Serpstat vs Semrush: budget suite or the big one

Serpstat vs Semrush is a budget all-rounder against the market leader. Serpstat covers the same core jobs (keyword research, competitor research, rank tracking, site audit, backlinks) from $50 a month, and its $100 Team plan includes three users and API access. Semrush starts at $139 for one user and keeps API data integration for its $549 Advanced plan.

What Semrush has is scale: much larger keyword and link databases by both vendors' own figures, rank tracking sold in keywords rather than checks, and toolkits for paid search and total traffic.

Prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 4 October 2026.

Serpstat vs Semrush prices

Serpstat advertises "up to 27%" off for annual billing but shows the yearly saving rather than a monthly figure. Semrush shows annual per-month prices, from $117.33 for SEO. Full detail: Serpstat pricing and Semrush pricing.

How Serpstat meters your usage

Serpstat's limits are counted differently from Semrush's, and that is where most surprises come from.

Searches per day. Individual allows 100 searches a day "for sites, keywords, and links". Team allows 500, Team x2 1,000, Agency 5,000. Individual suits someone who researches a few times a week, not someone who lives in the tool.

Results per report. Individual shows up to 2,000 results per website report and 2,000 per backlink report. Team raises both to 10,000. If a competitor ranks for 40,000 keywords, Individual shows you the first 2,000.

Position checks, not keywords. Rank tracking is sold as keyword position checks per month, with daily updates on every plan. As arithmetic, and assuming one keyword checked once in one location uses one check, Individual's 10,000 checks cover about 330 keywords tracked daily, or about 2,300 tracked weekly. Semrush's SEO plan tracks 500 keywords daily.

The team and API arithmetic

This is Serpstat's strongest argument. Monthly billing, our sums:

Semrush's user add-on is "starting at $45", so its column is a floor.

For a small agency that wants to pull data into its own dashboards, Serpstat's API at $100 against Semrush's at $549 is the single biggest price gap between them.

The trial difference

Serpstat offers a 7 day trial of Individual or Team. It needs a card: a $1 charge is made and refunded within 5 to 30 minutes, and the plan renews automatically after seven days unless you cancel. Put a reminder in your calendar.

Semrush offers a 7 day trial and a permanent free plan with one demo project and 10 reports a day, which needs no card.

How much smaller is Serpstat's data?

Sources: the Serpstat homepage and Semrush's stats page, both read on 4 October 2026.

Counting methods differ, so small gaps mean little. These are not small gaps. Semrush's keyword set is over three times larger, and its stated link count is about 80 times larger. If backlinks matter to your work, that difference is the reason to pay for Semrush (or a link specialist). If you mainly research keywords and track rankings, Serpstat's coverage may be enough, and its country list is longer.

Pick Serpstat if

• You are a freelancer, small agency or in-house team of three to six on a tight budget.
• You want API access without paying for a top plan.
• Your work is mostly keyword research and rank tracking, not link analysis.

Pick Semrush if

• Link research matters, or you need the deepest keyword data in a big market.
• You run Google Ads and want the Advertising toolkit, or need total traffic estimates.
• You want a free plan for occasional lookups rather than a card-backed trial.

For other ways to save, see SE Ranking vs Semrush, Ubersuggest vs Semrush and the Serpstat alternatives page.

When neither is the right buy

If what you actually need is to know what competitors changed each week, an SEO suite is the long way round. Figo checks each competitor once a week (rankings, new pages, ads on Google, Meta and TikTok, pricing, reviews) and sends a Monday briefing, from $49 a month. Ours, so judge accordingly. It does no keyword research or link analysis, so it does not replace either tool for SEO work.