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What decides what you'll actually pay for SEO software, beyond the monthly price?
Summary
Three things move the bill: how you're billed, how many people use the account, and the limits on projects, tracked keywords and crawling. The "per month" figure on many pricing pages is an annual plan divided by twelve, so Surfer's $49 Discovery plan is really a $588 charge up front. Headcount can flip the ranking too: Ahrefs Lite at $129 beats Semrush's $139 SEO plan for one person, but a fourth user forces Ahrefs into a $249 plan.
The annual price is an average, not a bill
Semrush shows its SEO plan as "$117.33/mo billed annually" next to "instead of $139 monthly." Twelve months on the monthly plan comes to $1,668. The annual plan comes to $1,407.96, and you pay it as a commitment for the year.
SE Ranking's Core plan shows $129.00 and $103.20 under a "Monthly" and "Annually Save 20%" toggle. That's $1,548 a year on monthly billing and $1,238.40 on annual.
Surfer doesn't show a monthly-billing price for Discovery at all. The page lists "49 USD per month, Billed yearly," and the FAQ says that on the annual plan "you'll be charged for the entire year." So the smallest Surfer purchase visible on the page is $588.
Ahrefs goes the other way. Its pricing page lists only monthly prices. There's a line about saving "up to 17%" by paying annually, but no annual dollar amounts, and switching to annual billing goes through the support team. For the general question of when annual billing pays off, the SaaS Compass guide to annual vs monthly billing covers it.
Adding people changes which plan is cheapest
Each vendor's list price covers one user. Here's what a team pays on monthly billing, using the lowest add-on price each vendor shows.
With one person, Ahrefs Lite and SE Ranking Core are both $129 and Semrush SEO is $139.
With three people, Ahrefs Lite is $209 ($129 plus two users at $40). Semrush SEO is at least $229, since extra users start at $45 each. SE Ranking Core is at least $161, with extra manager seats from $16.
The fourth person is where Ahrefs changes. Lite allows only two extra users, so a team of four has to move to Standard, which is $249 plus $60 per added user, or $429 a month. Semrush would be at least $274 and SE Ranking at least $177.
The Semrush and SE Ranking figures are floors because both pages give a starting price for extra seats without tying it to a plan. The seat fees guide goes through what each vendor includes per user.
"Five projects" means three different things
| Vendor and plan | What the headline limit counts | Rank tracking | Site audit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Lite | 5 projects on sites you haven't verified (verified sites are unlimited) | 750 keywords, updated weekly | 100,000 crawl credits a month, up to 25,000 pages per project |
| Semrush SEO | 5 websites to monitor | 500 keywords, updated daily | Not stated on the pricing page |
| SE Ranking Core | 10 projects | 2,000 keywords, updated daily | 250,000 pages a month |
The Ahrefs project count only bites when you research sites you don't own, such as competitors. The weekly refresh applies to every Ahrefs plan, not just Lite. The site and project limits guide goes deeper on how these caps play out with several sites.
What the $29 tier leaves out
Ahrefs Starter costs $29 a month and renews monthly only. Next to Lite, its help page shows 200 credits a month instead of 1,000, 250 rows per report instead of 2,500, one month of history instead of six, and no exports, where Lite allows 500,000 rows a month. You can't buy extra users or extra credits on Starter. If your routine involves pulling data into a spreadsheet for a client report, Starter can't do it at any volume.
Work out your own number: the SEO Tools Cost Calculator finds the cheapest published plan for your sites, tracked keywords and users.
Sources
Figures come from each vendor's own pricing pages and documentation. We have not tested these tools hands-on, and no ranking here is paid for.