SEO tools are sold on feature lists and billed on a meter: projects, tracked keywords, crawl credits, seats or lookups per day.
This guide ranks twelve of them on what the meter does to the bill after ninety days, what a second user costs, which job the product actually does, and what happens to your data when you cancel.
AuthorHannah ReiterSenior Analyst, Business Applications
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
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vendor. How that works.
In short
What SEO tools software does
SEO tools measure how a website performs in search: they crawl its pages, track keyword positions, map the links pointing at it and show what competitors rank for.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each SEO tool is built for. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Free plan; per month per plan, published; extra users and add-ons billed
Yes
Marketing teams who accept a large vendor and want everything in one place
Buyers who want an independent supplier without add-on billing
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Four packages cancelable monthly, with data held inside Europe
Ranked #1 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
The first ninety days are the point: four packages, each cancelable monthly, and a 14-day trial, so a wrong pick costs a month. Package tiers differ by users, projects and history, from one user and three projects at the start to a hundred projects at the top.
The bill rises once you need exports, extra projects or API credits, which the pricing page sells as add-ons. Invoices are in euros only outside Enterprise.
What stands out
Monthly cancelation
Package tiers
Data held in Europe
Where it costs you
Extra projects, API credits and exports are paid add-ons on top of the package.
Data history is limited to three years on the entry package, five on the second.
Right for
Teams who want one tool with monthly cancelation and European-held data
Wrong for
Anyone needing many users or projects on the cheapest package
GermanyPer package per month, published; 14-day trial
Five bundled tools with a permanent free plan to test with
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
A permanent free plan exists, so you can run real keywords through it before paying, and the FAQ lists a 48-hour refund window on paid plans. The bundle covers KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner and SiteProfiler.
When the Entry plan launched it allowed 25 keyword lookups a day and 50 tracked keywords, which shows how the meter works. Sub-users and two simultaneous logins only arrive on Premium and above.
What stands out
Free plan
Five bundled tools
Daily lookup limits
Where it costs you
Limits are daily lookups, so a heavy research session hits a cap.
Tools cannot be bought individually, only as the bundle.
Right for
Freelancers who want keyword, SERP and rank tools in one small bundle
Wrong for
Agencies needing many users or large daily lookup volumes
SlovakiaFree plan; per month or year per plan, published
Site audits and rank tracking with a small permanent free plan
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Plans are limited by projects, pages per crawl and keywords, all stated on the pricing page. Premium covers three projects and 25,000 pages per crawl, Professional seven projects and 50,000 pages, Agency twenty projects, 100,000 pages and unlimited team accounts.
Monthly and annual billing are both offered, and the paid plans include a 14-day trial. AI visibility prompts are counted too, so check how many you use.
What stands out
Free plan
Site audits
Page and keyword caps
Where it costs you
The free plan is limited to one project, ten keywords and 100 pages per crawl.
The cheapest paid plan tracks 300 keywords across three projects.
Right for
Small sites that need audits and rank tracking before committing budget
Wrong for
Large sites crawling beyond fifty thousand pages per project
GermanyFree plan; per month per plan, published; 14-day trial
A desktop crawler licensed per user per year, with a 500 URL free edition
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
The free edition crawls up to 500 URLs; a licence lifts that cap, limited by memory and storage on your machine. The price is published per user per year and falls from single licences to blocks of twenty.
There is no monthly meter. The vendor is based in Henley-on-Thames and describes itself as a search marketing agency, which matters if you want a pure software supplier. Everything beyond crawling needs a second tool.
What stands out
Desktop crawler
Annual licence
500 URL free edition
Where it costs you
It is a crawler only, with no rank tracking or link index of its own.
The pricing page mentions no trial, only the 500 URL free edition.
Right for
Technical SEOs who want a crawler they own per year, not per month
Wrong for
Teams wanting shared cloud crawls or keyword and link data
United KingdomFree to 500 URLs; annual licence per user, published
Technical audits as a desktop licence or a cloud subscription
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Desktop comes in Lite for one user and Pro with flexible seat counts at a published monthly price per extra user. Pro audits up to 500,000 URLs, expandable to 2 million, and adds scheduled audits and comparisons.
Sitebulb Cloud starts from a published monthly price for teams sharing crawl data, with larger plans above that. A 14-day trial gives Pro access with no card. Yearly billing is discounted.
What stands out
Technical audits
Desktop or cloud
Audit URL caps
Where it costs you
Lite audits up to 10,000 URLs per audit; larger sites need Pro or Cloud.
The pricing page offers no keyword, rank history or backlink data.
Right for
Consultants who want readable technical audits on their own machine
Wrong for
Anyone who needs keyword research or link analysis in the same tool
United KingdomDesktop licence per user and cloud plans, published; 14-day trial
Daily rank tracking priced by keyword tier, from Aarhus
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Everything scales on keyword count. Professional starts at 2,000 keywords and Expert at 10,000, with Enterprise quoted beyond 25,000. Reports download as CSV, Excel, Sheets or PDF, and Expert lists an unlimited read API.
The terms say user-entered data is kept for a maximum of 30 days after a subscription ends, so export before you cancel. Annual payment is discounted.
What stands out
Rank tracking
Keyword tiers
CSV and Excel export
Where it costs you
No trial is mentioned on the pricing page.
Keyword-tier pricing makes wide tracking expensive; the jump to Expert is steep.
Right for
Agencies tracking thousands of keywords daily and reporting through the API
Wrong for
Sites needing a crawler or link index from the same vendor
DenmarkPer month by keyword tier, published; Enterprise quoted
A link index sold in analysis units rather than seats
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Plans are counted in analysis units: one million on Lite, twenty million on Pro, a hundred million on the API plan with five users.
The Fresh Index covers the latest 120 days of links, while the Historic Index reaches back to 2006 and is part of Pro. Prices are shown in euros, pounds or dollars. The company is Majestic-12 Limited of Birmingham, which has been running since 2004.
What stands out
Link index
Analysis units
Historic index
Where it costs you
Lite has no Historic Index or API access; those start at Pro.
The refund window is seven days and only for new customers.
Right for
Link builders who only need a backlink index and API access
Wrong for
Anyone who also needs keyword research or site audits
United KingdomPer month per plan, published; 7-day money-back
Four published plans, crawl credits and billed extra seats
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingAsia-Pacific
Lite covers one user, five projects, 750 tracked keywords and 100,000 crawl credits; Standard raises that to six users and 500,000 credits, Advanced to eleven users. History runs from six months to unlimited by tier.
Extra users cost between 37.40 and 74.80 euros a month, depending on the plan. There is a Starter plan and a set of free tools, but Enterprise is a sales-led annual contract.
What stands out
Crawl credits
Extra seats billed
Starter plan
Where it costs you
Extra users are billed monthly on top of each plan.
Crawl credits cap site audits, and Enterprise needs an annual contract.
Right for
Established SEO teams who want one suite with transparent plan limits
Wrong for
Solo users who only need a few keyword lookups a month
SingaporePer month per plan, published; extra users billed
Per project plans with agency, API and AI search add-ons
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingElsewhere
Core allows ten projects and one manager seat, Growth thirty projects and three seats, with 2,000 and 5,000 keywords tracked daily. A 14-day trial needs no card.
The Agency Pack, AI Search and API are priced separately each month, and the agency and API options require annual billing. The service is provided by a UK or US entity depending on payment currency, and the terms apply California law.
What stands out
Project-based plans
Add-ons billed
Agency pack
Where it costs you
Agency Pack and API are annual-billing add-ons, not part of the plan.
The company lists no single home country, only UK and US legal entities.
Right for
Small agencies who bill clients per project and need white-label reporting
Wrong for
Buyers who need one named country of establishment on the contract
Not stated by the vendorPer month per plan, published; add-ons extra; 14-day trial
Daily search limits and position checks that rise with plan
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Four published plans meter daily searches and monthly position checks: 100 and 10,000 on Individual, 500 and 50,000 on Team, 1,000 and 100,000 on Team x2, 5,000 and 500,000 on Agency.
Team adds API access and three users. Agency lists 30 users and white-label reports. Annual billing is discounted by up to 27 percent. The controller is registered in Delaware, with a Sofia representative for the EU.
What stands out
Daily search limits
Position checks
Team seats
Where it costs you
The trial takes a verification charge that is refunded later.
Daily searches cap how much research you can do in a day.
Right for
Small teams wanting keyword and audit tools with clear daily search limits
Wrong for
Buyers who need a named operating country other than Delaware
United StatesPer month per plan, published; 7-day trial
Content optimisation and AI visibility tracking, sold by document count
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best SEO Tools in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
The limit is documents, not seats: Discovery covers 120 documents a month, Standard 360, Pro adds internal linking and cannibalisation reports, and Peace of Mind is unlimited under fair use with ten seats and API access.
AI Search Analytics is sold separately, tracking prompts across several models. The company, Surfer sp. z o.o., sits in Wroclaw, and the homepage names Positive Group as parent. Annual billing is discounted by 17 percent.
What stands out
Content editor
Document allowances
AI visibility tracking
Where it costs you
It optimises content; it is not a keyword, backlink or crawl database.
AI visibility tracking is a separate plan with its own prompt allowance.
Right for
Content teams who optimise many pages against search guidelines
Wrong for
Anyone who needs backlink data or technical site audits
PolandPer month per plan, published; trial available
Plans limit websites and daily tracked keywords: five websites and 500 keywords on the lower plans, 15 and 1,500 on Pro+, 40 and 5,000 on Advanced. Additional users cost extra each month, and lead generation and report packs are separate lines.
A free plan offers one demo project, and paid plans start with a 7-day trial. The pricing page lists plans billed annually, so compare monthly pricing before committing.
What stands out
Owned by Adobe
Extra users billed
Many add-ons
Where it costs you
Extra users and many add-ons are billed separately from the plan.
Semrush is now owned by Adobe, so independence is gone.
Right for
Marketing teams who accept a large vendor and want everything in one place
Wrong for
Buyers who want an independent supplier without add-on billing
United StatesFree plan; per month per plan, published; extra users and add-ons billed
SEO tools measure how a website performs in search: they crawl its pages, track keyword positions, map the links pointing at it and show what competitors rank for. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
12 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 0 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: SISTRIX, Mangools, Seobility, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, AccuRanker, Majestic, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Serpstat, Surfer SEO, Semrush.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 8 countries across 4 regions (Europe 8, North America 2, Asia-Pacific 1, Elsewhere 1). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
Which meter does each SEO tool use for its price
SEO tool prices look comparable until you ask what is counted. SISTRIX counts users, projects and history by package, and sells extra projects, API credits and exports as add-ons. Ahrefs counts projects, tracked keywords, crawl credits and users. SE Ranking counts projects, manager seats and daily tracked keywords. Mangools counts lookups per day.
Serpstat counts daily searches and monthly position checks, and Majestic counts analysis units. Two people on the same plan can hit different limits, which makes a headline price almost meaningless. Run one normal working week during the trial, write down which meter moved fastest, and price the plan above the one you thought you needed. The cheapest plan on the page is usually the one you outgrow in a quarter.
Log a week of real lookups, exports and audits during the trial.
Count the logins you need now, since extra users are billed on top of most plans.
Check which add-ons are billed only on annual terms.
A crawler is not a keyword database
The word SEO tool covers three different products. A crawler reads your own pages: Screaming Frog and Sitebulb do this, and Seobility does it alongside rank tracking. A keyword and ranking tool tells you where you appear and what competitors show for; Mangools, SE Ranking and AccuRanker do this at different depths. A link index maps who links to whom, which is all Majestic sells.
Buying a crawler and expecting keyword data, or buying Surfer SEO for backlink data, ends with a second invoice. The Screaming Frog pricing page lists a 500 URL free edition and an annual licence, and nothing for keywords. Decide which of the three questions you are actually trying to answer before you compare prices across them.
Write down whether you need crawling, keyword and rank data, or links.
Check that the pricing page lists the feature, not only the marketing page.
Budget a second tool if your first only answers one of the three questions.
Crawl and page limits decide how far a plan stretches
Audit tools cap how much of a site they will read, and the caps are far lower than most buyers assume. Seobility's free plan crawls 100 pages and its Premium plan 25,000 pages per crawl. Sitebulb Lite audits up to 10,000 URLs, Pro up to 500,000, expandable to 2 million. Ahrefs gives 100,000 crawl credits on Lite and 500,000 on Standard.
Screaming Frog removes the 500 URL cap with a licence, but your own memory and storage then set the ceiling. A shop with a few thousand products and faceted filters can exceed ten thousand URLs without anyone noticing. Count your real URL total first, using a log or sitemap, and compare it with the cap.
Count indexable and non-indexable URLs, not only pages in the menu.
Ask whether credits reset monthly or are consumed once.
Check whether a limit applies per project, per crawl or per month.
Exit: what happens to your data when an SEO tool ends
Ranking history is the one asset you cannot rebuild, so check how it leaves. AccuRanker exports reports as CSV, Excel, Sheets or PDF, yet its terms say user-entered data is kept for a maximum of 30 days after a subscription ends, so export before you cancel. Majestic keeps the Historic Index in Pro, which means downgrading removes access to it.
Mangools and Seobility offer free plans, which can serve as a place to park a small project afterward. SE Ranking and Serpstat run trials of 14 and 7 days respectively, enough to test an export, not to build history. Pull a full export in your first month and open the file somewhere else.
Export every report in month one and open it outside the tool.
Ask how long data is retained after cancellation.
Check whether history survives a downgrade, not only a cancellation.
What goes wrong most often when buying SEO tools software
Comparing headline plan prices across tools that count users, projects, lookups, units and documents. These are different meters, so the prices do not line up.
Buying a content tool such as Surfer SEO and expecting keyword or backlink data, or the reverse, and ending up with two subscriptions.
Starting a paid plan before counting your real URLs, then finding a crawl cap smaller than the site.
Leaving it until cancellation to export rank history, when some vendors keep data for only a short period afterwards.
07
Frequently asked questions
6 answers
What is the best SEO tools in 2026?
SISTRIX leads our ranking of 12. SISTRIX GmbH sells one product in four published packages, each cancelable monthly, with a 14-day trial. That makes the first ninety days cheap to leave.
The entry package covers one user and three projects, and extra projects, API credits and exports are paid add-ons, so the real price depends on what you export. Data history is limited to three years on the entry package.
Which SEO tools publish their pricing?
12 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
SISTRIX: Per package per month, published; 14-day trial.
Mangools: Free plan; per month or year per plan, published.
Seobility: Free plan; per month per plan, published; 14-day trial.
Screaming Frog: Free to 500 URLs; annual licence per user, published.
Sitebulb: Desktop licence per user and cloud plans, published; 14-day trial.
AccuRanker: Per month by keyword tier, published; Enterprise quoted.
Majestic: Per month per plan, published; 7-day money-back.
Ahrefs: Per month per plan, published; extra users billed.
SE Ranking: Per month per plan, published; add-ons extra; 14-day trial.
Serpstat: Per month per plan, published; 7-day trial.
Surfer SEO: Per month per plan, published; trial available.
Semrush: Free plan; per month per plan, published; extra users and add-ons billed.
The other 0 quote per organisation.
Is there a free SEO tool?
Mangools, Seobility, Screaming Frog, Semrush offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these SEO tool vendors established?
In 8 countries across 4 regions: Europe 8, North America 2, Asia-Pacific 1, Elsewhere 1.
SISTRIX: Germany.
Mangools: Slovakia.
Seobility: Germany.
Screaming Frog: United Kingdom.
Sitebulb: United Kingdom.
AccuRanker: Denmark.
Majestic: United Kingdom.
Ahrefs: Singapore.
SE Ranking: Not stated by the vendor.
Serpstat: United States.
Surfer SEO: Poland.
Semrush: United States.
What should you use instead of SISTRIX?
Mangools and Seobility are the next two on this page. Mangools is for Freelancers who want keyword, SERP and rank tools in one small bundle; Seobility is for small sites that need audits and rank tracking before committing budget.
Who should not buy SISTRIX?
Anyone needing many users or projects on the cheapest package. Extra projects, API credits and exports are paid add-ons on top of the package..
If your SEO tools product belongs among these 12, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
