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Oussama Alami
Head of SEO
Oussama leads technical and on-page SEO at AY Rank. He specializes in structured data engineering, crawl optimization, and building the entity architecture that makes AI models cite our clients.
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Short answer
- Semrush vs SpyFu comes down to scope and budget. SpyFu is the cheaper competitor research tool and goes deepest on Google Ads history, from $39/mo (Basic) or $29/mo billed yearly. Semrush is the bigger SEO suite, with daily rank tracking and a 43T+ backlink index by its own count, from $139/mo (SEO plan) or $117.33/mo billed yearly. For SpyFu vs Semrush, pick SpyFu for PPC research on a small budget and Semrush when organic search is your main channel. Prices read on each vendor's page on 10 Nov 2026.
| Tool | Entry price, monthly | Annual price | Free plan or trial | Keyword database (vendor's figure) | PPC history | Rank tracking | Backlink data | API access and cost | Users included |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush | $139/mo, SEO plan | $117.33/mo billed yearly | Yesfree plan with 10 reports a day, plus a 7-day trial | 28B+ keywords, 142 regional databases | Yesad data back to 2012 in the Advertising toolkit, $99/mo billed yearly | Yesdaily, 500 keywords on the entry plan | Yes43T+ backlinks (Semrush's figure) | Add-on to the top tier, API units sold separately, unit price not published | Not stated, extra users from $45/mo |
| SpyFu | $39/mo, Basic | $29/mo billed yearly | No30-day money-back guarantee instead | 13.1B keywords in 38 countries (homepage), 8B on the API page | Yesads captured since 2007, full history on Pro + AI and up | Yesweekly, 5,000 keywords on Basic | Yesindex size not published | Pro + AI and Team only, $40 or $100 monthly credit, then $0.20 to $5.00 per 1,000 rows | 1 on Basic and Pro + AI, 5 on Team |
You are probably here because one of two things happened. A trial ran out, or a renewal invoice landed and you want to know if the other tool does the same job for less.
The two tools overlap on keyword research and competitor research, then split. SpyFu is built around what competitors buy and rank for on Google, with a long ad archive and unlimited rows on its middle plan. Semrush is a full SEO platform with daily rank tracking, site audits, a large backlink index and a growing set of AI visibility tools, sold as a base plan plus paid toolkits. Below, each section covers one job and says which tool does it better as of 10 November 2026.
Semrush vs SpyFu pricing
SpyFu costs less at every comparable step. Semrush's cheapest paid plan costs about 3.5 times SpyFu's cheapest plan on monthly billing, and the gap stays wide on yearly billing.
- SpyFu Basic$39/mo
- Semrush SEO$139/mo
Source: each vendor's own pricing page, checked 10 November 2026. Monthly billing, no discounts. Yearly billing lowers both: Semrush SEO to $117.33/mo, SpyFu Basic to $29/mo. Custom-priced tiers are left out.
Here is every self-serve tier, as each pricing page showed it today.
Two details change the real cost. First, Semrush's PPC research lives in a separate Advertising toolkit, priced at $99/mo (Base) or $220/mo (Pro) billed yearly, so an SEO plus PPC setup on Semrush starts well above $139. Second, SpyFu's Basic plan leaves out the features many buyers come for: ad history, organic ranking history and API access all start at Pro + AI.
Semrush offers a free plan (1 demo project, 10 reports a day) and a 7-day free trial. SpyFu lists no free plan or trial on its pricing page. It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and lets you cancel by email, chat or phone.
SpyFu vs Semrush for keyword and PPC research
This is SpyFu's home ground. Its API page says it has captured "10s of billions" of ads since 2007 and covers 99.93% of Google advertisers. On Pro + AI you can open any competitor's Google Ads history, see their ad split tests and the keywords they dropped, and pull pre-built Google Ads campaigns. SpyFu's homepage also claims "20x more paid keywords and ads" than Semrush and Ahrefs. That is SpyFu's own comparison and we did not test it.
Semrush covers the same questions in Advertising Research: which keywords a competitor bids on, position changes, competing domains, ad copies and an ads history report with data back to 2012. The Advertising toolkit adds Google Shopping ads research, a unified Google and Meta dashboard, and on Pro, display, video and social ads through AdClarity.
For keyword research outside PPC, Semrush states the bigger database: 28B+ keywords across 142 regional databases. SpyFu's own pages give two numbers, 13.1 billion keywords in 38 countries on the homepage and 8 billion on the API page. If you work in many non-English markets, the regional database count matters more than the headline total.
Our read: for Google Ads competitor research on a budget, SpyFu wins. For multi-market keyword research, or if you also need Meta, display and Shopping ad intel, Semrush covers more ground at a higher price.
SEO and rank tracking
Semrush is the stronger SEO tool. Position Tracking updates daily on every paid plan, with mobile and desktop splits, ZIP-code local data and competitor rankings side by side. Pro+ adds multi-location and multi-device tracking, historical SEO data, content optimization and keyword cannibalization analysis. Every paid plan includes Site Audit.
SpyFu tracks rankings weekly: 5,000 keywords on Basic, 15,000 on Pro + AI and 50,000 on Team. That is far more keywords per dollar than Semrush's 500 on the entry plan, but at a slower refresh. SpyFu also added a Site Audit with monthly crawl limits (50k pages on Basic, 500k on Pro + AI, 2M on Team), weekly audits on the lower plans and daily on Team. Its organic ranking history, which traces how a page moved on a keyword over the years, is a real strength for diagnosing past drops, but it starts at Pro + AI.
On AI search, Semrush's Starter plan tracks 50 prompts daily, monitors 1 domain for AI brand performance and allows 300 AI visibility reports a day. SpyFu's Pro + AI plan includes AI Brand Monitoring, a ChatGPT integration and RivalFlow for page improvement ideas. Both are add-ons to classic SEO data rather than dedicated AI trackers. For tools built only for that job, see our list of AI search monitoring tools.
Backlinks
Semrush publishes far more about its link data. Its backlink page states 43T+ backlinks across 808M domain profiles, with about 10B pages crawled daily, plus anchor text, authority scores, link status and a Backlink Gap tool.
SpyFu includes backlink searches (10k rows on Basic, unlimited above) and its Domain Stats API returns backlink counts, but it does not publish an index size on the pages we read. If link building is a core part of your work, Semrush is the better pick, or a dedicated link data source. Our roundup of backlink APIs compares those.