Guide 2, chapter 2: do the same pages rank for both keywords? If Google shows different results for two keywords, they probably need two pages, whatever the tool groups.

Semrush's volumes are its own estimates. If you also run Google Ads, compare a few with Keyword Planner's ranges; the Keyword Planner guide explains why Google shows ranges to small accounts. Once you know which keywords you want, chapter 5 looks at the links you'll need to compete for them.

Links still matter, and Semrush is a decent place to study them. Just keep two things apart: finding links worth earning, which is most of the value, and cleaning up "toxic" links, which most sites don't need to do at all.

The Backlinks tool

Semrush's help pages call it Backlinks; older tutorials call it Backlink Analytics. Enter a domain or URL and you get its backlink profile, with these reports:^[29]

• Overview: the profile at a glance, with totals and trends.
• Backlinks: each linking page, its anchor text and the page it links to.
• Anchors: the words used in links. A profile full of exact-match commercial anchors ("best digital marketing company Delhi") is a warning sign.
• Referring IPs, Indexed Pages, Outbound Domains and a Network Graph.
• Competitors: domains with similar backlink profiles.
• Bulk Backlink Analysis: compare the backlinks of up to 200 URLs at once.^[25]

Semrush says new links reach its database within an hour of being published, and the interface refreshes every 15 minutes.^[29] That's Semrush's claim about its own crawler. For your own site, Search Console's Links report is Google's view and is free; use both.

Free users get 10 requests a day with 10 results each, and only a basic Network Graph.^[29]

Authority Score, read properly

Authority Score is Semrush's "compound metric that grades the overall quality of a website or a webpage", on a scale of 1 to 100.^[20] It combines link power (the number and quality of referring domains), estimated organic traffic and six spam signals, such as a mismatch between links and traffic.

Semrush itself says the score is "best used for domain comparison, and not for determining good/bad on an absolute scale". It isn't a Google metric, and Semrush's own ranking factors study found only a weak link between Authority Score and position (Guide 2, chapter 9 has the numbers). Use it for one job: sorting a list of outreach targets so the stronger sites get contacted first.

Backlink Audit and the disavow question

Backlink Audit analyses your own link profile, marks suspicious links with "toxic markers", lets you email site owners to remove links, and builds a disavow file for Google.^[30] It can pull links from Search Console, Google Analytics and Majestic as well as Semrush. Without a paid SEO Toolkit you can re-run the audit once a week; paid plans re-run it as often as you like.

Here we disagree with how the tool is often used. Google's disavow help page says "most sites will not need to use this tool".^[31] Google suggests disavowing only when you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links and those links have caused, or likely will cause, a manual action.

A tool's toxicity score is a guess about what Google might think. Disavowing from it tends to throw away good links along with bad ones. Our rule, the same as in Guide 3, chapter 10: no manual action and no history of buying links means no disavow file. Use Backlink Audit's Lost & Found report (paid plans) to notice when good links disappear, which is a far more common problem.

The free way to watch your own links is Search Console's Links report. When a partner agrees to link, our Hyperlink Generator turns your URLs into HTML link code with your anchor text. Send them the exact snippet. Next, chapter 6 turns to your own site: Site Audit, Position Tracking and the on-page tools.

Chapters 3 to 5 were about other sites. These tools work on yours, and they use your website monitoring slots (chapter 2).

Site Audit

Site Audit is a crawler with over 140 on-page and technical checks: duplicate content, broken links, HTTPS, hreflang, crawlability, indexability and more.^[18] An AI Search category checks, among other things, whether you block AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot.^[32] It can audit the desktop or mobile version of a site and re-crawl daily or weekly.

The settings that matter, from Semrush's configuration guide:^[13]

• Scope: the whole domain, one subdomain or one folder. To audit only a blog, enter the blog's folder and clear "Crawl all subdomains".
• Limit per audit: how many pages each crawl takes.
• Pages to crawl: Website (follows links from the homepage), Robots.txt sitemap, Sitemap by URL, or Import URLs from file. Use a sitemap when you care about your important pages rather than the ones closest to the homepage.
• User agent: SiteAuditBot (Mobile) is the default; SiteAuditBot (Desktop) and OpenAI-Search are the alternatives. There's no Googlebot option.
• Crawl delay: switch to "1 URL per 2 seconds" if a shared hosting server struggles during the crawl.
• JS rendering: for JavaScript-heavy sites. Only on the higher tiers.
• Restrictions to bypass: for staging sites behind a password.

Semrush's help pages still use the older tier names Pro, Guru and Business; the same page says Semrush One Starter, Pro+ and Advanced inherit those tiers' limits.^[18] Unused pages don't roll over; limits reset on the 1st of each month. The $139 SEO plan shows the same 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords as Starter on the pricing page.^[9]

How to read the results: ignore the Site Health percentage at first and sort issues by Errors. Then ask of each one, "does this affect pages that earn money or traffic?" A missing alt text on an old event photo can wait. A noindex on the services page can't. Confirm anything serious in Search Console, which shows what Google actually did.

For a quick check without an account, our Free Website Audit runs 50+ checks across 25 pages, including speed and AI visibility, and, after a free sign-in, gives a points-ranked action plan with a PDF. Guide 3, chapter 11 covers a full audit step by step.

Position Tracking

Position Tracking checks where your site ranks for a fixed list of keywords, every day. It tracks Google, Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode, by device, and by location down to postal code.^[33] It spots SERP features too, including AI Overviews and featured snippets.

Set-up decisions, in order:^[14]

1. What to track: root domain, subdomain, folder or URL. Start with the root domain.
2. Search engine and device: Google and mobile for most Indian consumer businesses.
3. Location: country, state or region, city, or postal code. A Delhi dentist should track New Delhi, or their area's PIN code if Semrush offers it, not India, because local results change across the city.
4. Business name: enter it exactly as it appears on Google, so Semrush can find you in the local pack.
5. Keywords: paste them, upload a file, or import from Keyword Strategy Builder, Google Analytics or Search Console. Tag them by service or page.

Two limits catch people out. Location and device can't be changed after the campaign starts. And tracking several locations or devices in one campaign (Multitargeting) needs Pro+ or above.^[33]

Data is daily for the first 60 days of a campaign, then weekly (Wednesdays by default) for 140 weeks.^[33] Rankings in ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode need an AI Visibility Toolkit or a Semrush One plan, which means Starter and up (chapter 7).^[34]

Why pay for rank tracking when Search Console shows average position? Because Search Console averages across every location and device, and only shows searches where you appeared. Position Tracking checks one place, one device, one keyword, every day, and shows competitors beside you. Guide 2, chapter 11 compares rank trackers and their prices.

On Page SEO Checker

On Page SEO Checker gives a list of changes for each page and target keyword, based on the top 10 results for that keyword.^[35] Ideas come in groups: content, semantics, strategy, backlinks, user experience, SERP features and technical SEO. It can import pages and keywords from Search Console, Google Analytics, Organic Rankings or Position Tracking. Each keyword analysed uses one "SEO Idea unit"; the free account gets one campaign with up to 10 pages or keywords.^[24]

It's good for spotting what the top pages have that yours lacks. Treat "add these semantically related words" as a reading list, not an order. Our Word Counter & Keyword Density Checker shows the top 1-, 2- and 3-word phrases on any page, from a URL or pasted text. Run it on your page and a competitor's to cover the same ground for free.

SEO Writing Assistant

SEO Writing Assistant is still offered, as part of the SEO Toolkit. It scores a draft on readability, SEO, originality and tone of voice, against your target keywords and the top-ranking pages.^[36] It works inside Semrush and as a Google Docs add-on, a WordPress plugin and an MS Word add-in. Its readability score uses the Flesch reading ease formula.

The limits are tight below Pro+. Free and Starter-level users can create 2 documents per account; Pro+ and Advanced levels get unlimited documents.^[36] The plagiarism checker allows 3 checks in total at the lowest paid tier.

A score of 10 out of 10 doesn't mean a page will rank. It means the page looks like the current top 10. Write something better than them first, then use the tool to catch what you missed. Guide 2, chapter 4 covers briefs and intent.

Chapter 7 covers the part of Semrush that has grown fastest this year: AI visibility.

A year ago this chapter would have been a paragraph. Semrush has since built AI visibility into its plans, and its pricing page now leads with "SEO + AI Search". Here's what each feature does and which plan you need, from Semrush's own feature guide, dated 13 October 2026.^[32]

The features, and who gets them

Semrush says its AI data covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, SearchGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, and that it refreshes more than 317 million prompts a month.^[4] Not every report covers every platform. Prompt Tracking, for example, covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT.^[32]

India is one of the regions covered by Visibility Overview, Competitor Research and Prompt Research. Prompt Tracking covers 220+ countries and territories.^[37]

What it costs

Extra prompts for the AI Visibility Toolkit cost $60 a month for 50 more; another domain or location for Brand Performance costs $99 a month.^[37] The $139 SEO plan is SEO only: its pricing card marks AI search tracking, AI sentiment, AI visibility reports and custom prompts as not included,^[9] although one help page still lists some of them.^[1] Chapter 8 converts these to rupees.

How much to trust it

Semrush's Brand Performance reports work by generating "synthetic prompts" for your domain and location, a mix of branded and non-branded questions, and analysing the answers.^[32] So the data is Semrush asking AI tools questions on a schedule. That's useful. It's also not the same as what real people asked.

Google says it directly: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems."^[38] AI answers also change from one run to the next, so read trends over weeks, not single days. Guide 5, chapter 8 explains the free alternatives in detail. They are Search Console's generative AI report (impressions, not clicks), Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report, GA4's AI Assistant channel and a monthly prompt log.

Who should pay for it

Our view: a single local business doesn't need paid AI tracking yet. The free Domain Overview score, the free Site Audit AI checks and a manual prompt log cover it. Pay when you report AI visibility to clients every month across dozens of prompts, or track several brands, and the manual log takes more than a day. For an agency already on the $139 SEO plan, moving to Starter at $199 adds 50 tracked prompts a day. That's cheaper than adding the $99 AI Visibility Toolkit, which has only 25.

Before trusting any AI visibility number, check that AI crawlers can reach your site at all. Our AI Crawler Checker checks whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and more than 100 other bots can access your site, gives an AI readiness score and suggests a robots.txt fix.

Chapter 8 puts every plan and add-on in one table, with rupee figures, and compares Semrush with the alternatives.

Prices below were checked on Semrush's pricing page on 16 October 2026, from an Indian connection. The page showed US dollars only.^[9] Rupee figures are ours, at ₹96 to the US dollar (the October 2026 average up to the 16th), rounded, and before tax.^[39] Semrush's tax page lists India among the countries where it collects GST, so expect GST on top at checkout.^[40]

Plans

Source for the table: Semrush's pricing page and plans comparison article.^[1] Our pick for most agencies is Starter, because it's the cheapest plan with every tool in this guide, though a few features (historical data, JS rendering, multi-location tracking) need Pro+. Pro+ adds historical data, content optimisation, keyword cannibalisation analysis and multi-location and device tracking. Billed yearly, you pay the whole year upfront.

Add-ons and other toolkits

Sources: users, reports and lead generation from the pricing page;^[9] the AI Visibility Toolkit from its help page;^[37] Local from the Local pricing article;^[42] Content from the Content Toolkit article.^[43]

Free account limits, in one place

• 1 demo project and 1 website to monitor; 10 reports a day across the main tools.^[9]
• About 10 results per report, and no exports in the Keyword Magic Tool.^[27]
• Site Audit: 100 pages a month. Position Tracking: 10 keywords.^[24]
• On Page SEO Checker: one campaign, up to 10 pages or keywords.^[24] SEO Writing Assistant: up to 2 documents.^[36]
• Keyword Strategy Builder: not available.^[28]
• AI: a domain's mentions, citations and visibility score, plus AI checks in a 100-page audit.^[32]

Trials, refunds and paying from India

Paid plans have a 7-day free trial;^[1] the AI Visibility Toolkit doesn't.^[37] Exports are off during trials. The 7-day money-back guarantee only covers a first purchase with a 12-month commitment, or a first add-on, bought on Semrush.com by credit card. You must ask in writing within 7 days.^[10] Semrush accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express, but not virtual cards.^[11] There's no student plan and no lifetime plan; colleges can apply to Semrush for Education, which gives 3 months' free access.^[1]

Pros and cons

Alternatives, starting with ours

Our own free tools cover parts of the job with no account:

• Free Website Audit: 50+ checks across 25 pages for SEO, speed, security and AI visibility, with a PDF action plan after a free sign-in. Instead of a first Site Audit on a small site.
• Meta Tag Analyzer: titles, descriptions, canonicals and Open Graph for up to 10 URLs, with Google and social previews.
• Word Counter & Keyword Density Checker: keyword percentages and top phrases from text or a URL. A free stand-in for parts of On Page SEO Checker.
• HTTP Status Checker: status codes, redirect chains and headers for up to 10 URLs.
• AI Crawler Checker: whether AI bots can reach your site, before you pay to track AI visibility.

We don't have a keyword volume, backlink or rank tracking tool yet. For those, use Google's free tools or another suite:

Which one when

• Local business with a small site: Search Console, Business Profile, Keyword Planner and our free tools. Semrush's free account for a monthly look at three competitors.
• Freelancer with two or three clients: the SEO plan, paid monthly until you're sure, then yearly. Or Ahrefs if links are most of your work.
• Agency reporting AI visibility: Starter or Pro+, plus the Pro Report add-on for white-label reports.
• In-house team on a large site: Pro+ for historical data, cannibalisation analysis and multi-location tracking, alongside a desktop crawler.

The comparison most people want next is Ahrefs vs Semrush, which puts the two side by side job by job. For a wider list of free options, see Best free SEO tools. If you'd rather have someone run the research and the fixes, that's our SEO service; ask for a quote.

Test yourself

Ten questions on the whole guide. Pick an answer, check it, and see your score at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Sources