What SEO software costs in 2026: a pricing study of 181 tools
The cheapest paid plan of the median SEO tool costs $39 a month. Among the 124 tools in our directory that publish a price in dollars, half start between $23 and $59.
The ends are far apart: $1 at the bottom and $2,500 at the top. We read the pricing page of every tool in the directory on 1 October 2026, and the figures below come from that read.
How much does SEO software cost in 2026
We read pricing for 181 tools. Of those, 124 publish an entry price in US dollars. A further 20 price only in a currency other than the dollar and stay out of the dollar figures. The remaining 37 (181 − 124 − 20) publish no entry price at all, a group that includes the 8 free tools and the 12 quote-only vendors.
Across the 124, the cheapest paid plan has a median of $39 a month, with the 25th percentile at $23 and the 75th at $59. So the middle half of the market fits inside a $36 spread ($59 − $23). Billed monthly for a year, the median entry plan comes to $468 ($39 × 12).
The chart below sorts the 124 entry prices into five bands.
The $20–49 band alone holds 57 tools, close to half the set. Add the 32 that start under $20, and 89 of 124 entry plans (72%) cost less than $50 a month. Only 14 ask $100 or more for a first paid tier. Four of those ask $300 or more, which makes a three-figure starting price the exception in this market, and the names that charge it are listed further down.
How SEO tools charge: paid, freemium, custom or free
Paid-only pricing is the default: 111 of the 181 tools (61%) have no free tier at all. Freemium, a free plan with paid tiers above it, accounts for 50 (28%). Twelve vendors (7%) quote every customer individually, and 8 tools (4%) are free outright.
The chart counts each pricing model across the directory.
Quote-only pricing is rare, and it clusters. The twelve vendors are AirOps, Botify, BrightEdge, Conductor, Lumar (formerly DeepCrawl), LocaliQ, Oncrawl, Ryte, seoClarity, Siteimprove.ai, Textmetrics and Whatagraph. Nine of them also sit in the enterprise category, which is why that category behaves so differently from the others.
SEO tool prices by category
A tool can belong to several categories, so the counts below add up to more than 181. Each median is taken over the tools in that category that publish a dollar price, which the second column counts.
The chart ranks the twelve categories by median entry price, from dearest to cheapest.
| Category | Tools | With a USD price | Median entry | Free plans | Quote-only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 17 | 7 | $459 | 0 | 9 |
| Competitor research | 24 | 17 | $49.95 | 7 | 0 |
| AI visibility | 56 | 40 | $49 | 8 | 6 |
| Agency reporting | 32 | 26 | $44 | 4 | 1 |
| Rank tracking | 55 | 47 | $41 | 11 | 1 |
| Site audit | 55 | 37 | $41 | 19 | 6 |
| Keyword research | 45 | 31 | $39 | 21 | 0 |
| Backlinks | 25 | 19 | $39 | 9 | 0 |
| Content | 68 | 45 | $36 | 26 | 3 |
| Analytics | 20 | 13 | $25 | 7 | 2 |
| Local SEO | 11 | 9 | $24.99 | 0 | 1 |
| WordPress | 7 | 2 | $9.50 | 6 | 0 |
The most expensive category: enterprise
Enterprise is the outlier by a wide margin. Its median entry price of $459 is almost twelve times the keyword research median ($459 ÷ $39 ≈ 11.8). That figure also rests on thin ground: only 7 of the category's 17 tools print a dollar price, 9 sell on request, and none has a free plan. The median describes the vendors willing to publish a number. The others are outside it by choice, and a buyer shouldn't assume they sit below $459.
The crowded middle
Below enterprise the categories bunch tightly. Competitor research ($49.95), AI visibility ($49), agency reporting ($44), rank tracking and site audit ($41 each), and keyword research and backlinks ($39 each) all fall within $11 of each other. Competitor research tops that group, and its product is data about other people's sites, which a vendor has to collect before it can sell a single report. AI visibility is the second-largest category in the directory at 56 tools, and one of the least generous: 8 free plans, or 14%.
Free access is easiest to find in keyword research and content. Keyword research has free plans at 21 of 45 tools (47%) and content at 26 of 68 (38%), against 11 of 55 (20%) in rank tracking.
The cheapest categories
Local SEO and WordPress sit at the bottom for different reasons. Local SEO has a median of $24.99 but no free plans among its 11 tools, so it's cheap to start and paid from the first day. Its entry plans are scoped small: BrightLocal's covers one location. WordPress tools are mostly plugins with free versions (6 of 7 have one), and the $9.50 median comes from the only 2 that publish a dollar price, so treat it as a hint and not a benchmark.
Free plans vs free trials: how many SEO tools let you in free
A free plan has no end date and a trial does, and the directory keeps them apart. 58 tools (32%) have a free plan. 83 (46%) offer a trial. And 51 (28%) offer neither, so the first look costs money.
Put another way, 130 tools offer some free way in (181 − 51). Since 58 + 83 = 141, the 11 in excess are tools that offer both a free plan and a trial.
The chart counts trials by length in days.
Trial lengths are close to standard. Of the 83 trials, 41 last 7 days and 30 last 14, which makes 71 trials, or 86%. The rest scatter: 3 days at three tools, 5, 10 and 15 days at two each, and one each at 21, 30 and 42 days.
Seven days is enough to check whether a tool's data matches what you already know about your own site. It isn't enough to watch a ranking trend form. If trend data is what you're buying, a 14-day trial or a free plan with tracking tells you more, and the free SEO tools category lists the tools with a free plan and leaves trials out.
How much does yearly billing save on SEO tools
Among the 64 tools where a monthly price and a yearly-billed price can be compared, the median discount is 20.2%. On the $39 median plan, that's $94.54 a year ($39 × 12 = $468, and 20.2% of $468 is $94.54), or roughly 2.4 months free (12 × 20.2%). The largest discount we found is 66.7%, two-thirds off the monthly rate.
Among the big suites the range is narrower. Serpstat takes 27.5% off its entry plan ($69 to $50), SpyFu 25.6% ($39 to $29), BrightLocal 24.4% ($41 to $31), Moz Pro 20.2% on Standard ($99 to $79), SE Ranking 20% (€109 to €87.20), Surfer 16.9% (€59 to €49) and Semrush 15.6% ($139 to $117.33).
The discount only pays once the choice is made, since a year paid upfront for a tool dropped after two months costs far more than two monthly bills. The sensible order is trial or free plan, then monthly, then yearly.
The cheapest and most expensive SEO tools
The ten cheapest entry points start under $10 a month. Most are single-job tools.
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Whitespark | $1 | Local SEO; priced per location |
| Copyscape | $4.95 | Plagiarism checker |
| SERPROBOT | $4.99 | Rank tracker, 75 checks a day per bot |
| Prepostseo | $7 | Writing and webmaster tools |
| vevy.ai | $7 | Shopify AI blog writer |
| NitroPack | $8 | Site speed for WordPress |
| Foudroyer | $9 | Search Console assistant |
| Keyword Hero | $9 | Keywords behind Analytics sessions |
| RankWeek | $9 | Auto-indexing |
| SpySERP | $9 | Rank tracker |
At the other end, ten tools start at $139 or more.
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| seoClarity | $2,500 | Enterprise SEO platform |
| WordLift | $1,100 | Knowledge graph and structured data |
| LinkResearchTools (LRT) | $599 | Backlink audits and monitoring |
| JetOctopus | $459 | Crawler and log analyzer |
| Alli AI | $299 | On-page changes at scale |
| AccuRanker | $224 | Daily rank tracker |
| BuzzSumo | $199 | Content research and digital PR |
| SEO.AI | $149 | AI writing agent |
| Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) | $139 | Rank tracker |
| Semrush | $139 | SEO suite |
seoClarity is counted among the quote-only vendors, yet it names a $2,500 starting point. Between it and Whitespark lies a factor of 2,500, and products with little in common.
What Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and the other big suites cost
These are the entry plans of the best-known names as their pricing pages showed them on 1 October 2026, with euro prices left in euros. The yearly column is the yearly-billed monthly rate × 12, or the monthly rate × 12 where no yearly price is listed.
| Tool | Entry plan | Monthly | Billed yearly, per month | Per year | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | SEO | $139 | $117.33 | $1,407.96 | 5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily, keyword research, Position Tracking, Site Audit |
| Ahrefs | Starter | $29 | not listed | $348 billed monthly | Keyword and competitor lookups; limits not listed on the pricing page |
| Moz Pro | Starter | $49 | not listed | $588 billed monthly | Entry plan for one person managing a single website |
| SE Ranking | Core | €109 | €87.20 | €1,046.40 | 10 projects, 1 seat, 2k keywords and 100 AI prompts tracked daily, 250k audit pages a month |
| SpyFu | Basic | $39 | $29 | $348 | 5k keywords tracked weekly, 1 site project, 50k audit pages a month, 1 user |
| Serpstat | Individual | $69 | $50 | $600 | 5 projects, 100 searches a day, 10,000 position checks, 1 user, no API |
| Surfer | Discovery | €59 | €49 | €588 | 120 documents, 10 tracked pages, 1 seat |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Paid licence | none | $23.25 | $279 per user | Unlimited crawl, bounded by the machine's memory |
| BrightLocal | Track | $41 | $31 | $372 | 1 location, 100 keywords and 4 competitors tracked, citation and Business Profile audits |
Semrush has the dearest entry of the group. Its free plan allows 1 demo project and 10 reports a day, the trial runs 7 days, and AI-answer tracking starts with Starter (SEO + AI Search) at $199, or $165.17 billed yearly, for 50 prompts tracked daily.
Ahrefs has the lowest monthly price in the group at $29, but Starter's limits aren't published. Lite at $129 is the first tier with stated limits: 5 projects, 750 tracked keywords, 5 tracked AI prompts and 1 user. No trial was listed, and the free tier covers only the owner's verified site.
Moz Pro starts at $49, while Standard at $99, or $79 billed yearly, is the first tier with listed limits: 3 tracked sites, 300 tracked keywords and 150 tracked AI prompts for 1 user. A free Moz Community account gives limited access to MozBar, Keyword Explorer and Link Explorer.
SE Ranking and Surfer showed us euro prices only. SE Ranking comes with a 14-day trial. Serpstat offers 7 days, and its Team plan at $129 is the cheapest way among these suites to get 3 users and API access in one plan. Screaming Frog is the only one sold by the year alone, at $279 per user, with a free version capped at 500 URLs. Mangools has a free plan, but its paid tiers weren't captured in this read, so it's left out of the table.
How to budget for SEO software
A solo site owner
Start with what's free: 58 tools have a free plan, and the Screaming Frog free version alone crawls 500 URLs. Then buy one research tool at or below the market's 75th percentile of $59. SpyFu Basic at $29 billed yearly, or $348 a year, tracks 5k keywords weekly for one site. Ahrefs Starter costs the same $29 billed monthly. A sensible ceiling is the median: $468 a year buys most of what a single site needs, and spending past it should come with a reason.
An in-house team
For a team, seats matter. Ahrefs Lite, Serpstat Individual, SE Ranking Core and Surfer Discovery are all one-user plans, so the entry prices above understate what a team will pay. Serpstat Team at $129, or $100 billed yearly, includes 3 users, unlimited projects and API access. Moz Medium at $179, or $143 billed yearly, covers 2 users and 1,500 tracked keywords. SE Ranking Growth is €235 a month for 3 seats. Between Serpstat Team billed yearly and Moz Medium billed monthly, that's $100 to $179 a month for one shared suite, plus a cheap single-job tool or two.
An agency
For an agency the useful figure is the cost per site. Semrush Advanced at $549 covers 40 websites, which works out to $13.73 per site ($549 ÷ 40). Moz Large at $299 covers 25 tracked sites, or $11.96 each ($299 ÷ 25). SpyFu Team / Agency at $249 has unlimited projects and 5 users, and Serpstat Agency at $499 adds white-label reports and 30 users. Local work changes the unit to the location: Whitespark charges $1 per location on its entry plan, while BrightLocal's three plans each cover one location. The agency reporting category, with a median entry of $44, is where client-facing reports sit.
How we collected the prices
We read the pricing page of every tool in our directory on 1 October 2026, on each vendor's own site, and recorded every tier with its monthly price, its yearly-billed price and its limits as listed. The entry price is the cheapest paid plan billed monthly in US dollars, and medians, percentiles and bands are computed over the 124 tools that publish one. Nothing was converted. Quote-only vendors weren't estimated. A free plan has no end date; a trial does. The full method is on how we rate.
FAQ
How much do SEO tools cost per month?
A first paid tier costs $39 a month at the median tool. Of the 124 tools with a dollar price, 89 (72%) start under $50 and 14 ask $100 or more; the dearest of those are named in the table above.
Are there free SEO tools?
Yes. Eight tools in the directory are free outright, and 58 have a free plan with no end date. The free SEO tools category lists them.
Is yearly billing on SEO software worth it?
Across the 64 tools that list both prices, yearly billing takes a median 20.2% off, and the best case is 66.7%. The saving is real for a tool that has already proved itself over a reporting cycle. For one you're still evaluating, a trial and a couple of monthly bills cost less than a year paid upfront.
Do enterprise SEO tools publish prices?
Mostly not. Of the 17 tools in the enterprise category, 9 sell by quote and 7 print a dollar price, with seoClarity in both columns: it quotes, and still names $2,500 as the starting point. Where a number is printed it's high, with a category median of $459, and no enterprise tool has a free plan.