Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Semrush is priced for an agency competing against sites with real SEO teams, $139 a month, or $117.33 billed annually, for 5 sites and 500 tracked keywords, and it is the most expensive tool in this catalog by some distance. Serpstat covers the same categories, keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks, site audits, from $50 a month, or roughly $31 once its stated annual saving applies, with thinner data in some markets as the honest trade for the price. Semrush is the deeper, dearer suite. Serpstat is the same shape of tool built for a smaller budget.
Keyword and competitor research at agency depth
A full SEO suite at fifty dollars a month
Semrush | Serpstat | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $139 | From $50 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export |
Keyword and competitor research at agency depth
Semrush is the tool an SEO reaches for when they need to know what a competitor ranks for and what it is worth. Position tracking, site audits and keyword gaps are all there, along with newer reporting on how brands surface in AI answers. It costs more than most creators can justify, and the entry plan tracks five sites and 500 keywords.
A full SEO suite at fifty dollars a month
Serpstat does keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis and site audits from one account, and prices the entry plan below where the better-known suites start. The data is thinner in some markets than Ahrefs or Semrush, which is the honest trade for the difference. For somebody checking a few hundred keywords a month rather than running an agency, the cheaper tier is not a compromised version of the tool, it is the same tool with lower limits.
Our note
The data is thinner than the market leaders in some regions, and that gap is the whole difference in price. Run the trial against keywords you already know the answer for, because that comparison tells you in an afternoon whether the cheaper tier is enough.
Choose Semrush if the traffic actually comes from search and the competition runs SEO teams of its own: $139 a month buys competitor keyword research, daily position tracking for 500 keywords and reporting on how the brand surfaces in AI answers, at SEO plus AI Search for $199. It costs nearly three times Serpstat's entry rate, which the data depth and reputation are meant to justify.
Choose Serpstat if the workload is a few hundred keywords and one or two sites rather than an agency book of clients: Individual is $50 a month, or about $31 billed annually, for the same broad categories of data. Backlink reports cap at 2,000 results against 10,000 above it, and an agency running real client volume will hit both the export limits and the data depth before Semrush's ceilings, which is the honest reason the market leaders cost more.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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| Their cut | None | None |
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| Runs on | Web | Web |
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| Covers | SEO & Discovery, Research & Trends | SEO & Discovery, Research & Trends |
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| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
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| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
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| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
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| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
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Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.