Is Semrush worth it for a small business? How I use it, and cheaper options

Semrush is an online suite of SEO and advertising research tools: keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, rank tracking and more. My answer to “is Semrush worth it?” depends on how often you would open it. If you or your team do SEO work every week, on several websites or for clients, the paid plans earn their place. If you run one website with a handful of service pages, the free account and Google’s free tools cover most of what you need.

I use Semrush mainly for keyword research, and for one thing in particular: the keywords advertisers pay for, and what each click costs them. That cost shows which keywords bring business. I then go after those keywords with SEO, so the business gets the visits without paying for every click.

This review walks through that workflow, what Semrush costs at the time of writing (October 2026), when a paid plan makes sense, and the cheaper alternatives. It is part of my guide to small business marketing tools, the stack I use every day.

What I actually use Semrush for

Semrush does far more than keyword research: site audits, rank tracking, competitor research, content tools, ad research and, more recently, visibility in AI search. I use it mainly for two things, and they work together.

Keyword research: what people type, and how often

The core of my use is keyword research: finding the words people type into Google when they need what a business sells, and how often they type them. For each phrase, Semrush’s Keyword Overview shows:

• Volume: the average number of searches a month, in the country you choose and worldwide.
• Keyword Difficulty (KD%): a score from 0 to 100 for how hard it is to reach Google’s top 10.
• Intent: what the person searching most likely wants, from information to a purchase.
• CPC: the average price an advertiser pays Google for one click on an ad for that keyword.
• Trend: how searches for it move over the year.

Ad keywords, and what each click costs

The CPC (cost per click) is the figure that tells me which keywords work best. Advertisers rarely keep paying for clicks that bring them nothing, so a keyword with a high CPC is usually one that brings customers. A high CPC also suggests stronger buying intent, and more competition for it.

That is how I decide where the SEO effort goes. When a keyword is expensive in ads, ranking for it in the organic results brings the same kind of visitor without a bill for each click. I double down on those keywords with SEO instead of paying for them in ads. My comparison of SEO vs PPC explains when paying for the ads still makes sense, for instance while the page climbs.

How to use a free Semrush account: 10 requests a day

A free Semrush account allows 10 requests a day, according to Semrush’s plan comparison, and each report shows only its first 10 results. That is tight, but enough to run the workflow above on a short list, as long as you prepare the list before you log in.

1. Write the list first. Note the words your clients use on the phone, in emails and in reviews, and keep the ten that describe what you sell most directly. Every search counts towards the ten, so vague ideas waste them.
2. Choose the country. Semrush keeps separate data for each country it covers: pick the United Kingdom for a British business, or your clients’ country if you sell abroad.
3. Check each phrase in Keyword Overview. Copy the volume, KD%, CPC and intent into a spreadsheet, one row per phrase.
4. Run your best phrase through the Keyword Magic Tool. It turns one seed phrase into a list of related searches that you can filter by volume, difficulty and CPC. The free account shows only the first 10, so start from a precise phrase such as “boiler repair Leeds” rather than “boiler”.
5. Shortlist the specific, expensive keywords. Keep the phrases with real volume, a high CPC and a difficulty your site can realistically reach. Specific beats broad: of the websites I built for one client, the one that sells very specific services ranked, while the one that offered too many services did not work at all.
6. Give each keyword its own page. One primary keyword per page, in the title, the address, the first paragraph and one heading. Then watch that page’s impressions in Google Search Console over the following weeks.

For a second opinion on what advertisers pay, Google Keyword Planner shows its own bid ranges for free; I come back to it below. The full method, from the first list of words to the plan of your pages, is in my guide to keyword research for small businesses.

Semrush prices in October 2026

Semrush sells its tools as separate toolkits. The one for keyword research is the SEO Toolkit, in three plans, and Semrush One bundles it with the AI Visibility Toolkit. These are the prices at the time of writing (October 2026):

Semrush publishes its prices in US dollars only, so I give no £ figure here: what you pay in pounds depends on the exchange rate, on your bank’s fees if your card is charged in dollars, and on any VAT. Check the currency and the final amount at checkout. The current offer is on Semrush’s pricing page, and plans and prices change, so look there before you subscribe.

Over a year, Pro comes to about $1,680 billed monthly, or about $1,408 billed annually. That is the figure to weigh against what the keywords could bring you.

Semrush One and AI visibility

Semrush One adds the AI Visibility Toolkit, built to show how AI assistants such as ChatGPT talk about your brand. Before paying for it, run the free manual test in my guide on how to check your AI visibility: a handful of prompts, typed into each assistant once a month, tells a small business most of what it needs to know.

Is Semrush worth it for your business?

Semrush suits people who do SEO work every week. Freelancers, agencies and in-house marketers who publish content regularly, track rankings across several sites or keep an eye on competitors are likely to open it most days. For them it is a working tool, like a van for a plumber.

It suits a small business owner less well. With one website and a handful of service pages, you need keyword research when you plan the site, when you add a page, and perhaps once a quarter to see where you stand. Between those moments, a paid plan sits unused.

A simple test: billed annually, Pro costs about $1,408 a year. If the keywords you find bring you one client a year who would not have found you otherwise, and that client is worth more than that, the subscription pays for itself. If you cannot picture that client, keep the free account.

The same goes for cheap lifetime deals on lesser-known SEO tools. I missed a few SEO tool deals on AppSumo and regretted it, yet I still call AppSumo a bit of a casino, for reasons I explain in my AppSumo review.

Cheaper Semrush alternatives

Google’s free tools each cover part of the job, while Ahrefs and SE Ranking are full suites like Semrush, with a free or cheaper way in. The details below come from each company’s own website, so test the tools on keywords you already know before you decide.

Google’s free tools

• Google Keyword Planner is free inside a Google Ads account. It gives monthly search volumes (as ranges if you are not spending on ads) and top-of-page bid ranges, which are Google’s own signal of what advertisers pay. My Google Keyword Planner tutorial shows how to use it without running ads.
• Google Search Console is free and shows the searches your site already appears for, with clicks, impressions and average position, straight from Google. It cannot show the searches you do not appear for yet, which is where Semrush or Keyword Planner come in. My Google Search Console guide covers the set-up.
• Google Trends is free too, and handy for spotting seasonal peaks and for comparing two ways of saying the same thing.

Ahrefs and its free Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs is the best-known alternative to Semrush. Its free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools give you Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics for the websites you own, once you have verified them: enough to see your own site’s backlinks and technical issues without paying. The paid plans start at $29 a month with Starter, and the next plan up, Lite, costs $129 a month at the time of writing, according to Ahrefs’ pricing page.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is another all-in-one SEO suite. At the time of writing, its website lists a Core plan at $129 a month and a Growth plan at $279, with a 14-day free trial. At the entry level, that is close to Semrush Pro, so compare what each plan includes rather than the headline price.

At a glance

What to do next, and when to hand it over

You do not need an agency to get started. Here is the order I would follow:

1. Open a free Semrush account and, if you have not already, add your site to Google Search Console.
2. Write down ten phrases your clients use, and check them in Keyword Overview.
3. Shortlist three keywords: specific, searched for, and expensive in ads.
4. Plan one page per keyword, or improve the page that already targets it.
5. If you keep hitting the 10-request limit for weeks, try Pro for one month, billed monthly, before you commit to a year.
6. A month or two after publishing, open Search Console and check whether those pages get impressions for their keywords.

If you would rather hand over the research and the pages that follow, that is the kind of work my SEO service covers.