Is Semrush Free? The Free Plan, Free Tools and the 7-Day Trial

Yes, three ways, and all of them narrow

Semrush is free in three ways: a Free plan, a set of free tools that need no account, and a 7-day trial of the paid plans. All three are real, and all three are narrow. The Free plan costs US$0 a month and needs no credit card ^[1]. It includes 1 demo project, 10 reports a day across the main tools, help center onboarding and some AI Visibility features. The trial unlocks paid limits but needs a card and blocks exports. After it, plans run from US$139 a month. This guide uses Semrush's pricing page, help center, refund policy and its own blog guide to the free account, read from the US on 12 October 2026.

For most people, the sensible order is to use the free plan for a week or two, decide which reports they would actually open every day, and only then start the trial with that list in hand. The free plan is a viewer, not a workspace. The trial is a short, card-backed test that turns into a bill on its own, so it deserves a plan before you press the button.

The free plan: ten lookups a day

Signing up takes an email address and a password. Semrush's December 2025 guide to the free account lists the limits tool by tool: Domain Overview, keyword research, competitor research and Backlinks each allow 10 queries a day, Site Audit covers 100 pages, Position Tracking covers 10 keywords and SEO Ideas has limited access ^[2]. The pricing FAQ frames the same cap as 10 analytics requests a day, against 3,000 on Pro, 5,000 on Guru and 10,000 on Business. Every new search in any keyword tool counts. Semrush's own guide admits that the 10 queries can run out in a single research session. Plan each search. Ten goes fast.

Keyword research on the free plan

The Keyword Magic Tool shows 10 results per report in the interface and exports none. Export, metric updates and the AI-powered metrics, Personal Keyword Difficulty and Potential Traffic, are all missing from a free subscription. Keyword Strategy Builder offers no clustering or metric refreshes on free, and keyword lists cannot be shared. You can check a few keywords' volume, difficulty and intent. Building a full keyword list is a paid job. Our Semrush keyword research guide shows where each of those limits bites in the workflow, step by step.

Domain Overview and the AI visibility snapshot

Domain Overview on the free plan shows Authority Score, organic traffic, ranking keywords and backlinks for any domain. It also shows an AI Visibility Score, mentions, cited pages and a breakdown by AI platform. Ten lookups a day is enough for your own site and several competitors, and this is the most useful free report today. The pricing page promises a limited set of AI Visibility features, and Semrush's comparison table shows that this means basic metrics in Domain Overview. Prompt tracking, Brand Performance and share of voice start with Starter. The free snapshot tells you whether AI assistants mention you. It does not tell you why.

Audits, tracking and the smaller free tools

The free Site Audit crawls up to 100 URLs a month and flags indexing problems, slow pages, broken links, HTTPS warnings and issues that limit AI visibility. A small brochure site fits. A store with a few hundred product pages does not, and Semrush suggests auditing the homepage, product pages and posts that matter most. Position Tracking covers 10 keywords for one website, with daily updates and tracking down to ZIP-code level. Ten keywords cover a local business's core services. They will not cover a blog, and Starter tracks 500 keywords while Pro+ tracks 1,500.

The Backlinks tool allows 10 searches a day and shows link quality, referring domains and the pages that attract the most links, for your own site or a competitor's. That is enough to spot a rival's best linked content, but not enough for a backlink audit. A free account can also run one On Page SEO Checker campaign with up to 10 pages or keywords, and the SEO Writing Assistant allows one piece of content, scored for SEO, tone, originality and readability. Both work for testing on one page. Neither scales to a site.

Copilot, local and social

Copilot, Semrush's AI assistant, appears in the free SEO dashboard in a basic form and starts making suggestions once Position Tracking or Site Audit is running. Semrush describes it as part of every subscription, drawing on Site Audit, Organic Rankings, Keyword Gap, Backlinks and Position Tracking, so on a free account it has little data to work with.

For local businesses, a basic Listing Management scan grades your online presence, counts NAP citations to fix and shows your average rating and review count, and Map Rank Tracker gives 50 free credits a month. Semrush also offers a free AI business description generator, a review link generator and a review QR code generator. For a single location, that is genuinely useful. On the social side, the free Social Tracker shows 30 days of performance, follower growth, posting activity, top posts and competitor comparisons, and a limited Social Content AI produces 27 content ideas with captions. These are samples of the paid Social toolkit, which starts at US$20 a month.

Free tools that need no account

Semrush's free tools page lists checkers that need no sign-up at all: an SEO checker, a website authority checker, AI search and AI Overviews visibility checkers, an AI traffic checker, keyword tools, a backlink checker, a website traffic checker, a SERP checker and a plagiarism checker. The free AI writing tools allow three uses a day and up to 300 words each. These are quick one-off checks rather than a workspace, but they cost nothing and need no sign-up.

The limits reset on different clocks. The 10 daily lookups and the AI writing tools reset each day, while the Site Audit allowance is 100 pages a month and Map Rank Tracker credits are 50 a month. Spread a month's audit over the pages that earn money, and spend daily lookups early in the week, when you plan.

Free next to the paid plans

The table follows Semrush's free account guide, with prices from the pricing page. That comparison leaves out the US$139 SEO plan, which tracks the same 500 keywords as Starter without the AI prompt quota. What the free plan lacks is easy to list: no exports from the Keyword Magic Tool, no PKD, no clustering, one project and no historical data. Projects and data on a free account do carry over when you move to a paid plan, Semrush says. That makes the free plan a reasonable place to set up tracking early. Ten keywords tracked for three months give you a baseline, so a paid plan starts with history instead of a blank chart.

How the 7-day trial works

Most Semrush toolkits include a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel at any time before it ends. The SEO + AI Search plans, Traffic & Market, Local, Content, Social, Advertising and AI PR all offer 7 days free, while the Agency Partners Platform add-on offers 14 days. Trials can be started for different toolkits at different times, and no sales call is required. A Local trial can only be added while an SEO or Traffic & Market trial is still running, and it ends with them. Each account can add up to 3 extra users, who get 7 days of free access to the main account's toolkits, except Traffic & Market. A small team can test together.

The card, and the missing exports

Unlike the free plan, a trial needs a credit card. Semrush charges a nominal amount to check the card and refunds it once confirmed, and you are not charged until the trial ends. The pricing FAQ lists Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express and UnionPay; the billing help article lists the first four and refuses virtual cards. The bigger catch is data. Trials give access to most core features, "but exporting data is disabled during the trial period" ^[3], and the rule covers every trial, even where the paid plan includes exports. Semrush's September 2026 trial guide suggests exporting your gap lists and audit issues before the trial ends, which the help center says trials do not allow.

One shot per toolkit, and the SEO exception

Each toolkit trial can be activated once per account, and extending or upgrading a trial is possible only in limited cases, through customer support. Seven days is the whole window. Write down the domains, competitors, keywords and locations you want to test before you start the clock, so that none of the seven days goes on setup. The SEO and Traffic & Market toolkits carry a stricter rule: anyone who has, or had, a trial or paid subscription for any toolkit is not eligible for free access to them. Start a Social trial first and you lose the SEO trial. If SEO is what you want to test, start with it.

When the trial ends: the charge and the way out

After seven days, the account converts to the plan you chose unless you cancel, and the refund policy says the first payment is charged automatically at the end of the trial ^[4]. You pay the standard rate for that plan. Set a reminder for day five. Canceling uses the same process as a paid subscription: the request goes through a form, and for unpaid trials and free subscriptions it takes effect within 3 business days of a properly submitted request. Incomplete answers in the form can lead to a denied request, so fill it in carefully rather than in a hurry on the last evening.

Refunds are tight. Monthly plans are not refundable, and a refund is possible within 7 days only on a first annual purchase. So a missed trial cancellation on a monthly plan means one full month paid. Of our 100 recent Semrush Trustpilot reviews, 39 mention a trial. Many describe charges they did not expect.

What you pay after the trial

These prices come from the pricing page, and annual billing is charged for the whole year upfront. Extra users cost from US$45 a month each with an SEO plan. Students get no individual plan; Semrush's education program gives accredited universities free access for three months, and says it has worked with 350+ universities and 25,000+ students. A student working alone should use the free plan and the Academy. For the full plan-by-plan breakdown, see our Semrush pricing guide.

Free plan, trial or straight to paid

The free plan and the trial differ on five points. The free plan needs no card; the trial does. The free plan lasts as long as you like; the trial lasts 7 days. The free plan caps lookups at 10 a day; the trial opens paid limits. Neither allows exports. Only the trial turns into a bill. Semrush says its free plan suits beginners, small businesses testing the tool, freelancers checking an idea and creators with one site, and the limits agree. One site, 10 keywords and 10 lookups a day fit a hobby site or a single shop. They do not fit client work.

Anyone managing clients, a site over 100 pages, or more than 10 keywords should skip straight to paid, as should anyone who needs to export data. For them, the honest route is one paid month at US$139 on the SEO plan, which can be canceled before renewal. That costs less than a forgotten annual plan. Ahrefs Free gives verified site owners Web Analytics, a Site Audit with 170+ checks and Site Explorer for their own sites, and SE Ranking offers a 14-day trial with no card. Semrush's free plan is the only one of the three that looks at any domain, owned or not, within its daily cap. For your own site alone, Ahrefs' free offer goes deeper.

A free-plan week and a seven-day trial plan

On the free plan, a simple routine fits inside the limits. Use Domain Overview on your site and two rivals each week. Track your 10 most valuable keywords, audit your 100 most important pages each month, and spend the remaining lookups on keyword checks. That covers the basics without touching a card, and it builds the ranking history that a paid plan can later inherit.

For the trial, Semrush's own guide suggests six steps: review organic rankings, start Position Tracking, run a keyword and AI competitor gap, run a Site Audit, compare backlinks and check AI visibility. Start Position Tracking on day one, since it updates daily and needs time to collect data. Keep anything you want to reuse inside Semrush, because exports stay off. Cancel by day six if it is not for you.

The bottom line

Semrush is free in three limited ways: a free plan for one site, free tools for quick checks, and a 7-day trial with no exports. The free plan is worth keeping for its AI visibility snapshot and as a place to start tracking early. The trial is worth starting only when you are ready to judge the paid plan in a week, with the SEO trial first and a reminder set before the automatic charge.