Semrush Starter vs. Pro+: Which plan is right for you?

Choosing between Semrush Starter and Pro+ comes downward to one question: How much SEO and AI visibility activity does your squad need to manage?

If you already cognize you desire to track achievement throughout traditional and AI search, Starter and Pro+ the two shield the essentials. The decision comes downward to the measure you need, and the two plans are built to lawsuit distinct workloads.

This guide breaks downward thothese differences to assistance you choose the scheme that fits your squad without underbuying or paying for capability you won’t use.

Semrush Starter vs. Pro+: Main differences

Here’s a quick difference of the two Semrush plans:

Semrush Starter covers the center SEO and AI visibility tools you need to oversee one chief website affirmative a few smaller or client properties. You can track keywords, study competitors, and detect AI visibility from one place.

Pro+ gives you the identical center capabilities, but alongside 3 times as many projects and tracked keywords. It additionally unlocks historic data, side-by-side domain comparisons, multi-targeting, and keyword cannibalization detection. For those reasons, it’s frequently chosen by agencies and expanding teams. 

The simplest difference is this: Starter fits a focused SEO + AI hunt operation. Pro+ supports teams prepared to measure their brand visibility workflows to multiple markets or brands. 

Website and tracking limits

The difference array complete gives you the numbers. But choosing the correct scheme method operating out what those numbers appearance akin in practice.

Start alongside your energetic websites or client accounts. Think of it small as the figure of websites you own and additional as the figure of distinct SEO projects you’re actively running. 

Starter lets you create 5 SEO projects, during Pro+ increases that bounds to 15. 

SEO Dashboard

Each SEO project gives you a distinctive SEO dashboard anywhere you can configure tools specified as Site Audit and Position Tracking and track high-level metrics in a sole view.

For a freelancer managing their own location and 2 or 3 client sites, Starter have to be additional than adequate to activity comfortably. It would additionally fit an in-house squad liable for one chief location and a few secondary properties.

However, if you’re already managing additional than 5 client accounts, brands, or sites, Starter volition put a difficult ceiling on your workload. Pro+ gives you area for 15 projects, so you can add clients and develop your endeavor considerably without worrying concerning operating out of capacity.

Daily SEO Position Tracking and AI visibility tracking

The next item to regard is how many regular keywords and prompts you need to track in Position Tracking. 

Starter gives you 500 keywords and 50 AI prompts to track daily. Pro+ raises those limits to 1,500 keywords and 100 prompts. To provision you an idea of what that looks like, current is an example of a Position Tracking run tracking 201 keywords:

The Position Tracking study charts regular visibility, estimated traffic, and competitors, allowing you to remain on top of the SEO advancement of your campaigns. AI Visibility Tracking plant similarly: all day, you obtain an update of how frequently you have been cited and mentioned in AI answers for your tracked prompts.

Both Semrush Starter and Pro+ provision you about 100 keywords and 10 prompts per site, whenever divided evenly throughout all plan’s complete project allowance. For small SEO programs, that’s typically adequate to detect a focused collection of precedence terms. The bounds becomes additional restrictive whenever you commencement tracking long-tail variations, multiple merchandise categories, or distinct keyword sets for multiple clients.

The identical regulation applies to AI prompts. Tracking additional prompts isn’t continually better. A focused set of about 25 prompts can shield branded, category, and competitor intent without filling your reporting alongside noise. Semrush’s guide to choosing AI hunt prompts to track can assistance you to build a lean, applicable immediate catalog to create the most of your allowance, whichever scheme you choose.

Comparing the plans, Starter’s 50-prompt allowance is a powerful fit for one focused AI visibility program. Pro+ gives you additional area to distinct your safety throughout products, campaigns, or client accounts.

AI opinion inspection alongside Brand Performance

To get a complete image of AI visibility, you additionally need to cognize how your brand is being described by AI. 

Both Semrush Starter and Pro+ additionally contain Brand Performance, a distinct AI visibility tracking tool that automatically tracks 200 prompts and reports on AI opinion and portion of voice. 

This data updates weekly, so it provides a near-live inspection of how your brand is described and positioned in AI answers, alongside the regular immediate tracking.

There’s one crucial constraint to consider: the two Starter and Pro+ contain Brand Performance for a sole brand. Additional brands disbursal $99 all per duration on the two plans. This is the one area anywhere Pro+ doesn’t measure beyond Starter — crucial to keep in intellect if you’re comparing plans for an agency or multi-brand business.

Extra features you get alongside Pro+

In supplement to higher limits for website and brand tracking, a subscription to Pro+ includes multiple tools that Starter doesn’t, including:

• The Compare Domains report
• SEO historic data
• Multi-targeting in Position Tracking
• The Keyword Cannibalization report

Compare Domains report

Compare Domains lets you benchmark up to 5 domains, subdomains, subfolders, or URLs. From a sole view, you can analyze rivalrous metrics specified as tagged and non-branded traffic, paid and integrated performance, keyword overlap, top keyword opportunities, and backlink trends.

This is particularly helpful for agencies pitching a prospective client.

By adding a prospect’s domain alongside alongside 2–4 genuine competitors, you get a detailed study that shows anywhere the potential is foremost , and anywhere it is falling behind.This gives you a clearer narrative to build your pitch, and display your potential their wins and opportunities. 

In-house teams can use the identical study to benchmark their location against market leaders, examine a new competitor, or difference distinct brand properties.

Starter does not contain a constricted type of the report. If regular side-by-side rivalrous benchmarking is part of your workflow, Pro+ is the apparent choice.

Learn additional concerning the accessible comparisons in the Compare Domains guide.

SEO historic data

In supplement to live data, the Pro+ scheme provides SEO historic data rear to 2012, letting you appearance rear at changes in rankings, traffic, and keyword performance.

While Starter shows you what’s happening now alongside your site’s SEO, Pro+ shows you how and why the location got there.

This is helpful for agencies managing multiple client accounts or in-house SEOs who need to assistance their scheme alongside historic evidence. That environment helps rotate a study from a snapshot of the current instant into a additional significant and informative analysis. Instead of merely noting that item changed, you can explain the apt reasons to clients or elder leadership.

Historical data is particularly precious whenever evaluating a new potential or competitor location whose inner analytics you can’t access. For example, if their estimated integrated traffic dropped without clarification 6 months ago, SEO historic data can difference the timing alongside their keyword rankings or any Google algorithm updates at that time, and diagnose the cause.

Historical data can additionally be helpful during onboarding a new client and understanding the former behavior of their site. You can study former rankings, acknowledge seasonal patterns, see anywhere competitors gained ground, and comprehend which strategies produced movement before making your archetypal recommendation.

SEO historic data is accessible in Domain Overview, Organic Rankings, Keyword Overview, and Keyword Gap.

Find out additional alongside our guide to using Semrush historic data.

Multi-targeting in Position Tracking

For businesses serving a figure of locations, multi-targeting enables you to track multiple targets per project and keep an eye on visibility in additional areas. A mark can be any location, equipment type, language, hunt engine, or AI phase anywhere you track keywords or prompts.

For example, if you run a local business, it’s crucial to cognize how fine it ranks in its residence location. But if you assist customers in nearby towns, you’ll additionally need to detect visibility in those areas.

Multi-targeting lets you add all area as a distinct mark inside the identical project, keeping everything in one place. Without multi-targeting, you would need to create a distinct project for all target, and use up your accessible project slots faster.

With multi-targeting, you can track the identical keywords throughout 4 distinctive locations, track locations downward to the postal-code flat and difference their visibility flank by side, or track ChatGPT, AI Mode, and Google hunt inside a sole project.

Multi-targeting can be helpful equal for businesses that don’t run multiple bodily locations. It allows you to use equipment types as targets, so you can difference visibility for desktop and mobile results.

Find out additional alongside our multi-targeting guide. 

Keyword Cannibalization report

Keyword cannibalization happens whenever multiple pages on your location mark the identical keyword. Instead of one powerful leaf earning visibility, your rankings may change between multiple URLs.

That can divided your site’s authority and create it harder for any one leaf to position consistently.

TheKeyword Cannibalization report inside the Position Tracking tool identifies these pages so you can location the matter and enhance your visibility.

When auditing a new client location or project, a Keyword Cannibalization study can be a origin of quick wins, assisting you to optimize your location and position improved for its mark keywords. 

The study presents affected pages and keywords so you see exactly which URLs are competing throughout multiple keywords. 

You can afterward prioritize issues alongside the most traffic possible and decide whether to consolidate pages, modify their targeting, or fortify the leaf you desire to rank.

Starter doesn’t contain the Keyword Cannibalization report. You can motionless examine competing pages manually, but Pro+ surfaces the issue directly, making it uncomplicated to fold into your SEO workflow. 

Which should you choose: Starter or Pro+?

When choosing which Semrush scheme is the correct one for your business, your current workload should run the decision. Starter gives a focused squad plentifulness of power without unnecessary capacity. Pro+ gives a busier procedure the measure and deeper inspection required to grip additional activity from the identical place.

Choose Starter if:

• You desire center SEO and AI visibility capabilities without paying for additional capability you won’t use
• You concentration on 5 or small sites or markets
• You don’t need to track additional than 500 mark keywords
• You’re fair getting started alongside AI visibility and lone need to track 50 prompts or small per day
• You don’t currently need historic data, side-by-side domain comparisons, multi-targeting, or a dedicated cannibalization report

Choose Pro+ if:

• You oversee SEO and AI visibility for additional than 5 sites, clients, or markets
• You need to track broad keyword portfolios throughout multiple properties
• You regularly throw new endeavor and need accelerated rivalrous benchmarks
• You desire to investigation former SEO achievement of your sites, clients or competitors
• You run throughout multiple locations or need to difference devices or hunt engines
• Keyword cannibalization is part of your SEO workflow

Review the Semrush pricing options and choose the scheme that fits the activity already in forefront of you.

Ready to test out a Semrush plan?