Quick answer
For one user on 27 October 2026, SE Ranking Core cost $103.20 a month on annual billing, Semrush's SEO plan $117.33 and Ahrefs Lite $129. Extra users change the order: Semrush adds from $45 a month per user, Ahrefs Lite $40 and SE Ranking from $16. Screaming Frog is £199 a year per user for crawling, and SerpBear is a free, self-hosted rank tracker that needs a paid search-data API.
Small marketing teams usually need one of three things: a suite that does research, tracking and audits together; a crawler that audits the site's own pages; or just a rank tracker. The prices differ by an order of magnitude, so start by deciding which of the three you need. Prices were read from each vendor's page on 27 October 2026.
Suites: priced for one user and for three
| Suite | 1 user / month | Extra user | 3 users / month (our arithmetic) | Keywords tracked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Ranking Core | $103.20 (annual) | from $16 | ~$135 | 2,000 |
| Semrush SEO | $117.33 (annual) | from $45 | ~$207 | 500 daily |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 (period not labelled) | $40 (up to 2 more) | $209 | 750 |
Profiles: Semrush, Ahrefs, SerpBear.
Semrush
Semrush prints both billing periods. SEO costs $117.33 a month annually ($139 monthly), with 5 websites and 500 keywords tracked daily. Starter, which adds tracking of how a brand appears in AI search answers, costs $165.17 ($199). Pro+ costs $248.17 ($299) for 15 sites and 1,500 keywords. A free account allows 10 reports a day, and there is a seven-day trial. Additional users start at $45 a month.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs lists Starter $29, Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449 and Enterprise $1,499 a month. Enterprise requires an annual commitment. The page advertises up to 17% off for annual payment without printing those figures next to the plans. Every main tier includes 1 user. Lite can add 2 more at $40 each, Standard 5 more at $60, and Advanced 10 more at $80. Tracked keywords run from 750 on Lite to 5,000 on Advanced.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking printed Core at $103.20 and $129.00 a month and Growth at $223.20 and $279.00 next to a "Save 20%" annual toggle. The lower figures are exactly 20% less, so we read them as annual. Core includes 10 projects, 1 manager seat and 2,000 tracked keywords. Growth includes 30 projects, 3 seats and 5,000 keywords. Extra seats start at $16. A 14-day trial needs no card.
Is a desktop crawler enough for a technical audit?
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a site crawler for auditing your own pages. The free version stops at 500 URLs, which covers many small business sites. A licence costs £199 a year per user, falling to £169 each at 20 or more licences. The page showed sterling prices. It is a complement to a suite, not a replacement, because it does no keyword or competitor research.
What does self-hosted rank tracking cost?
SerpBear is an MIT-licensed rank tracker with unlimited keywords and domains. It runs as a small Next.js and SQLite app, with Docker files in the repository. It needs search-result data from a scraping API or your own proxies. The README lists serper.dev at "$1.00/1000 req" pay-as-you-go and other services from $29 to $50 a month, and flags some as no longer working.
Tracking 300 keywords daily is about 9,000 requests a month, roughly $9 at that pay-as-you-go rate. That is our calculation, not a quote. For a team that only watches rankings, it is the cheapest route by far. It requires a server, which our server comparison prices.
Picking one
- Research, tracking and audits for one marketer: SE Ranking Core or Semrush SEO.
- Backlink and competitor research is central: Ahrefs, with seats budgeted.
- Technical audit of your own site: Screaming Frog, free up to 500 URLs.
- Rank tracking only, on a budget: SerpBear plus a search-data API.
Moz is not included because its pricing page refused our request. If your SEO work feeds a CRM pipeline, compare that cost in our CRM guide. Traffic measurement is covered in our web analytics comparison.
Key points
- Suites bundle research, tracking and audits; their real cost for a team depends on extra-seat fees.
- For three users, our arithmetic gives about $135 on SE Ranking Core, $207 on Semrush SEO and $209 on Ahrefs Lite.
- Ahrefs includes 1 user on each main tier and caps how many extra users each tier can add.
- Screaming Frog's crawler is free up to 500 URLs and £199 a year per user licence beyond that.
- SerpBear is MIT-licensed and tracks unlimited keywords; its cost is the search-data API, from $1.00 per 1,000 requests at one provider its README lists.
Questions
Which SEO suite is cheapest for one person?
On 27 October 2026, SE Ranking Core was the lowest of the three suites we priced at $103.20 a month on annual billing, which we inferred from its 20% annual saving. Semrush's SEO plan cost $117.33 a month annually, and Ahrefs Lite was listed at $129 a month.
How much do extra users cost on SEO tools?
Semrush lists additional users starting at $45 a month. Ahrefs sells extra users per tier at $40 (Lite, up to 2 more), $60 (Standard, up to 5) or $80 (Advanced, up to 10). SE Ranking lists extra manager seats from $16. Those fees often decide the cheapest option for a team.
Do I need a full SEO suite or just a rank tracker?
If you mainly want to know where your pages rank for chosen keywords, a rank tracker is enough. SerpBear does that for free if you can self-host it and pay for search data. Suites add keyword research, backlink data, competitor research and audits, which is what their higher price pays for.
Is Screaming Frog free?
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider has a free version limited to crawling 500 URLs. The paid licence costs £199 a year per user, with volume discounts down to £169 for 20 or more licences. The pricing page displayed pounds sterling on our read date and showed no dollar figure.
Why is Moz not in this comparison?
Moz's pricing page refused our automated request on 27 October 2026, so we could not read its prices at source. We only publish figures we have read on the vendor's own page, so Moz will be added when that is possible.
Who wrote this
Stackfeature Research Desk
The Research Desk is a shared byline, not a person. Work published under it is compiled from vendor pricing pages, documentation and licence files, each linked and dated in the piece. Nothing under this byline claims hands-on testing unless the piece says so and links the evidence.
Citing a figure from this page? Carry its date with it. Prices here were read on the date shown above, and corrections are logged.
Related comparisons
AI Assistants for Business: Seat Prices and Who Trains on Your Data
What an AI assistant costs per seat for a small team, and what each vendor says in writing about using your company's data to train models.
AI tools for work · · 3 min read
The Best CRM for a Small Team, Priced at 5, 10 and 25 Seats
Free CRM tiers stop at two or three users. Here is what five CRMs cost once a team passes that point, read from each vendor's own price page.
CRM · · 4 min read
Password Managers for Teams of 5 to 25: Per-User Costs and SSO
One plan is a flat pack for ten people, one has a ten-user minimum, and two can run on your own server. Four ways to share credentials, priced at 5, 10 and 25 users.
Password managers · · 3 min read