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Is anyone else questioning whether SEMrush is still worth the price?
Posted by on November 3, 2025 at 9:03 pmI’ve been using SEMrush since 2010, so a good fifteen years now. It’s been one of those tools I’ve relied on especially for technical SEO audits and automated reporting – both of which it does really well. The reporting suite, in particular, has been a great for client work.
But lately, I’m starting to question the value. I’m paying around $600 a month, and while that used to feel justified, it doesn’t anymore. The data’s been inconsistent – sometimes completely missing for certain sites – and I’ve noticed more bugs recently. For a premium tool, it’s not exactly behaving like one.
They also removed that lead generation widget, the one that let you embed a free SEO audit on your website. It was a good way to bring in leads without needing extra integrations, and it’s strange that they ditched it.
I’ve tried plenty of alternatives, but nothing quite matches the balance. I really rate Ahrefs though. Its Site Explorer and Keyword Research tools are both excellent – cleaner, faster, and far easier to use than SEMrush, in my opinion – but it’s missing that automated reporting piece and the visualisation of technical audits have on Semrush.
With how fast AI tools are developing, you’d think there’d be more affordable, data-driven options popping up by now. Something that combines accuracy, automation, and usability without the enterprise price tag.
Curious if anyone else feels the same. Have you found a better mix of features elsewhere, or are we all just reluctantly paying for SEMrush because it’s still the most “complete” option out there?
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1 Reply
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I’ve used Mangools for a long time.
Ahrefs and SEMRush are just more comprehensive though for serious SEO research.
Even with AI, crawling sites at scale gets expensive fast. That’s why these tools and Google still dominate.
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My opinion is that SEMRush is focused on enterprises that cannot afford (in terms of time and effort) to jump to another tool with the intention to improve their shareholder value since they are now a public company.
I’d say their main tools are still quite decent, and we also need to remind our selves that data in this industry is rarely 100% accurate. Their historical data is also quite valuable. I do believe this product is becoming more difficult for a SMB to afford.
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I have no clue how anyone is using semrush for a technical audit, the product is complete garbage in that area.
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I don’t question it at all since I don’t use third party metrics.
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I don’t see 600 worth of value in it. When I do need backlink info I just use a data service.
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At my last job we ditched SEMRush for Ahrefs because the data just wasn’t reliable. It wasn’t even directionally accurate. The most powerful thing a tool like that offers you is the ability to estimate traffic, see which domains are up/down/sideways in a google update. But we could see our own data was way off and when you don’t trust the data anymore, there’s nothing left you can trust.
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its worth it for me bc i have client work and its helpful for research, definitely dont use it for technical audits i do TA by hand nowadays
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It’s not.
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If the company I work for wasn’t paying for it, I’d definitely get a cheaper SEO tool. £600 a month is nuts!
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from what I can tell, the free stuff is complete garbage.
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Jokes aside, we use it and pay much more than $600, TBH. But we do it because it has its uses. You need to know whether those uses fit your needs or not.
If you’re a small business or an independent SEO analyst or something like that, I think it’s not worth the price. For big companies or agencies with high revenue, it’s nothing. Not to mention, you can split the costs between clients and charge for it (as you should with every expense you have). So it really depends on your use case.
One thing though: I would never, EVER use it for a technical audit. EVER. And this isn’t limited to Semrush; it applies to any tool equally.
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I have used BrightEdge, Conductor, SEMRush and several others in the last 5 years. All for a very large org (180k employees) with multiple websites. As far as useable SEO data – none of them stood out over the other. Reporting is really where the tools distinguish themselves. Except for one other, often important, area – **price**.
Your value per dollar is off the charts with SEMRush.
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I do technical seo and i told my boss, we dont need semrush its a waste. I just use ahref weekly audit and fix the errors it finds. I dont need constant reports just 1 or 2 a week. The other SEO teams running reports because their jobs depends on it, making my job harder because they overwhelm the server with so many reports. Constantly complaining to me about slow pages and 500 error codes while running 3 reports an hour. 🫠
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Try dragon metrics. I ditched the rest.
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I have started using lighthouse for audits
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