The cheapest paid seat on an SEO tool runs from $18 a month at Sitebulb to $139 at Semrush, and the sticker is the least interesting number on most of these pages. Every price here was checked on Oct 29, 2026 from the vendor's own pricing page. The big suites now sell seats, credits and AI prompt quotas as separate meters, while the small audit tools still charge one flat number.
What changed in SEO tool pricing this year
Semrush, 2026. Semrush's plan names changed. An Internet Archive snapshot of its pricing page from May 12, 2026 still describes Pro, Guru and Business plans. Today's page sells SEO at $139 a month ($117.33 billed annually), Starter at $199 ($165.17 annually), Pro+ at $299 ($248.17 annually), and Advanced with no public price, only a “Request demo” button. A Free plan at $0 is on the page with one demo project and 10 reports a day. Extra users start at $45 a month each. The Starter, Pro+ and Advanced tiers bundle AI visibility tracking with daily prompt quotas, which is the new meter.
Ahrefs, checked Oct 29, 2026. Ahrefs sells Lite at $129 a month, Standard at $249, Advanced at $449 and Enterprise at $1,499 with an annual commitment. Each plan includes one user. The Lite plan caps the user at 1,000 credits a month, and extra users cost $40, $60 or $80 a month depending on the plan. A $29 Starter plan and a free tier called Ahrefs Free sit underneath. The FAQ is blunt about discounts: “We never run discounts.”
Everyone else stayed flat. WooRank, Raven Tools, Sitebulb and Screaming Frog all list a number, and that number is the bill.
What each SEO tool costs
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | What it meters | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sitebulb (desktop) | $18/mo Lite, or $180/yr | Users, URLs per audit | 14-day trial |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | $279/yr per licence | Licences | Free up to 500 URLs |
| Raven Tools | $39/mo Small Biz, annual prepaid ($49 monthly) | Domains, users, rank checks | 7-day trial |
| WooRank | $53.25/mo Pro billed yearly ($89.99 monthly) | Projects, keywords, pages | 3-day trial |
| DataForSEO | Pay as you go, $50 minimum top-up | Every API call | $1 trial credit |
| Semrush | $117.33/mo SEO billed annually ($139 monthly) | Seats, prompts, reports | Free plan, 10 reports/day |
| Ahrefs | $129/mo Lite | Credits, users, crawl credits | Ahrefs Free (own sites) |
The two suites at the top of the market both added a second meter this year. Semrush counts AI prompts, Ahrefs counts credits. The sticker price is the floor, not the bill.
Across the whole shelf, SEO software is more generous than the headline suites suggest. Of the 460 SEO tools in the AppClap catalog (Oct 29, 2026), 230 have a free tier and 11 are open source.
Which SEO tools pass the AppClap flat-price test
The AppClap flat-price test is simple: a tool passes when the price on its pricing page is the price on the invoice, with no credits, no usage add-ons and no second meter you discover in month two.
Crawling and audits. Screaming Frog SEO Spider passes. The licence is $279 per user per year, it drops to $235 at 20 or more licences, and the free version crawls up to 500 URLs with no card (checked Oct 29, 2026). Sitebulb passes. Lite is $18 a month for one user and 10,000 URLs per audit, Pro is $42 a month for 500,000 URLs, and an extra Pro user is $11 a month. Its cloud tier starts at $125 a month, and that one is sold by crawl volume.
Open source crawlers. SEOnaut is an MIT-licensed SEO audit tool with about 845 GitHub stars that you run on your own server for nothing (repo). LibreCrawl is MIT with about 1,100 stars and was last pushed on Sep 29 (repo). SEO Panel is the veteran, GPL-2.0, about 155 stars, still receiving commits this week (repo). All three pass by default, because there is no invoice.
All-in-one dashboards. WooRank passes. Pro is $89.99 a month, or $53.25 a month billed yearly, for 1 website, 50 tracked keywords and a 2,500-page crawl; Premium is $199.99, or $133.25 yearly, for 5 websites and 250 keywords (checked Oct 29, 2026). The trial is 3 days, short enough to miss over a weekend. Raven Tools passes with one footnote. Small Biz is $39 a month on the annual prepaid plan, which is $468 up front, or $49 month to month, for 2 domains, 2 users and 1,500 rank checks; Start is $79 annual or $109 monthly for 20 domains and 4 users, and the ladder runs through Grow at $139, Thrive at $249 and Lead at $399 (checked Oct 29, 2026). Extra rank checks are $0.003 each, and annual plans are a contract with no refunds, so the cheaper number buys a year.
Data and suites. DataForSEO fails by design. It is honest about it: everything is pay as you go from $0.0006 per SERP, with a $50 minimum top-up that never expires. Semrush fails on seats and prompts. Ahrefs fails on credits. If your team is one person on one site, that may never matter. If it is an agency with five people, the second meter is the real pricing page.
Is there a free SEO tool that is actually free?
Yes, for small sites. Screaming Frog's free version crawls 500 URLs with the main audit reports and no time limit. Semrush's Free plan gives one demo project and 10 reports a day. Ahrefs Free audits sites you own. SEOnaut, LibreCrawl and SEO Panel are free at any size if you can run them yourself. What none of the free options give you is a backlink index of the whole web, and that index is what the $129 and $139 plans are really selling.
How to read an SEO tool pricing page
- Monthly or annual? WooRank's $53.25 is $89.99 if you pay monthly, and Raven's $39 is a prepaid year.
- How many users are in the price? Ahrefs and Semrush include one. Raven's cheapest plan includes two.
- Is there a second meter? Look for credits, prompts, rank checks or API calls, and find the overage price.
- How long is the trial? WooRank gives 3 days, Raven 7, Sitebulb 14.
- What happens when you cancel an annual plan? Raven's page says no refunds on annual plans.
What we do about it
AppClap reads pricing pages so you do not have to, we never take vendor money, and when a page hides a number behind a sales call we say so. Every tool above has its own page, and the Semrush alternatives page lists the rest of what we track.
Or describe what you need in plain words: an SEO audit tool with a flat price and no credits.
Sources: semrush.com, Plans & Pricing (live page, plus Internet Archive snapshot of May 12, 2026); ahrefs.com, Plans & pricing; woorank.com, Pricing; raventools.com, Pricing; sitebulb.com, Desktop plans; screamingfrog.co.uk, SEO Spider pricing; dataforseo.com, Pricing; GitHub repos StJudeWasHere/seonaut, PhialsBasement/LibreCrawl and seopanel/Seo-Panel; AppClap catalog counts, Oct 29, 2026. All checked Oct 29, 2026.
