Serpstat vs Semrush 2026: Price, Seats, Tracking and API Compared

The short verdict

Serpstat and Semrush both sell all-in-one SEO platforms with rank tracking, audits, research tools, an API and an MCP server. They differ on price, seats, tracking volume and terms. Serpstat is cheaper at every step and includes the API, MCP and three users on its $129 Team plan ^[1]. Semrush costs more but gives more daily lookups, more add-on toolkits and stronger AI visibility features ^[2]. Budget teams pick Serpstat. Broad marketing teams pick Semrush.

We read both pricing pages from the US in October 2026, along with Serpstat's help center and changelog and Semrush's knowledge base and pricing FAQ, and scored both on the same eight-axis rubric. Serpstat scores 3.80 and Semrush 3.77. Close, for different reasons. Serpstat's lead in value for money and integrations is offset by weaker docs, ease of use and support terms, which is why two products with very different price tags end up only 0.05 points apart.

What each plan costs

Both vendors sell four published tiers, Serpstat as Individual, Team, Team x2 and Agency, and Semrush as SEO, Starter, Pro+ and Advanced, with Semrush Enterprise quoted on request. Annual billing helps Serpstat more. Semrush saves up to 17%, while Serpstat saves 27.5% on Individual, 22.5% on Team, 19.1% on Team x2 and 17.8% on Agency, by our arithmetic, so its discount is larger at every level. Both renew automatically.

Entry and middle plans

Serpstat Individual costs $69 a month, or $50 billed annually, for 5 projects and 10,000 position checks a month. Semrush SEO costs $139, or $117.33 billed annually, for 5 websites and 500 keywords tracked daily. Serpstat costs half, while Semrush gives far more daily lookups. Over a year the entry plans differ by $807.96 on annual billing, $600 against $1,407.96. In the middle, Serpstat Team costs $129 a month with unlimited projects, 500 searches a day, 50,000 position checks, 150,000 audit pages, 200,000 API credits, MCP and three users. Semrush Starter costs $199 with 5 websites, 500 keywords and MCP access, and Pro+ costs $299 for 15 websites and 1,500 keywords. Serpstat's middle is lower and wider.

Top plans

Serpstat Agency costs $499 a month, or $410 billed annually, with 30 users, white label and phone support. Semrush Advanced costs $549, or $455.67 billed annually, with 40 websites, 5,000 tracked keywords and API data integration, and Semrush Enterprise above it is quoted. At the top, the two are closest in price, but they buy different things: Serpstat spends the money on seats and agency features, Semrush on websites, tracking volume and API data. For the full plan-by-plan breakdown, see our Serpstat pricing guide.

Why seats decide most of the bill

Serpstat includes 1, 3, 6 and 30 users across its four plans. Semrush plans include one user, with more sold as an add-on from $45 a month each, while Serpstat lists no single-seat price; you move up a plan instead. For a team that works in the tool every day, this is the biggest single difference in cost. Three users on Semrush SEO cost at least $229 a month. On Serpstat Team, they cost $129. An in-house team of three with one site gets everything it needs on Serpstat Team, while on Semrush it pays for two extra seats. If the team also runs social and ads, Semrush's toolkits may justify the gap.

The gap compounds over time. Billed annually, three years of Serpstat Team cost $3,600 and three years of Semrush SEO cost $4,223.88. Add two Semrush seats at $45 a month and the gap grows by $3,240, to $7,463.88 for the same headcount. Serpstat costs less than half as much. Agencies see the same pattern. A five-person agency pays $169 a month billed annually for Serpstat Team x2 with six seats, while five users on Semrush SEO cost at least $319 a month month-to-month. Over a year that is $2,028 against $3,828, a gap of $1,800, before Semrush's annual discount is applied to the base plan.

Research volume and rank tracking

Daily searches favor Semrush

Semrush's FAQ gives SEO users 3,000 searches a day in Analytics reports, Pro+ 5,000 and Advanced 10,000. Serpstat gives 100 searches a day on Individual, 500 on Team and 5,000 on Agency. Here Semrush is far ahead. The definitions differ slightly, since Semrush counts requests to Analytics reports and Serpstat counts searches for sites, keywords and links. In both cases, though, every report you open spends the allowance, so heavy researchers should compare these two numbers before anything else. A freelancer on Serpstat Individual will find 100 daily searches tight for research, though plenty for tracking and audits.

Tracked keywords favor Serpstat

Semrush tracks 500 keywords daily on SEO and Starter, 1,500 on Pro+ and 5,000 on Advanced. Serpstat counts position checks instead: 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 and 500,000 a month, or roughly 333, 1,667, 3,333 and 16,667 keywords a day. At the middle tier the gap is starkest. Serpstat Team covers about 1,667 keywords daily for $129, while Semrush Starter tracks 500 for $199, so Serpstat tracks more than three times as many keywords for about two-thirds of the price. Both update daily, so frequency is a tie.

Serpstat also allows unlimited projects from Team up, against 5 websites on Semrush SEO and Starter, 15 on Pro+ and 40 on Advanced. Agencies with many small clients fit Serpstat better. One more detail matters for new pages: after Google disabled the num=100 parameter in September 2025, Serpstat chose to keep full top-100 tracking without raising prices. Semrush's pricing page does not describe its tracking depth. If you need positions 50 to 100, ask Semrush directly.

Keyword, competitor and backlink research

Both show volume, difficulty, intent and CPC. Serpstat covers 230 Google databases plus Bing US, adds semantic AI Search and gives its full keyword module on every plan. Its statistics page shows 3.7 billion keywords for the US. In February 2025 it added over 25 million Amazon US and over 16 million Perplexity AI search suggestions. Semrush's SEO plan includes basic keyword research, with the fuller research and optimization tools reserved for Starter, which costs $60 a month more. Semrush's pricing page does not list database sizes, and neither Semrush page we read mentions Bing data. Test your own market in both.

For competitors, Serpstat's Site Analysis shows organic and paid competitors, top pages and keyword gaps. Semrush SEO includes competitor analysis, with fuller tools from Starter and a Traffic and Market toolkit that goes further for extra money. For traffic, Serpstat estimates organic visits with a machine-learning model introduced in August 2025, while Semrush has the dedicated product. Backlinks are harder to call. Serpstat's own pages give its index as 529 billion and 1.1 trillion links, and we did not compare link indexes directly. Run the same domain through both trials and count referring domains.

Audits, clustering and the extra toolkits

Serpstat audits 30,000 pages a month on Individual and 150,000 on Team, and renders JavaScript from Team up. Semrush includes Site Audit on SEO and an AI-ready Site Audit from Starter, but the pricing page we read does not list JavaScript rendering by plan, so single-page apps should test both. In August 2026 Serpstat added eight URL checks, including uppercase letters, double slashes, tracking parameters and internal search pages, the kind of duplicate-page problems that grow on large ecommerce and media sites. Clustering is a clear Serpstat win: its tool takes up to 50,000 keywords per project and groups them by shared top-30 URLs, while Semrush lists keyword cannibalization analysis from Pro+.

The bigger split is in how the two are sold. Semrush's model is "Pay only for the tools you use", with Content, Local, Traffic and Market and Advertising toolkits on top ^[3]. Serpstat's model is one plan with everything inside except LLM Brand Monitor. So Semrush's content tools are deeper, but Serpstat bundles AI writing from Team up. Serpstat grew out of an SEO and PPC agency and includes ad research in its plans, plus a Local SEO tool and city-level tracking. Semrush is modular. Serpstat is bundled.

Reporting and white label tilt the other way for small agencies. Semrush sells a Base Report add-on at $10 a month and a Pro Report at $20 with branding and white-labeling. Serpstat includes custom and scheduled reports from Team, with 5 scheduled reports, but keeps white label for Agency at $410 a month billed annually. For a small agency that needs white label, Semrush is cheaper. Both are well connected: Serpstat lists Google Sheets, Looker Studio, Airbyte, SEOtools for Excel, Reportz and an n8n node, and Semrush has an App Center plus Google Analytics and Search Console integrations.

API, MCP and AI visibility

Serpstat's API starts on Team at $129 with 200,000 credits a month, while Semrush lists API data integration on Advanced at $549. In yearly terms, the cheapest API access costs $1,200 on Serpstat Team and $5,468.04 on Semrush Advanced, both billed annually, before Semrush's separately sold units. Neither lets you bank usage. Semrush says "Unused units will expire instead of being added to the renewed amount", and Serpstat's credits also reset each cycle, at one credit per result row. Serpstat's limit is one request per second below Agency, so a nightly job of 3,000 calls takes about 50 minutes. That suits dashboards and AI agents. A live product needs faster limits.

MCP follows the same pattern. Semrush includes it from Starter at $199, while Serpstat's runs on API credits and needs Team at $129. Semrush MCP connects ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Cursor, VS Code and Claude Code, and it is read-only. Serpstat's HTTP version works with Claude and ChatGPT, and its local version adds Claude Code, Gemini CLI and Cursor. Both cover the main clients.

AI visibility is where Semrush leads for real. Starter tracks 50 prompts daily, Pro+ 100 and Advanced 200, across Google Search, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Serpstat's SEO plans do not track chatbot prompts; that job belongs to its separate LLM Brand Monitor, free for 10 checks and 2 projects a month or $39 a month for 200 checks on Pro. Serpstat Team plus Pro costs $168 a month, still below Semrush Starter, but you work in a second product with its own dashboard. Serpstat does track AI Overview positions in Rank Tracker, at two credits per keyword and region.

Trials, refunds and cancellation

Both offer seven free days, Serpstat on Individual or Team, and both check the card with a small charge that is returned. Semrush charges a nominal amount and refunds it at once; Serpstat charges $1 and returns it within half an hour. Serpstat starts auto-renewal with the trial, so switch it off on day one. On free plans, Semrush is the more useful: it gives 10 reports a day, tracks 10 keywords and audits 100 pages, while Serpstat Freemium gives 10 searches a day, 10 results per report and 10 audit pages.

Refunds are thin on both sides. Semrush refunds according to its official refund policy, and Serpstat's terms call payments non-refundable, considering justified requests case by case ^[4]. Neither page we read promises a money-back window, so assume none. Cancellation is simpler at Semrush, which lets you cancel, downgrade or upgrade at any time. Serpstat's terms ask for emailed notice 15 days before expiry, while its help center offers a self-serve toggle. An annual subscriber who relies only on the toggle may still be held to the terms. The safe routine is to switch renewal off and email support. Serpstat keeps data 2 to 100 months after a plan lapses. Export before you leave either.

Support, documentation and what users say

Serpstat offers chat and email to all users, priority chat on Team and phone on Agency, while Semrush Enterprise lists a dedicated account manager and 24/7 support. For small teams, Serpstat's support is more personal. Both run large help centers: Serpstat's was rewritten in 2026 and it keeps a public changelog, while Semrush's knowledge base covers each toolkit, the API and MCP. Semrush's is bigger. Serpstat's is newer. On scale, Serpstat began in 2013 inside Netpeak in Odesa and went standalone in 2015; Semrush is the larger company with more toolkits.

Semrush has far more reviews than Serpstat on every platform, and both score low on Trustpilot. Trustpilot is a poor guide for both, because billing disputes dominate, and Serpstat's sample there is too small to compare. That is why our sentiment axis uses only platforms with at least 30 reviews, G2 in both cases. One last warning: Serpstat's own Semrush comparison page still compares its Team plan with the retired Semrush Guru plan at $208 a month. Ignore that table.

Who should pick which

Pick Serpstat if you need daily tracking of many keywords, an API or MCP, and several users on a tight budget, or keyword clustering and PPC research in one plan, and you can live with its terms. A freelancer with five sites pays $50 a month billed annually against $117.33 for Semrush SEO, and developers get 200,000 API credits and MCP for $129. For prototypes, Serpstat wins.

Pick Semrush if one researcher needs thousands of lookups a day, or you want AI prompt tracking inside the plan, specialist toolkits, a generous free tier, cheap white label and simple cancellation. To switch, export Position Tracking data from Semrush; since March 2026 Serpstat's Import Position History tab detects Semrush files automatically, and its team offers help moving history. Run both for a month. For other options, see our Serpstat alternatives guide.

The bottom line

Serpstat wins on price, seats, tracking volume and API access. Semrush wins on daily lookups, AI prompt tracking, toolkit range, white label for small agencies and simpler cancellation. For a small team that tracks and audits, Serpstat gives more for less, and the gap widens with every extra seat. For a marketing department that wants one vendor for everything, Semrush is worth its premium. The right one depends on your team. Try both in the same week and compare the same keywords before you commit.