SE Ranking Buyer's Checklist: 40 Questions Before You Pay

Why the trial is where you decide

SE Ranking's 14-day trial needs no card and cannot bill you, but once you pay, payments are not refunded ^[1]. That single fact shapes this whole checklist. Every question below is one to answer during the trial, while walking away still costs nothing. The answers come from SE Ranking's pricing page, help center and Terms as of 12 October 2026. The trial is generous enough for a real test. It includes 750 daily keywords, 20 AI prompts and 100,000 API credits, keeps three months of history and allows 10 research reports a day ^[2]. Spread competitor research across the 14 days instead of running everything on day one.

Treat the trial as your refund window. Three tests cover most of the risk, and if the product fails one that matters, walk away at no cost:

• Rebuild one real project with your actual keyword list, engines and locations.
• Run a site audit on a real site, with the crawler whitelisted first.
• Pull one client report and read it the way the client would.

Count keywords the way SE Ranking counts them

Daily checks, with no weekly discount

SE Ranking checks standard rankings once per day on every plan, and the help center adds that the daily frequency cannot be changed ^[3]. There is no cheaper weekly mode. Each check reads Google's top 100 results, and a Recheck Data button refreshes positions on demand between scheduled checks. If your clients watch rankings day to day, this is a reason to choose SE Ranking over Ahrefs, which tracks weekly.

Phrases times engines times locations

Core includes 2,000 tracked keywords and Growth 5,000 ^[1]. The catch is how a keyword is counted: once for every search engine it is tracked in ^[2]. Google desktop and Google mobile are separate search engines in a project, so tracking both doubles the count. Multiply phrases by engines and locations before you choose a plan. At that rate, 400 phrases in five cities on Google desktop already use Core's whole limit, while Growth's 5,000 slots cover 1,000 phrases in the same five cities. Run that sum first.

Many local businesses need mobile most, so track mobile first and add desktop only where the result differs. A dentist who tracks 150 treatment-and-city phrases on mobile only uses 150 slots per city. The same list on both devices across four suburbs uses 1,200, more than half of Core's limit before any competitor tracking. Extra keywords on Core start at US$22.40 in steps of 100, so a small overflow is cheaper than an upgrade.

Projects, including the ones you paused

Core allows 10 projects and Growth 30, and a project is tied to one website. Inactive projects still count against keyword limits, so pausing a client does not free its slots. Agencies with more than ten clients start at Growth or add the Agency Pack, which comes in 30, 50 and 100-project sizes. Two details soften the limits. Deleted projects can be restored within 30 days, and a project can be moved to another SE Ranking account, which helps when a client takes the work in-house.

Seats, sessions and guest links

Core includes one manager seat and Growth three. Only one active session is allowed at a time per login, so count the people who will work at the same moment, not everyone on the team. A session is treated as stale after about three hours without activity. Shift workers can share a seat. Two people working in parallel cannot. Extra seats cost from US$16 on the pricing page, or US$20 a month according to the Users FAQ.

Guest links are the cheaper answer for clients. Growth includes them, and they give view-only access to a project without using a seat. Local Marketing has its own guest links per location. The rule is simple: if a client only needs to see rankings, a guest link will do, and if they need to edit, they need a seat.

History and AI tracking

How far back you need to look

Core keeps six months of historical data, and Growth keeps all of it ^[1]. For year-over-year client reports, Core's six months will not be enough, so an agency that promises annual comparisons should either start on Growth or export data regularly. If you stay on Core, make that export a monthly habit. Competitive Research history is separate and goes back to February 2020.

AI answers, prompts and checks

Every plan tracks AI prompts daily: 100 on Core and 250 on Growth, across five engines. The tracker covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity. Answers vary between checks, so judge trends over weeks, not single dates. Mentions are matched against the brand name you configure, which means a variation such as ION versus ION Group can register as no mention. Enter every common spelling of the brand before the first check.

AI Search add-on packages count checks, and the vendor's formula is "1 check = 1 prompt + 1 AI platform". Twenty prompts on three engines use 60 checks. Pick your engines before you pick a package, because tracking all five engines costs five times as much as tracking one. SE Visible, a separate dashboard for AI brand visibility and sentiment, comes included with the AI Search add-on, and marketing leads who want a summary rather than prompt-level data may prefer it. Its prompt allowance is pooled across projects. It tracks 42 countries and checks daily by default, and a project can switch to weekly checks, which uses the allowance more slowly.

Agency questions: white label, the pack and leads

White label for the platform and reports is part of the Agency Pack. It lets clients log in on your own domain, with your logo and colors. If you only send PDF reports, Report Builder's logo option may be enough. The pack can only be added to an annual subscription ^[4], and the 30-project pack costs US$828 a year, on top of an annual plan paid upfront, with no refunds.

So test the pack during the trial, where it is included. Set up the white label domain, send one branded report to a friendly client and check how it looks on their side, because after the trial the only way to see it again is a year-long commitment of at least US$828. Then settle the seat question in writing. The help center says the pack lets you invite up to 10 specialists you cooperate with, while the pricing page shows 30 client seats. Client seats are view-only and cannot create projects. Ask sales which number applies before you sign.

The pack also includes the Lead Generator, a widget that offers visitors a free on-page check in exchange for their email, with 100 leads a month. It suits agencies that sell audits, and leads can go to a CRM through Zapier. Our SE Ranking for agencies guide covers the agency setup in more depth.

API credits and MCP

Every plan includes API credits: 25,000 a month on Core and 100,000 on Growth. One key covers the Data API and the Project API, and the Project API draws on plan limits rather than credits. Credit costs vary by endpoint, failed requests are free, and the rate limit is 10 requests per second. Annual-plan credits expire at the end of the cycle, while Wallet credits never expire. Beyond them, estimate volume with the calculator before choosing between the add-on, the standalone plan and the Wallet.

Two practical notes for developers. Right after a purchase, a key can return an insufficient-funds error for a few minutes while credits link to it, so wait before you debug. Keys cannot be limited to certain endpoints or IP addresses, so give each developer their own key and rotate it when they leave. As for MCP, SE Ranking's server works in Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants through the official connectors, and paid plans include it. The trial does not. If MCP is the main reason to buy, ask for a demo.

Local SEO and multiple locations

Every plan includes three Plus Local Marketing locations. Plus covers listings in 100+ directories, review management and Google Business Profile posts, and local and map rankings are checked weekly by default, which suits most single-location businesses. Profile edits made in Local Marketing are pushed to Google Business Profile through a background sync, so one person should own the profile to avoid conflicting changes. Extra locations start at US$18.40, and Lite and Plus locations can be mixed in one account. Locations you add are visible only to you, not shared with other users. Franchise and multi-branch teams should plan access before adding them.

Content, audits and research data

Writing in the platform

Content Marketing includes 25 articles on Core and 50 on Growth, with extras from US$39.20. Content Editor builds briefs and scores drafts, the AI Writer drafts text, and articles can be exported straight to WordPress with post status, author, category and publication date set at export. Content Editor fully supports English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish, plus Dutch without language processing. Teams writing in other languages get less from the editor.

Site audits and your firewall

Core audits 250,000 pages a month per account and Growth 2 million, with 1 million per project on Growth. The default crawl is 1,000 pages per audit until you raise it in settings. A large online store needs Growth. Before the first audit, check your firewall. The audit bot is SEBot-WA and operates from German IP addresses, and region blocks and Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode can stop it. Whitelist the IPs and user agent first, or the trial audit will fail. For 429 errors, lower the maximum number of requests in the audit settings. If a 403 survives whitelisting, the help center suggests turning on JavaScript rendering.

Backlinks, ads and country coverage

Backlink tables come from an analysed sample capped by plan, for example 10,000 backlinks, and the complete referring domain list needs the Data API. If link building is your main job, test a large competitor during the trial. For your own links, Backlink Monitoring imports lists from Search Console or a CSV file and checks their status every week. Paid search teams get more here than in most SEO-first tools: Competitive Research covers paid search keywords, ad copy and monthly ad history, and rank tracking can include Google Ads positions for a city or postal code.

The keyword database spans 188 locations, but depth varies widely. The vendor's data page lists 591M keywords for the USA and 769M for the United Kingdom, Germany shows 672M and France 421M, while Poland shows 9.7M and Romania 6.4M. An agency working in Central and Eastern Europe will find far thinner keyword suggestions there than in the large English-speaking markets. Check your own markets before buying.

Billing, cancellation and payment

Annual billing saves 20% but is paid upfront, and the Terms are blunt: "Payments are non-refundable, except in cases where the service wasn’t delivered as promised". Extra keywords get no partial refunds either. If your finance team requires refundable software, SE Ranking does not qualify. The Agency Pack and the API add-on require annual billing. A safe path is one or two months on monthly billing, then annual once the setup is stable. Several one-star Trustpilot reviews describe asking for credit after days of broken rank tracking and being refused. Build that risk into client contracts that promise daily reports.

The paperwork deserves ten minutes before the first payment, not after it:

• Cancelling add-ons. On annual plans, Content Marketing, extra keywords and the AI add-on cannot be canceled in the app; support has to do it. Put a reminder in the calendar a month before renewal and send the request in writing.
• Payment methods. Payments go through Stripe: cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, bank transfer or direct debit. PayPal is not available on Stripe. Companies paying by bank transfer should start two weeks before renewal.
• Currency. Stripe bills in USD, EUR, GBP or JPY, and prices read from the US are in dollars. If your company pays in another currency, the exchange rate becomes part of the price.
• VAT. Pay as a company and add your VAT ID at checkout to avoid VAT. Invoices are in the Billing section.

Switching in, staying current and getting out

Migration and legacy plans

Annual plans include free assisted migration, and imports cover Semrush, Ahrefs, AgencyAnalytics, AccuRanker and Serpstat. Custom report layouts and dashboards must be rebuilt by hand. There is a tension here. The assisted help comes with an annual plan, yet the safer test is to migrate one project first, validate it, and move the rest on a monthly plan. If the imported history turns out incomplete, you have spent one month's fee, not a year's prepayment.

Existing customers have a different question. Plans changed in October 2024, and legacy plans count keywords differently and may lack new tools such as Insights and Share of Voice. Before switching, compare your keyword count under the new per-engine rule. The help center invites legacy users to switch to a new plan at the same price to access the tools and future updates, but reviewers on Trustpilot describe moves that cost them more. Price your setup first.

Leaving cleanly, and the smaller checks

After a canceled plan expires, projects stay stored for 60 days, and then they are deleted. Deleting an account is irreversible and removes all data. Export before you leave. Then delete. A few smaller checks round out the list:

• Rank accuracy. SE Ranking stores a cached copy of the results for most checks. To compare manually, use an incognito window and the same location as the project. Several Trustpilot reviewers reported inaccurate rankings after Google changes, so check a sample yourself.
• Training. The Academy is free for paying and trial users. The beginner course takes about two hours, the 60-question exam up to two hours more, passing needs 80% or more, and the certificate lasts a year. There is a seven-day wait between attempts, so plan certification for a new hire's first fortnight.
• Contradictions. SE Ranking's pages disagree on client seats (10 or 30), extra seat prices (US$16 or US$20) and API credits, where the US$45 API add-on brings 3M credits on one page and 250K a year on another. None of them blocks a purchase. Each one is a question to put to sales in writing.

SE Ranking next to Ahrefs and Semrush

Ahrefs Lite costs US$129 a month but tracks weekly and has no trial, and Semrush's SEO plan costs US$139 a month. If backlink depth matters most, Ahrefs wins. If daily tracking and price matter most, SE Ranking does. With no refunds after payment, the trial gap matters. Our Ahrefs vs SE Ranking comparison and SE Ranking vs Semrush comparison go through the rest head to head.

The short version

Answer six questions before paying. How many keywords, once you multiply phrases by engines and locations? How many people will work at the same time? Do you need white label, and can you commit to a year for it? How much AI tracking do you want? Can you live without refunds? And who will cancel annual add-ons before they renew? If all six answers fit, start monthly on Core, move to annual only once the setup is stable.