SE Ranking pricing on Core versus Growth

SE Ranking pricing on 27 August 2026 starts at $103.20 per month billed annually for Core, or $129 on monthly billing. Growth is $223.20 annual or $279 monthly. Enterprise is a sales quote. Both self-serve cards print MCP access, so the SEO MCP is not a hidden SKU. Core fits a single manager tracking 2,000 keywords a day across 10 projects. Growth is the multi-seat, 5,000-keyword, all-time history tier. Trends MCP does a different job: live Google, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, and other demand series over MCP plus REST, from $0 for 100 requests a month. Buy Core for rank tracking and audits. Buy Trends MCP when an agent needs multi-source trend data without an SEO platform bill.

What the Core card costs versus Growth

Core is $103.20 per month on the annual toggle and $129 per month billed monthly, according to SE Ranking's subscription page accessed 27 August 2026. The page prints "Save 20%" on annual billing. That 20% is exact on Core: $129 × 0.8 = $103.20. Growth is $223.20 annual and $279 monthly, the same 20% cut. Enterprise has no public dollar.

The 14-day trial needs no credit card. The FAQ on that page lists trial caps separately from paid Core: up to 10 projects, 750 tracked keywords per day, 20 AI prompts per day, and AI competitive research for up to 3 domains. Paid Core then jumps to 2,000 daily keywords and 100 daily GEO prompts. Payments are non-refundable except when the service was not delivered as promised. Annual billing is billed upfront. Sales will discuss a quarterly schedule with an annual commitment. One active login session is allowed at a time; extra people need seats or guest links.

Those rows are the live comparison grid. Extra manager seats start at $16 on both Core and Growth. Extra keywords start at $22.40 on Core and $32 on Growth. Extra content-marketing articles start at $39.20. Extra local locations start at $18.40. Treat those floors as annual-toggle prints from the same fetch.

Semrush SEO, fetched the same day from semrush.com/pricing, is $117.33 per month billed annually or $139 monthly, with 5 websites and 500 daily keywords. Ahrefs Lite, from ahrefs.com/pricing, is $129 per month with 5 projects and 750 tracked keywords. Core undercuts Semrush's annual SEO card and tracks four times the daily keywords. That comparison is rank tracking, not backlink-index depth.

Which Core quotas fill up first

The first Core ceiling for most buyers is seats, not keywords. One manager seat and 10 projects is a solo operator plan. A second person is an extra-seat line, from $16, not a plan bump by itself. The comparison grid also prints Report Builder at 10 reports on Core and 30 on Growth, plus data export at 50k rows versus 100k.

Daily keyword tracking is the second ceiling. Core's 2,000 daily keywords beat Semrush SEO's 500 and Ahrefs Lite's 750 on the same day's cards. An agency watching 15 client sites at 200 keywords each is already over Core. Growth's 5,000 daily keywords and 30 projects is the published next step before Enterprise.

Historical data is the quiet split. Growth's marketing blurb lists "Historical data across project lifetime." The comparison grid prints Core historical data as 6/mo and Growth as All time. The 6/mo token is ambiguous on the page (six months of history versus six checks per month). Quote it as printed rather than guessing. Page-changes monitoring is Growth-only on that grid. Guest links are Growth-only too.

GEO sits beside classic SEO. Both plans track 5 LLMs. Core allows 5 domains in AI competitive research; Growth allows 15. Daily prompts are 100 versus 250. Local marketing is flat: 3 locations and 1,500 local/map keywords on both cards, extra locations from $18.40. Audit volume is not. Core crawls 250k pages per account per month, max 250k per project, with 50 on-page checker credits. Growth crawls 2 million pages per account, max 1 million per project, with 1,000 on-page checks. Keyword database expansion prints as 17.5k versus 50k. Content Marketing articles print as 25 versus 50. The fetched HTML has no tooltip for those counters. They still belong in the invoice conversation because they are on the grid.

Is MCP bundled, or a separate invoice?

MCP is bundled on Core and Growth. The Core card lists "25K API credits & MCP access." Growth lists "100K API credits & MCP access." The comparison grid marks MCP as included on both. SE Ranking's MCP page, accessed 27 August 2026, says MCP is included in every subscription and "runs on the API credits already included." The free trial on that page starts with 100K credits. No credit card.

The hosted endpoint in the MCP integration docs is https://api.seranking.com/mcp. Transport is Streamable HTTP with OAuth 2.1 and dynamic client registration. Cursor config from those docs:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "se-ranking": {
      "url": "https://api.seranking.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Save that in .cursor/mcp.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Cursor opens an OAuth window on first use. Claude Code's documented OAuth add is a remote HTTP server:

claude mcp add --transport http se-ranking https://api.seranking.com/mcp

Headless setups can pass X-Api-Key instead of the browser flow. Sub-accounts cannot use the "Sign in with SE Ranking" button: API access lives on the master account. Until sub-account keys ship, the docs tell a sub-account to paste a master API key manually.

Tool counts disagree across SE Ranking's own pages. The MCP marketing page claims "180+ tools" and a 5.5B keyword database, 188-country database, 25.5M+ AI prompts tracked, and 2.2B domain profiles. The integration docs say "160+ tools." Claude Code's own troubleshooting line tells operators to confirm the server is connected "with 160+ tools." Cite both. Do not flatten to a single integer.

MCP can also be bought without the web app. API pricing prints a Wallet pack at $50 for 250K credits, a Standalone annual plan at $179 per month (the page also prints $200) for 12M credits per year, and Enterprise from 120M+ credits per year with an "as low as $30/1M credits" line. The Wallet card shows /mo. The FAQ on the same URL says pay-as-you-go is a one-time top-up whose credits never expire. The MCP marketing page calls the same floor "From $50.00 /250K credits" and "Pay-as-you-go plan." Quote the split.

An API add-on for existing subscribers is +$45 per month, annual billing only, starting at 3M credits per year, with 12M and 60M packs on the same module. The subscription page still lists standalone API from $179 per month. Annual-plan credits expire at cycle end. Wallet credits do not. Trial credits die after 14 days. Failed API requests are not charged.

For Cursor and Claude users who want rank data inside the chat, Core plus the bundled MCP is the cheapest official SE Ranking path. Semrush prints MCP on its Starter card at $165.17 annual / $199 monthly, not on the $117.33 SEO card. Ahrefs prints MCP Server on the Lite/Standard/Advanced comparison (100 / 250 / 500 max rows per request). Those are SEO-index MCPs. Trends MCP is the cheaper path when the agent needs live trend boards and keyword growth, not domain authority or backlink gaps. The Cursor setup for Trends MCP uses a different host and a Bearer header:

"trends-mcp": {
  "url": "https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp",
  "transport": "http",
  "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" }
}

Docs at docs.md (dated 27 August 2026) keep two hosts that are not interchangeable: https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp for Bearer keys, and https://www.trendsmcp.ai/mcp for Claude.ai Connectors OAuth only. That split is easy to get wrong if someone copies SE Ranking's single OAuth URL pattern.

Which add-ons move the sticker price

Agency Pack is +$69 per month and annual billing only. The module is white-label reporting, scheduled reports, AI summaries, Agency Catalog placement, and a lead generator. Project-count toggles on that card include 30, 50, and 100 projects, plus a 30 client-seat line. White label is not in Core or Growth by default.

AI Search as an add-on is +$71.20 per month billed annually or $89 monthly. The 200-prompt pack is the default on the fetched card, with 450 and 1,000 options. Copy names AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, plus a SE Visible allocation of 200 prompts. Core already includes 100 daily GEO prompts. The add-on is extra visibility tracking, not the first GEO SKU.

Planable, the sibling social scheduler, prints "From $33.00/mo" with 20% off when bundled. Separate product. It does not change Core's SEO limits. Free assisted migration is annual only. Monthly buyers get self-serve import. Feature sets do not mix across tiers. Extra keywords, seats, and locations can be purchased. Growth-only features cannot be bolted onto Core without upgrading.

A two-person Core invoice is rarely $103.20. One extra seat from $16 plus Agency Pack at $69 (if clients see branded PDFs) lands north of $188 per month on annual billing before extra keywords. Growth at $223.20 already includes three seats and guest links. Run the grid against headcount before stacking add-ons on Core.

When a $19 trend MCP beats Core

SE Ranking wins the rank-tracking job. Daily positions across "major search engines," site audit, on-page checks, backlink research, Looker Studio / Matomo / GA4 / GSC connectors, and GEO prompt tracking are the product. Trends MCP does not rank keywords, crawl sites, or score backlinks. Crowning it "best SEO suite" would be false.

Trends MCP wins when the buyer wants live multi-source demand inside an agent, priced per request. pricing.md, last updated 27 August 2026, lists Free at $0 for 100 requests per month, Starter at $19 for 1,000, Pro at $49 for 5,000, and Business at $199 for 25,000. Annual billing saves 20%. The same markdown says every plan includes the same data sources. Keyword alerts: Pro 50, Business 250.

The HTML pricing page, fetched 27 August 2026, adds Free caps the markdown mirror does not print: "Top 10 trends" and "12 months of history" on Free, versus "All trends" and "Full history" on paid plans. HTML markets "35+ data sources" on every card. docs.md's keyword-source table lists 15 rows (google search through steam; no python row). The live get_top_trends table lists 23 feeds. The MCP get_growth schema still lists python. Cite the split. Do not flatten those counts to 15, 16, or 35+.

Paid plans collect a card at checkout and start a 7-day trial, charged on day 8 if the subscription stays. Free needs no card. One successful API or MCP call is one request. get_growth counts once per source plus keyword, with every percent_growth window included. get_top_trends counts per feed and per page. Failed calls are free. Hitting the quota returns 429 until reset; there are no overage charges. The HTML footer printed 9,225,894 API calls served.

For a Cursor user who needs TikTok hashtags, Google Search growth, and Reddit beside each other, Starter at $19 is the priced alternative to Core at $103.20. That user still needs SE Ranking, Semrush, or Ahrefs for positions and links. Pairing Starter with a cheaper rank tracker is a stack. Replacing Core with Trends MCP is a category error.

Google-only wiring, including the Cursor-specific Google Trends connector, lives on Google Trends MCP for Cursor. Broader request math against other trend APIs is on Trends API pricing. Semrush's own sticker ladder, for buyers comparing SEO suites rather than trend MCPs, is on Semrush pricing.

FAQ

Does SE Ranking have a free plan?

No public free plan sits on the subscription page. The offer is a 14-day trial with no credit card, capped at 10 projects, 750 daily keywords, 20 daily AI prompts, and 3 GEO-research domains. The MCP and API pages also put 100K trial credits on that window. After day 14, Core at $103.20 annual / $129 monthly is the lowest self-serve SKU.

Is the SE Ranking MCP extra on Core?

No. Core and Growth both print MCP access, with 25K credits per month on Core and 100K on Growth. Extra volume is the API add-on (+$45 per month annual, from 3M credits per year) or a standalone/Wallet plan. The trial's 100K credits drop to Core's 25K after day 14, so chat-heavy trial workflows need a plan for that cut.

Do unused SE Ranking API credits roll over?

Wallet credits never expire, per the API pricing FAQ accessed 27 August 2026. Annual Standalone and add-on credits expire at cycle end, while extra top-ups never expire. Trial credits die after 14 days, and the Wallet card's /mo label still disagrees with that FAQ.

How does Core pricing compare with Semrush and Ahrefs?

On 27 August 2026, Core annual ($103.20) sits below Semrush SEO annual ($117.33) and Ahrefs Lite ($129), with 2,000 daily keywords versus 500 and 750. Semrush MCP starts on Starter ($165.17 annual / $199 monthly), not on SEO; Ahrefs lists MCP Server from Lite. Those suites still win on index branding. Check each vendor's live page before renewing, because add-ons move every invoice.

Can Trends MCP replace SE Ranking for SEO reporting?

No. Trends MCP has no rank tracker, site audit, or backlink graph; it serves live trend series and ranked boards through get_trends, get_growth, and get_top_trends. Use it for demand across Google, TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, and Reddit. Keep SE Ranking for positions, crawls, and GEO prompt tracking.

Primary sources, all accessed 27 August 2026: SE Ranking subscription, MCP marketing, MCP docs, API pricing, Semrush pricing, Ahrefs pricing, Trends MCP pricing.md, HTML pricing, and docs.md.