Semrush AI in 2026: AI Visibility, Copilot, MCP and the API

Three kinds of AI, three different price tags

Semrush now sells AI in three forms: tracking how AI assistants mention your brand, AI features built into its existing tools, and access for your own AI assistants through MCP and the API. They sit in different plans and cost different amounts, which is where most of the confusion starts. We read the pricing pages, the help center and Semrush news releases from the US on October 12, 2026.

The short answer depends on the job. To track your brand in ChatGPT, Google's AI results, Gemini and Perplexity, buy the AI Visibility toolkit alone at US$99 a month per domain, billed annually ^[1], or Starter, which adds the full SEO toolkit ^[2]. To use Semrush data inside your own assistant, Starter and Pro+ include 50,000 MCP units ^[3]. The AI writing tools are a separate purchase again. They live in the Content toolkit, a US$60 monthly subscription.

AI Visibility: the toolkit and the plans that bundle it

The standalone toolkit is the cheapest way in. Beyond the prompts in the table, it includes AI visibility reports for any domain, mentions from ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini and Perplexity, competitor and prompt research, and an AI readiness audit. For a single brand that only wants to know how AI assistants talk about it, that is the whole job. Starter, Pro+ and Advanced bundle the SEO toolkit with AI Visibility and track 50, 100 and 200 prompts a day respectively ^[2]. On annual billing, Starter costs US$66.17 a month more than AI Visibility alone and adds the full SEO toolkit, by our arithmetic. The trap is the US$139 SEO plan, which carries no prompt-tracking quota at all.

Reading the AI Visibility reports

AI Visibility is a 0 to 100 benchmark of how often your brand appears in AI answers compared with competitors. Mentions count the prompts where your brand appears, while Citations count the AI responses that cite your domain. Monthly Audience estimates the total query audience for the topics where you appear. The score is relative, so competitors can move it even when nothing on your side has changed. Prompt Research shows which topics people ask AI about most: AI Topic Volume estimates how often a topic is asked, and Topic Difficulty runs from 0 to 100% to reflect the brands that dominate the answers.

Visibility Overview lists two kinds of opportunity. Topic Opportunities are prompts where competitors appear and you do not; Source Opportunities are sites that AI answers cite when mentioning competitors but not you. The second list is the practical one. It names the pages that shape AI answers in your category, and they are often review sites and publishers you can pitch. Competitor Research goes further, with Weak topics, where rivals are mentioned more often, and Missing topics, where they appear and you do not. Its source lists split into Missing, Shared, Strong and Unique, mirroring the logic of Keyword Gap. Use both gaps together.

Prompt Tracking and Brand Performance

Positions mean different things on each engine

Prompt Tracking monitors your daily visibility for a custom set of prompts in ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Gemini. You can type prompts, import them from TXT or CSV, or take suggestions, and reports show AI Visibility, mentions, owned sources, topic volume and average position. Estimated traffic and share of voice are not available for AI engines yet. Positions need care. In ChatGPT Search, Semrush ranks each domain in the citation area from top to bottom, while in Google AI Mode the answer itself counts as position 1 and citations follow as 2, 3 and so on. Compare trends within one engine, not across them.

Read the answers, not only the score

Each tracked prompt has a View SERP link that opens the actual ChatGPT, AI Mode or Gemini answer Semrush captured. That snapshot shows which domains were cited and how your brand was described. Read a sample every week. A score alone hides whether a mention is a recommendation or a warning, and only the captured text tells you which one you are getting.

Brand Performance

Brand Performance reports cover share of voice, sentiment, narrative drivers and the questions people ask about your brand. Share of voice is your percentage of mentions against competitors, and key sentiment drivers are the themes behind positive or negative perception. One detail can catch agencies out. Changing the tracked domain locks the slot for 14 days, so pick the domain carefully before you start.

How far to trust the visibility numbers

Semrush says its AI visibility data rests on a database of 317 million prompts and on answers captured as users see them, rather than through the models' APIs. It also uses AI search clickstream data and Google's keyword data for AI Overviews. Even the size of that database is not consistent: the help center's overview says 289 million+, the data article and the Claude connector release say 317 million, and the Semrush One page says 239 million+.

These are Semrush's descriptions of its own method. No outside audit is cited. Different dates may explain it, but nothing on the pages says so. Until an independent study compares Semrush's captured answers with what real users see across many locations and accounts, treat the visibility score as a trend line for your own brand rather than as an exact measure of reach.

AI checks inside the SEO tools you already use

Site Audit and AI crawlers

Site Audit adds an AI Search Health score. It reflects whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, whether elements such as structured data and llms.txt are present, and whether technical blockers exist. A separate widget counts pages blocked for each of 8 major AI crawlers in your robots.txt. Semrush sorts AI bots into on-demand fetchers such as ChatGPT-User, search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, training bots such as GPTBot and Google-Extended, and traditional search bots. Blocking training bots does not affect search visibility, Semrush notes. Our Site Audit guide covers the rest of the tool.

Keyword research, rank tracking and Copilot

Personal Keyword Difficulty and Topical Authority use large language models to measure the distance between a keyword's topic and your domain's main topics, and Potential Traffic estimates what ranking would bring your site. Semrush says these are included in any paid subscription; the free plan does not show them. The classic reports carry AI data too. The Keyword Magic Tool filters keywords that trigger AI Overviews, Organic Research counts a domain's keywords that trigger them, with or without a link to that domain, and Semrush Sensor tracks how often they appear across industries. None of this needs an AI toolkit.

Position Tracking, meanwhile, monitors rankings daily across Google, AI Overviews, devices and locations. That is a separate measure from Prompt Tracking, which watches chat answers. A site can rank first on Google and be absent from the AI Overview above it. Copilot, Semrush's AI assistant on the project dashboard, reads Site Audit, Organic Rankings, Keyword Gap, Backlink Gap, Backlinks and Position Tracking, then lists alerts and prioritized suggestions. Semrush says it is part of every subscription. It needs projects set up first. Without data, it has nothing to say.

Measuring the traffic AI sends

My Reports can filter Google Analytics 4 widgets by AI referral traffic, showing sessions and conversions from AI engines in scheduled reports. This measures what AI actually sends you, not what Semrush estimates, so pair it with the visibility score. Mentions that send no visits are worth less. For competitors, the Traffic & Market toolkit includes an AI Traffic dashboard that estimates the traffic they receive from AI assistants, tracking referrals from 21 services, including chatgpt.com, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, perplexity.ai and deepseek.com. That toolkit is priced separately, from US$289 a month.

AI that writes, advertises and posts for you

The Content toolkit

The AI Article Generator writes articles from a topic or an SEO brief, then an optimizer suggests fixes for Google and AI search. Drafts can be published to WordPress, Mailchimp or Semrush's Social Poster, and Semrush's own advice is to add human review before publishing. Inside the same toolkit, Chat creates, edits and repurposes content from prompts, while Board shows drafts and briefs as cards that can be shared with teammates. One limit is stated plainly: Chat and Board do not connect with other Semrush tools. It is a writing space, not a research assistant. The toolkit costs US$60 a month.

Ads AI Agent and GBP AI Agent

The Advertising toolkit includes Ads AI Agent, a chatbot that reads a connected Google Ads account and answers questions such as which campaigns waste budget. It compares performance with industry benchmarks, and its suggestions can be applied through Ads Launch Assistant. The Advertising toolkit costs US$99 or US$220 a month. For local businesses, GBP AI Agent keeps a Google Business Profile active on its own: it publishes posts every 7 days by default, adds a photo every 10 days and replies to reviews within 24 hours, in the tone you choose. It comes with the Local Base plan, priced per location. Cancel, and all automations stop.

App Center apps with their own prices

Some AI tools are App Center apps outside the main plans. AI Marketing Agent costs US$79 a month with a 7-day trial, and extra workspaces cost US$50 a month each. LLM Gap Analyzer, built by TopicRanker, costs US$49 a month for 30 analyses of each type, covering Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. Running the same article, keyword or prompt twice in a month uses two of those 30 searches. Another 30 searches cost US$29 a month, and unlimited use costs US$59. Gemini and Claude are listed as coming soon.

Semrush inside your own assistant: MCP

What MCP does and which plans include it

Semrush MCP lets an AI assistant query Semrush data in plain language. It connects ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Cursor, VS Code and Claude Code, and setup uses OAuth or an API key. The connection is read-only, so assistants can retrieve data but cannot change it ^[3]. Starter, Pro+ and the legacy Pro and Guru plans include 50,000 MCP API units that refresh on the renewal date. Advanced and the legacy Business plan need a separate package of 2, 5, 10 or 20 million units, and traffic and market data through MCP needs a Trends API plan. Every query consumes units, so be specific: the top 50 keywords in the US cost fewer units than all keywords globally.

The ChatGPT app, the Claude connector and a plan mismatch

Semrush launched an official ChatGPT app on December 17, 2025; the release says Semrush customers on Enterprise, EDU, Business, Pro and Plus plans can use it. Its Claude connector followed on August 26, 2026, described as the third MCP integration with a major LLM. Here the documents part ways. The Claude release says the connector is available to all Semrush One and SEO Classic subscribers, while the MCP help article lists only Starter, Pro+, Pro and Guru as including units and asks Advanced and Business users to buy a package. Neither mentions the new SEO plan. If you are buying a plan mainly to connect Semrush to Claude or ChatGPT, get written confirmation from support first.

The API and the rules on your data

The Standard API and the Trends API

The Standard API, with Analytics and Projects endpoints, is an add-on for the Business tier of the SEO toolkit only. After upgrading, the unit balance starts at zero, packages come in 2, 5, 10 or 20 million units, and unused units expire at renewal instead of rolling over. Checking the balance is a free call. The Trends API serves Traffic & Market data, is available only to paid users and comes in two plans, with a default limit of 10,000 requests a month. Semrush's use cases include monitoring up to 200 domains at once with history back to 2017. Pricing comes from sales.

Rate limits, caching and AI training

The API terms cap use at 10 requests per second from one IP address and 10 simultaneous requests per user. Data received may not be cached for more than one month without Semrush's written consent, so a dashboard built on Semrush data has to be designed around that month. On AI training, Semrush's AI terms say "Semrush does not train or develop its models" ^[4], and that it does not let third-party providers train on user input. The same terms name OpenAI among its providers. The general Terms of Service go the other way for customers: they forbid using Semrush output to train AI models. That rule matters to anyone feeding exports into their own model.

What Semrush AI costs in practice

Three setups

A single brand tracking AI mentions only pays US$99 a month on AI Visibility, billed annually. A small team wanting SEO plus AI tracking and MCP lands on Starter at US$165.17 a month on annual billing. A content team adding the AI writer pays for Starter plus Content, US$225.17 a month by our arithmetic. Add Traffic & Market for the AI Traffic dashboard, and the total passes US$500. At the top, Semrush's unpriced enterprise offer tracks unlimited prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek, and adds forecasting, ROI attribution and SSO.

Start free, then decide who pays

Before paying, use the free plan. Domain Overview shows an AI Visibility Score, mentions, cited pages and per-platform breakdowns for any domain, and the free tools page adds an AI search visibility checker, an AI Overviews checker and an AI traffic checker. Run them on your site and two rivals. Then decide. Brands whose buyers ask ChatGPT or Gemini for recommendations should track prompts. Agencies reporting AI visibility to clients need Pro+ or Advanced for prompt volume, and developers who want Semrush data inside an assistant need Starter or Pro+ for MCP. Everyone else can wait.

The bottom line

Semrush's AI offer is broad but scattered across plans, toolkits and App Center apps. The core is good value at Starter: SEO, 50 tracked prompts and MCP for US$199 a month, or US$165.17 a month on annual billing. Watch the edges. The SEO plan has no prompt quota, the AI writer is a separate toolkit, and the plan lists for MCP and the Claude connector disagree. Run the free checks first, buy the smallest plan that covers your job, and read the captured answers rather than trusting the score alone. Our Semrush pricing guide breaks down every plan.