Semrush Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives

What is Semrush?

Semrush is one of the best-known search marketing platforms. It covers keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink data, site audits, rank tracking, content tools and advertising research, and now also tracks how brands appear in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews. It is used by in-house teams, agencies and freelancers to plan, measure and report on search work.

Founded in 2008, Semrush became part of Adobe when the acquisition completed on 28 April 2026, and now operates as an Adobe company. Adobe plans to link it with Experience Manager, LLM Optimizer and its wider customer experience tools. In 2025 and 2026 Semrush also reorganised pricing around Semrush One bundles that combine SEO and AI visibility.

Its main strength is breadth: one login covers traditional SEO, AI search monitoring, content and paid search research. Its competitive data, showing which keywords, pages and ads bring competitors traffic, is a particular strength. The downside is price, since serious use, extra seats and add-on toolkits quickly push costs beyond the entry plan.

Key features of Semrush

• Keyword researchLarge keyword database with volume, difficulty, intent and SERP features for planning content.
• Competitor analysisSee which keywords, pages and ads drive competitors’ traffic and where you have gaps.
• Site AuditCrawl your site for technical SEO problems and get prioritised fixes.
• Position TrackingDaily rank tracking by location and device, with share of voice on higher tiers.
• AI VisibilityTrack prompts and brand mentions, sentiment and citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and AI Overviews.
• Semrush MCP and APIBring Semrush data into AI assistants through MCP or pull it into your own reports via the API.

Who is Semrush best for?

• In-house SEO teams that need research, audits and tracking in one place.
• Agencies managing many client sites and reports.
• Content marketers who plan topics around search demand.
• Brand teams that want to see how AI assistants describe them.

Popular ways to use Semrush

• Keyword planning: Build topic clusters from volume, difficulty and intent data.
• Competitor gaps: Find keywords and backlinks competitors have that you lack.
• Technical fixes: Run a Site Audit and work through errors by priority.
• AI search monitoring: Track whether AI assistants mention and cite your brand.
• Client reporting: Combine rankings and traffic into scheduled reports.

Semrush pricing (October 2026)

Annual billing saves about 17%. Extra users start at $45/month and some toolkits, such as Local and Traffic, are sold as add-ons. A 7-day free trial is offered.

Semrush pros and cons

How to get started with Semrush

1. Create a free account and add your domain as a project.
2. Run a Site Audit to find technical issues.
3. Use Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool to build a target list.
4. Set up Position Tracking for your priority keywords.
5. Add AI prompts to track brand visibility in AI answers.

Tips to get better results from Semrush

• Use the 7-day trial on a real project to judge which plan you need.
• Pick annual billing only once you know your seat count.
• Filter keywords by intent to separate buying from research queries.
• Schedule audits weekly so new issues surface early.

Semrush vs alternatives

Ahrefs is Semrush’s closest rival, with a respected backlink index and a cheap Starter plan, while Semrush offers more marketing tools beyond SEO. Surfer and Clearscope focus on content optimisation rather than full research.

For content planning, MarketMuse goes deeper on topic authority, and Frase is cheaper for writing and briefs. Choose Semrush if you want one suite for SEO, AI visibility and competitor research. See all best AI marketing and SEO tools.

Our verdict: is Semrush worth it?

Semrush FAQs

Pricing and features change often. Details on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Always confirm current plans on the official Semrush website.