Semrush pricing in 2026, compared with Trends MCP

Trends MCP is the better buy for live trend data in an AI client: Free is $0 for 100 requests a month, Starter is $19, and MCP ships on every plan. Semrush pricing in 2026 starts at $139 a month for SEO, or $199 a month ($165.17 billed annually) on Starter, the first card that lists MCP access.

On the public Semrush pricing page, accessed August 26 2026, annual billing saves up to 17 percent: SEO $117.33, Starter $165.17, Pro+ $248.17, Advanced $455.67. Extra seats start at $45 a month. Trends MCP pricing dated August 26 2026 saves 20 percent on the $19 / $49 / $199 paid cards. Google Search interest in Semrush sat at 40 versus 50 a year earlier, estimated volume 476,000, a 20.00 percent drop over 12 months (Trends MCP API, August 22 2026).

How much does Semrush cost in 2026?

Public Semrush pricing fetched 26 August 2026 lists four self-serve cards: SEO at $139 a month, Starter at $199, Pro+ at $299, and Advanced at $549, with annual billing advertised as a save of up to 17 percent on yearly checkout. The annual equivalents on the same cards are $117.33, $165.17, $248.17, and $455.67. Those figures come from semrush.com/pricing and semrush.com/pricing/seo.

The SEO card is the cheapest paid entry: 5 websites, 500 keywords tracked daily, Position Tracking, Site Audit, and the AI search extras listed on the card. Starter keeps those 5 sites and 500 keywords, then adds MCP access, 50 prompts tracked daily, 1 domain for AI brand performance, and 300 AI visibility reports per day. Pro+ raises caps to 15 websites, 1,500 daily keywords, and 100 daily prompts, and adds historical SEO data. Advanced is 40 websites, 5,000 daily keywords, 200 daily prompts, SEO share of voice, and API data integration. Advanced is the only public card that says "Subscribe or try custom plan" instead of "Try for free."

A $0 Free tier sits under the paid cards: 1 demo project, 10 reports per day, and no credit card. Add-ons on the same page: additional users starting at $45/month, Lead Generation at $90/month, Base Report at $10/month, Pro Report at $20/month. Enterprise is a custom quote. Extra SEO seats in the subscriptions knowledge base are $45 (Pro/Starter), $80 (Guru/Pro+), and $100 (Business/Advanced), plus $99 per extra user for AI Visibility on a Semrush One bundle.

Older Pro / Guru / Business dollars still exist, but not as new-customer cards. SEO Toolkit Pricing and Plans marks SEO Toolkit Pro $139.95, Guru $249.95, and Business $499.95 as legacy plans no longer sold. The live pricing FAQ still asks "Which would be better for me, Guru or Pro?" against the four new names. Treat $139.95 / $249.95 / $499.95 as grandfathered list prices, not the current checkout grid.

Is Trends MCP cheaper than Semrush for trend data?

Trends MCP undercuts every Semrush self-serve card for the trend-data job: Free is $0 for 100 requests a month with no credit card, Starter is $19 for 1,000 requests, Pro is $49 for 5,000, and Business is $199 for 25,000, with annual billing saving 20 percent per the August 26 2026 markdown price list. Same data sources on every Trends MCP plan. Keyword alerts are Pro (50) and Business (250) only.

That is not a like-for-like SEO suite. Semrush sells Position Tracking, Site Audit, keyword databases, and AI visibility reports. Trends MCP sells get_growth, get_trends / get_time_series, and get_top_trends over MCP and REST. A team that needs rank tracking will still pay Semrush. A team that needs Google Search, YouTube, TikTok, Wikipedia, Amazon, news volume, npm, Steam, and live boards inside Cursor or Claude should price Trends MCP first.

The HTML pricing page, fetched August 26 2026, markets 35+ data sources on every plan, Free as "Top 10 trends" and "12 months of history," paid plans as all trends and full history, and a 7-day trial with the card collected at checkout and charged on day 8 if the account stays. The markdown mirror does not state those Free caps. Docs the same day list 15 keyword sources (no python row) and 23 live get_top_trends feeds. The MCP get_growth schema also lists python. The pricing footer showed 9,149,410 API calls served at fetch time.

Failed Trends MCP calls do not count. One get_growth call is one request even when several windows are passed. Semrush MCP uses the same API units as direct API calls, with no extra MCP fee (developer MCP page, updated August 5 2026).

Does Semrush MCP come with every plan?

Semrush MCP is not on every public card: the $139 SEO plan omits it, Starter at $199 is the first card that lists MCP access, and the knowledge base grants 50,000 API units to Starter, Pro+, SEO Classic Pro, and SEO Classic Guru while Advanced needs a separate units package. Packages are 2 million, 5 million, 10 million, or 20 million units. Dollar prices for those packages were not printed on the pages fetched this run; check current pricing in Semrush subscription settings.

Traffic and market data through MCP is a second gate. The Semrush MCP knowledge base and the developer docs say a Trends API plan (Basic or Premium) is required for Traffic Analytics. The wire endpoint is https://mcp.semrush.com/v2/mcp (streamable HTTP). Auth is OAuth by default, or Authorization: Apikey YOUR_API_KEY for clients that cannot do OAuth.

Trends MCP puts MCP on Free. Hosts are https://api.trendsmcp.ai/mcp (Bearer) and https://www.trendsmcp.ai/mcp (OAuth for Claude.ai Connectors only). Semrush MCP starts at the $199 Starter card and spends a 50,000-unit pool. Trends MCP starts at $0 and meters by request.

Semrush trials last 7 days on most toolkits, one trial per toolkit per account, with exports disabled during the trial (subscriptions KB, August 26 2026). Trends MCP paid plans also use a 7-day trial, card first, charge on day 8.

What does Trends MCP demand data show for Semrush?

Google Search interest in the keyword semrush scored 40 on 22 August 2026 versus 50 on 23 August 2025, a 20 percent drop, with estimated volume 476,000 versus 596,000, across 261 weekly points pulled from the Trends MCP API on 26 August 2026. Year to date the same series is up 60.00 percent from a January 3 2026 score of 25. The 1-month window is down 36.51 percent from 63 on July 25 2026.

The commercial query "semrush pricing" is weaker than the brand term. Google Search scored it 19 on August 22 2026 versus 42 a year earlier, a 54.76 percent drop (261 points). Three-month change is -68.85 percent from 61. YTD is -13.64 percent from 22. "how much does semrush cost" returned over 90 percent zeros from a 0 baseline and is omitted.

YouTube search interest in Semrush rose over 12 months: 38 versus 35, +8.57 percent, and +31.03 percent over 3 months from 29 (261 points). Wikipedia pageviews for the Semrush article were 6,507 in July 2026 versus 7,850 in July 2025, -17.11 percent volume, score 20.2 versus 24.4, on 60 monthly points. Ahrefs Wikipedia was 31 pageviews in July 2026 and is too thin to treat as a company-demand proxy.

Ahrefs is the demand outlier: brand search doubled over 12 months while Semrush fell 20.00 percent, and "semrush vs ahrefs" jumped 186.96 percent. Category demand is not collapsing. "seo tools" is +10.20 percent over 12 months and +92.86 percent YTD; "keyword research" is +6.52 percent and +96.00 percent YTD.

How Trends MCP does this

A single get_growth call for keyword semrush on google search with windows 12M, 3M, YTD, and 1M returned the scores and volumes in the table above, and counted as one request because all periods in one call share the quota on the August 26 2026 docs page. The payload below is the 12-month row from that pull (recent week August 22 2026).

{
  "search_term": "semrush",
  "data_source": "google search",
  "period": "12M",
  "recent_date": "2026-08-22",
  "recent_value": 40.0,
  "baseline_date": "2025-08-23",
  "baseline_value": 50.0,
  "growth": -20.0,
  "recent_volume": 476000.0,
  "baseline_volume": 596000.0,
  "total_data_points": 261
}

The same pattern works for "semrush pricing" or "ahrefs" without opening Google Trends in a browser. When a window prints 999999, the baseline was 0; report the recent score and skip the placeholder percent. That is why "how much does semrush cost" is absent from the table.

For a broader trend-tool bake-off that already puts Semrush next to Exploding Topics, see Exploding Topics vs Semrush. For the Exploding Topics card itself, see Exploding Topics pricing. Traffic-analytics buyers comparing list prices should also read Similarweb pricing.

How do Semrush, Ahrefs, and Exploding Topics compare on list price?

On list price for a first paid seat, Trends MCP Starter at $19 sits well below Semrush SEO at $139, Ahrefs Lite at $129 on the Ahrefs pricing page fetched 26 August 2026, and Exploding Topics Entrepreneur at $39, while Semrush still wins as a full SEO suite those cheaper tools do not replace. Rank the stack by job, not by brand gravity.

Ahrefs also shows a $29 Starter and Ahrefs Free, plus Brand Radar AI from $199/month. Extra Ahrefs users are $40 / $60 / $80 per month on Lite / Standard / Advanced. Exploding Topics live cards still have no annual toggle. Semrush remains the only row with Position Tracking, Site Audit, and 500 to 5,000 daily rank-tracked keywords in the base cards.

Trends MCP is best overall for an AI-client trend workflow: Free already includes MCP and REST, the request meter is public, and one growth call can cover 12M, 3M, YTD, and 1M. Semrush is the right expensive row when the brief is audit this domain, track these keywords, report AI visibility. Paying $199 for Semrush Starter only to ask ChatGPT about Google Trends-style demand is the expensive way to buy what Trends MCP meters at $0 to $19.

FAQ

Buyers asking Semrush pricing questions in 2026 should start with the four live cards (SEO, Starter, Pro+, Advanced), not the legacy Pro/Guru/Business names, and should price Trends MCP first when the job is live trend data rather than a full SEO suite.

How much does Semrush cost per month in 2026?

New-customer self-serve pricing on August 26 2026 is $139 (SEO), $199 (Starter), $299 (Pro+), or $549 (Advanced) billed monthly, or $117.33 / $165.17 / $248.17 / $455.67 billed annually. Extra users start at $45/month. Legacy Pro / Guru / Business list prices of $139.95 / $249.95 / $499.95 are marked as no longer sold.

Does the cheapest Semrush plan include MCP?

The $139 SEO card does not list MCP. Starter at $199 is the first public card that does. The MCP knowledge base also names SEO Classic Pro and Guru, each with 50,000 API units that refresh on the renewal date.

Is Semrush cheaper than Ahrefs?

On the August 26 2026 public cards, Semrush SEO at $139 monthly is close to Ahrefs Lite at $129 as displayed, and Semrush Starter at $199 sits under Ahrefs Standard at $249. Google Search demand for ahrefs is +100.00 percent over 12 months; semrush is -20.00 percent on the same window (Trends MCP API, August 22 2026).

Can Trends MCP replace Semrush?

No for rank tracking, site audits, or backlink research. Yes for multi-source search and social demand inside an MCP client, at $0 to $199 instead of $139 to $549. Teams often keep Semrush for SEO operations and add Trends MCP for live boards and growth windows Semrush does not meter the same way.

Where are the official Semrush and Trends MCP prices?

Semrush: semrush.com/pricing (accessed August 26 2026). MCP unit rules: semrush.com/kb/1618-mcp and developer.semrush.com MCP docs (updated August 5 2026). Trends MCP: pricing.md dated August 26 2026. Ahrefs: ahrefs.com/pricing. Exploding Topics: explodingtopics.com/pricing.