The best Semrush alternatives in 2026

Semrush is the default answer when somebody asks how to research competitors, and for good reason: it does more things than almost any other marketing tool. It is also the tool people most often describe as too expensive for what they personally use it for.

Prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 19 September 2026.

What Semrush costs today

Add-ons sit on top. There is a $45 a month starting price for some enterprise modules, a $90 a month add-on, and smaller $10 and $20 a month items. The number on your invoice is usually higher than the number on the page.

First, work out which Semrush you actually use

This is the whole decision. Semrush is at least four products sold as one.

1. Keyword research and content planning. Volumes, difficulty, related terms, briefs.
2. Your own site's health. Site audit, position tracking, backlink monitoring.
3. Competitor research. What they rank for, what their ads say, where their traffic comes from.
4. Reporting. Client PDFs, white label, scheduled sends.

People who cancel happily are almost always using one of the four. People who regret cancelling were using three.

The alternatives worth a look

Ahrefs, if you are there for the data

Ahrefs runs Starter, Lite, Standard, Advanced and Enterprise, with published prices at $129, $249, $449 and $1,499 a month. Extra users are $40 to $80 each per month depending on the plan.

It is the strongest like for like swap if you use Semrush mainly for keyword and backlink research. The backlink index is the best in the category and the interface is faster. It is not cheaper at the top end, and the per user pricing bites agencies.

Pick Ahrefs if your Semrush hours go into keyword research, link prospecting and site audits.

SpyFu, if you care about history

SpyFu opens at $39 for the first month and moves to $119 a month after, with Basic, Pro + AI and Team/Agency tiers. Extra users are $30 each.

Its edge is time depth: years of a competitor's paid and organic keyword history in one screen. Nothing else in this price range shows you what somebody was bidding on three years ago.

Pick SpyFu if your work is paid search and you want to see how a competitor's strategy moved over time.

Similarweb, if you need audience and market share

Similarweb does not publish a price. Every plan is a conversation with sales, and the reported entry point for meaningful access is several thousand a year.

It answers questions no keyword tool can: where a competitor's traffic comes from, which apps their audience uses, how a whole category is trending. That is worth real money to strategy teams and worth nothing to somebody who wants a weekly summary.

Pick Similarweb if you present market share numbers to executives and have budget approved for it.

Figo, if the real job is watching people

This is our tool, so read the next two paragraphs with that in mind.

Semrush can tell you what a competitor ranks for. It will not email you on Monday saying that one of them pulled the price off three pages and added a free consultation, and that you should put your own price back on your comparison page today. That is the job Figo does, for $49 a month for three competitors, $99 for eight, or $249 for twenty across five client workspaces.

It checks nine things every week for each competitor: rankings and traffic, new pages, blog posts, Google Ads, Meta ads, TikTok ads, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit mentions, plus Google reviews and published pricing. Then it writes what changed in plain sentences with your numbers next to theirs and one thing to do.

It also asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask and records who gets named, which is the part no keyword tool measures yet.

Pick Figo if your problem is not what should we target but what did they change and what do I do about it.

Do not pick Figo if you need keyword research, site audits, rank tracking for your own site, or backlink analysis. It does none of those, on purpose. Several of our customers pay for Ahrefs as well, and that is the right call.

When you should keep paying Semrush

Be honest about these before you cancel.

• You run client reporting on it. Rebuilding scheduled white label PDFs somewhere else costs more hours than the subscription saves.
• You use position tracking daily. Your history lives there and does not transfer.
• You need one tool to defend in a pitch. We use Semrush still carries weight in a room, fairly or not.
• Three or more of the four jobs above are yours. Nothing at a lower price does all of them.

A cheaper stack that covers most of it

If you want the coverage without the invoice, this combination costs about $180 a month and handles what most small teams use Semrush for:

• Ahrefs Starter, $129 for keyword and backlink research.
• Figo, $49 for the weekly competitor watch and AI visibility.
• Google Search Console, free for your own rankings and impressions.

It is not the same product. It is the same outcomes for the three jobs most people actually do.

The short answer

If you use Semrush for research, move to Ahrefs. If you use it for paid search history, move to SpyFu. If you use it to keep an eye on four or five rivals, that is not what it is for, and $49 does it better. If you use it for all of it, stay, and stop reading comparison pages.