When optimizing your website’s search engine performance, having the right tools can make or break your strategy. Among the top contenders in the SEO world, SE Ranking and Semrush have earned their reputations as versatile and powerful platforms.
But which one is better for your specific needs in 2025?
This in-depth comparison of SE Ranking vs Semrush will walk you through their key features, advantages, and limitations. From keyword research and rank tracking to competitive analysis and pricing models, we’ve tested both tools extensively to give you the most accurate insights.
Whether you’re a seasoned SEO expert looking to refine your toolkit or a beginner exploring your options, this guide will help you make an informed decision without the hassle of trial and error.
By the end of this comparison, you’ll know exactly which tool aligns with your goals and budget.
Let’s dive into the detailed comparison of SE Ranking vs Semrush – the battle for the best SEO tool in 2025!
Brief Overview
From optimizing the content to creating backlinks, there are many checklists for marketing agencies and SEO experts to improve their SEO endeavors. If you have the right SEO tool in your arsenal, the journey to search engine optimization becomes easy for you.
While there is no scarcity of such SEO software in the market. But, with so many tools, it becomes really messy to choose the best one.
That’s why I’ve provided you with a detailed analysis of the tools in this comparison.
Key Selling Points
Key Selling Points
Now, let’s take a closer look at the key features of both platforms. I’ve curated a list to show what these tools offer. Both tools have a dashboard that shows how well your website is performing and lets you track your progress over time.
| Features | SE Ranking | Semrush |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | 14-days | 7-days |
| Price | $65 per month | $139.95 per month |
| Keyword Research | ✔ | ✔ |
| Competitive Analysis | ✔ | ✔ |
| Backlinks Checker | ✔ | ✔ |
| Site Audit | ✔ | ✔ |
| Social Media Management | ✔ | ✔ |
| On Page SEO Checker | ✔ | ✔ |
| Position Tracker (Rank Tracking) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Log File Analysis | ⨉ | ✔ |
| Content Management | ⨉ | ✔ |
| Additional Accounts | ✔ | with extra fees |
| Projects | unlimited | up to 200 |
SE Ranking vs Semrush: Which SEO software is the Best?
Let’s dive into the key features and find out which is the best SEO toolkit for your business.
Quick Verdict
If you’re a small to medium-sized business looking for an affordable yet comprehensive SEO tool, SE Ranking is your go-to option. It offers white-label reporting and local SEO tracking features that are hard to beat at its price point. You may read this detailed review of SE Ranking for a better understanding.
On the other hand, if you’re an SEO professional or a large enterprise in need of advanced analytics and competitive intelligence, Semrush is the superior choice. It integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics and offers a content marketing toolkit that’s second to none.
- SE Ranking excels in affordability and user-friendliness, making it ideal for smaller businesses or those new to SEO.
- SE Ranking is the perfect entry-level tool for those dipping their toes into the SEO world or businesses on a budget. You may use the SE Ranking discount coupon to get an extra 10% OFF.
- SEMrush offers a more extensive set of features, including advanced backlink analysis and competitive intelligence, which are indispensable for larger enterprises or seasoned SEO professionals.
- SEMrush is the Swiss Army knife of SEO tools, designed for those who need to dig deep into analytics and outmaneuver competitors.
Why is SE Ranking a Great Choice for SMBs and Beginners?
SE Ranking offers a user-friendly interface that doesn’t overwhelm you with complex features. It’s the perfect stepping stone for those who are new to SEO or businesses that don’t have the budget for an expensive tool.
The platform provides all the essential features you’d need for a successful SEO campaign, such as keyword tracking, website auditing, and even local SEO features.
For instance, their local SEO tracking allows you to monitor your rankings on local search engines and directories, a feature often overlooked by other platforms.
Key Benefits:
- Affordability: Budget-friendly plans that don’t compromise on essential features. Where other SEO toolkits start at $100/month, it comes with $55/month features more than its competitors in the same price range.
- Ease of Use: I always prefer a user-friendly tool and I’m sure you also. It has an intuitive interface that even SEO novices can navigate with ease.
- Local SEO Features: Unique tools for tracking local search engine rankings, crucial for small businesses targeting local markets.
- Accurate Keyword Tracking: Accuracy is the key to success. It offers the precise position of your keywords on major search engines with 100% accuracy.
Why is Semrush Unbeatable for Professionals and Large Enterprises?
SEMrush is like the Swiss Army knife for SEO professionals.
It’s packed with advanced features that allow for in-depth competitive analysis, backlink audits, keyword research, and even content marketing strategies.
For example, their competitive intelligence features allow you to spy on your competitors’ backlink strategies, giving you the upper hand in your SEO efforts.
Key Benefits:
- Advanced Analytics: Provides deep insights into your website’s performance and areas for improvement.
- Competitive Intelligence: Tools for spying on competitors’ keywords and backlink strategies, giving you a competitive edge.
- Content Marketing Toolkit: Comprehensive tools for content audit, topic research, and content optimization, making it a one-stop shop for all your content needs.
SE Ranking vs Semrush: Key Differences
SE Ranking vs Semrush: Quick Statistics
SE Ranking
Semrush
User Ratings: SE Ranking vs Semrush
SE Ranking
Semrush
SE Ranking vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Is Better?
Keyword Research
A keyword analysis is the first step in search engine optimization. The tools offer great insights into getting keyword suggestions. Using a rank tracker can help you keep track of your website’s performance and see how your keywords are ranking in search engines.
SE Ranking
Let’s quickly analyze SE Ranking keyword research features.
SE Ranking is a cloud-based SEO platform having 7,00,000+ users that provide you with immensely amazing keyword analysis for On-Page SEO.
To get started, you just have to type your main keyword and hit “Enter”. It offers you quite good analytics with its keyword suggestion tool.
It provides a user-friendly interface showing keyword difficulty, search volume, and CPC along with the ongoing trend of that particular keyword On-Page SEO checker.
SE Ranking keyword suggestion tool gives you an insight into all related key phrases that help you pick LSI keywords easily.
You can sort the keywords list accordingly and export it to your system.
You also get top organic results on Google SERPs for a particular search query which helps you analyze how strong the competition is.
Semrush vs SimilarWeb: Which tool wins?
Semrush
It is an SEO giant with 6 million users and 20 billion keywords.
SEMrush offers quite useful tools for keyword research and building a powerful SEO strategy. Let’s explore the tool.
It offers the most beneficial Keyword Magic Tool along with organic traffic insights that give you an overview of the search term.
Just enter your seed keyword and explore important metrics like search volume, CPC, search intent, and difficulty in the wink of an eye.
The plus point of the tool is that you get global search volume and total results on SERPs in a single place. The trend column shows how popular a particular keyword is.
With Keyword Magic Tool you get an idea of which type of keywords you need for your project. You can filter out exact match and broad match keywords along with the facility to include or exclude a particular term.
For better extraction of keywords, it provides some groups of words related to that keyphrase. You can select the word that relates to your keyword and brainstorm ideas for that search term.
Which Software is the Best for Keyword Research? — SE Ranking vs Semrush
Though both tools have extremely powerful keyword analysis features, I personally recommend Semrush to use.
Reasons to choose –
- You can’t get question-based keyword ideas in SE Ranking
- You can include/exclude a particular word for keyword analysis
- Semrush has a much bigger keyword database that offers you great results
SE Ranking is not the winner in the comparison doesn’t conclude that it is not worthy. It also provides good results and is best for you if you are starting up a business.
Winner: Semrush
Competitive Research
Without spying on your competitor, it’s really difficult to outrank him on Google SERPs. Both of the tools provide you a detailed domain analysis. Let’s explore each one of them.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking competitive research is quite easy to use and offers you an easy-to-use interface to spy on your competitor.
You can select the URL or domain from the dropdown menu and make your spy quite easier. Just enter the URL or domain name and hit “Enter”. That’s it. You have a detailed report of that particular URL/domain.
You get to know everything about your competitor like the number of backlinks, keywords, organic/paid traffic, estimated PPC earnings, etc.
The interface is quite impressive and user-friendly providing you the historical data along with these results on the same page.
You get a list of organic keywords on which your competitor is ranking and evaluate your strength according to it.
This single page provides you all the information about your competitor. You get top-performing web pages along with organic competitors on the same page.
All in all, it provides an excellent competitive analysis.
SE Ranking SERP Checker 2025: Is It Worth It?
Semrush
You can also use SEMrush to spy on your competitor’s website. It provides you quite good tools in domain research.
In SEMrush’s competitive analysis, you get all insights related to traffic, backlinks, authority, etc. Simply, enter any domain name and spy on it.
It also provides you historical data on any domain since 2012 and shows you which is the targeted country of that domain.
Similar to SE Ranking, you get paid traffic analysis too. It provides you a list of organic competitive domains and paid traffic distribution, which helps you in analyzing that domain.
Unlike SE Ranking, it offers Keyword Gap analysis which helps you in getting opportunities to look for the keywords that are easy to rank.
Which SEO tool is better for Competitive Analysis? — SE Ranking vs Semrush
Well, in competitor research both tools are equally efficient. But, I like SE Ranking for its easy and impressive interface.
Though SEMrush is not behind SE Ranking in terms of competitor research, SE Ranking provides the number of keywords along with countries in the result.
Winner: Both
Website Audit
You can’t ignore checking a website for errors to perform better at search engines. You need to perform regular technical SEO audits to find errors and fix them on time. Both SEO software offers website audits to prevent website issues.
Let’s explore the website audit tools.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking provides you an automatic audit of your website to check for errors when you create a project.
You get weekly site audits which you can set manually or monthly also.
It provides you a quick site audit highlighting all major issues.
You get to know how many pages of your website are indexed in search engines. You get all issues related to meta tags, descriptions, titles, page health, and optimization issues are provided with solutions.
You just need to navigate each section to find the error and its possible solution.
One special thing that it offers is the Page Changes Monitor feature. Basically, it allows you to check any changes that have been made on a web page. This is especially needed when you have a multiple-author website. Additionally, for better insights into your blog, it allows you to integrate Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Semrush
Semrush, on the other hand, is lagging in this feature of page changes monitoring but gives you a quite detailed website analysis report.
It provides you an in-depth site audit that helps you prevent your website from hitting the Google updates.
All issues related to 4xx and 5xx errors, site structure, AMP links, and slow pages are assembled in the report. If you have chosen International SEO targeting, then “Hreflang errors” are also provided in the analysis.
If any of your web pages are prevented from being indexed, then you get notified about them in the audit report.
Which software is the best for Site Audit? — SE Ranking vs Semrush
I personally recommend the SEMrush audit tool to be the best tool for finding SEO issues and fixing them. It provides a detailed audit report to analyze your website.
Though we can’t deny the fact that SE Ranking provides a Page Changes Monitor and link building tool, SEMrush wins the battle with in-depth website analysis.
Winner: SEMrush
Semrush vs SE Ranking: Which is the Best Keyword Rank Tracker?
Pricing
Pricing is also a crucial factor when comparing any SEO tools or services. This comparison of SE Ranking and Semrush will not be completed without a price comparison.
As you have analyzed how these tools are different, now take a look at how much these tools cost.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking offers 3 prime plans but with an impressive pricing model. Yes, SE Ranking pricing is based on a 3-tier price model.
You get a flat 10% OFF SE Ranking discount in addition to the discount it offers on the annual subscription. However, every year SE Ranking Black Friday deal offers you an exclusive discount on top of the annual discount.
You get 3 types of plans in SE Ranking, i.e. Essential, Pro, and Business.
- Essential: $65/month
- Pro: $119/month
- Business: $259/month
Here, the SE Ranking Essential plan is ideal for bloggers and freelancers who started out recently. However, Pro is well-suited for small business owners and marketers with a good online presence.
If you run a business or agency on a large scale, then, Business plan is the one that makes sense for your company.
Semrush
Semrush also offers 3 plans for the users but it is comparatively higher.
Semrush pricing model provides these 3 plans along with a custom plan-
- Pro: $129.95 per month
- Guru: $249.95 per month
- Business: $499.95 per month
- Enterprise: Custom Price
Semrush announced a rise in its pricing in July 2023. All users who have subscribed to it earlier would follow the previous pricing system. But, new subscribers need to pay for SEMrush as per new pricing plans.
Here, the Pro plan is sufficient for beginners or freelancers who just started their websites. Those with a good online presence and a well-optimized business may opt for the Guru plan.
However, similar to SE Ranking, a Business plan is for those who run multiple websites or an agency. Semrush offers one more plan for you if none of these 3 plans fulfill your needs.
Yes, you can ask for a custom plan as per your need under the Enterprise plan.
Which is the Best SEO platform for pricing? — SE Ranking vs Semrush
SE Ranking is a clear winning in this comparison. It offers features similar to Semrush but at a comparatively lower price.
It is an all-in-one SEO software at an affordable price which makes it a better tool and a good SEMrush alternative.
It should be noted that SE Ranking’s price is low compared to SEMrush, but it does not compromise its services. You get excellent analysis with the SE Ranking tool.
Winner: SE Ranking
Is SE Ranking reliable?
Of course, it is reliable. Both SE Ranking and SEMrush are well-known tools and get good word of mouth from the audience.
You can grab a free trial to evaluate the tools.
Click here to get a 14-day free trial of SE Ranking.
Click here for Semrush free trial for 7 days.
Which one is better: SE Ranking or Semrush?
Both SE Ranking and SEMrush are excellent SEO tools, but their features differ. SE Ranking is more affordable and user-friendly, while SEMrush offers more advanced features for experienced users. It ultimately depends on your specific needs and budget to determine which tool is best for you.
SE Ranking tool offers you white-labeled SEO reporting at an affordable price, whereas, in Semrush you have to spend a lot to get this feature. On the other hand, Semrush has a better backlink audit tool as compared to SE Ranking. You can distinguish and export a list of toxic links using the Semrush backlink analysis tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Verdict: SE Ranking vs Semrush—Which Is Better?
Let’s take a quick recap of what we learned here—
- SE Ranking and Semrush are the top SEO tools for 2025.
- SE Ranking excels in accurate keyword ranking and user-friendly design.
- Semrush offers extensive keyword research, competitor analysis, and Google Analytics integration.
In conclusion, the choice between SE Ranking and Semrush in 2025 ultimately depends on your specific needs and preferences as an SEO enthusiast or digital marketer. Both tools have their unique strengths and cater to different aspects of the SEO landscape.
SE Ranking shines with its precise keyword research and user-friendly design, making it an excellent choice for those who appreciate simplicity and accuracy in their SEO efforts. If you’re just starting in the SEO world or prefer a straightforward approach, SE Ranking could be your go-to tool.
On the other hand, Semrush offers a broader suite of tools, including extensive keyword research, in-depth competitor analysis, and seamless integration with Google Analytics. It’s the Swiss Army knife of digital marketing, suitable for those seeking an all-encompassing solution.
So, here’s my recommendation: if you’re a beginner or prefer a streamlined approach, consider SE Ranking. If you’re looking for a comprehensive toolkit to tackle various aspects of digital marketing, Semrush is your best bet.
In the end, both SE Ranking and Semrush are valuable assets in the world of SEO, and your choice should align with your specific goals and comfort level. Happy optimizing!
Have you used any of the tools? If yes, please share your experience.
👉 If you find the comparison of SE Ranking and Semrush useful, don’t forget to share it with others.
About Author
Nitin Dabas is your SEO guide. Expert in keywords, on-page SEO, and link-building, he has boosted rankings for countless clients. Read his blog and join his success stories.
Nice review Nitin. Happy to retweet it bro. Using the right tools to get your SEO game tight makes blogging – and life – easier. Cool to see SE Ranking is affordable too.
Thanks, Ryan.
I’m glad this comparison provided something useful to the readers and a better alternative to SEMrush.
Hi Nitin,
I love the way you made the comparisons of SEM Rush and SE Ranking. I love SEM Rush because there is more there to play around with. When it comes to SE Ranking, I do understand that its great for beginners or those who have a smaller budget.
Thanks so much for comparing the two.
-Donna Merrill
Of course, Donna.
SEMrush is the most popular tool for everybody (beginner or expert), but SE Ranking is the best SEO tool for beginners with a limited budget.
Thanks for your feedback.
Helpful work for bloggers and you did a good work comparing these tolls.
It will be beneficial to know which one is more worthwhile using.
Thank you
Erika
Thank you for the post! I appreciate the time you spent putting together such a superb and helpful list! I would also suggest semrush is one of the best SEO research tool by claiming to be an “All-in-one Digital Marketing Suite.”
Thanks
Aadiv
Thanks for sharing a valuable comparison between se rankings and semrush. Your comparison will definitely help me choose best marketing tool according to my needs and budget.