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Do keyword research tools at the same price let you pull the same amount of data?
Summary
No. At $129 a month, Ahrefs Lite gives each user 1,000 credits and charges one every time you open a report, while SE Ranking Core advertises unlimited keyword research. Even among plans without a lookup cap, the number of rows you can see in one report and export in a month varies by a factor of ten or more.
How Ahrefs credits run out
On Ahrefs, opening a report in Keywords Explorer, Site Explorer or another credit-based tool costs one credit. Applying filters and clicking "Show results," changing the dates, or opening the SERP viewer or position history each costs one more. Reopening the same report with the same settings within 30 minutes, paging through results and sorting columns are free, and you can paste up to 10,000 keywords into Keywords Explorer for a single credit. Site Audit and Rank Tracker don't use credits.
Say you research 20 keywords a day and filter each report twice. That is 60 credits a day, and Lite's 1,000 run out partway through day 17. Standard, at $249, removes the credit cap.
The $29 Starter plan has 200 credits a month, shows at most 250 rows per report, keeps one month of history and allows no exports at all. It renews monthly only, and you can't buy extra credits or users on it.
Rows on screen and rows you can export
Once lookups are unlimited, the working limit becomes rows. Ahrefs Lite shows up to 2,500 rows per report and exports 500,000 rows a month; Standard raises that to 30,000 rows per report and 1.5 million exported. SE Ranking Core, which lists keyword, competitor and backlink research as unlimited, caps data exports at 50,000 rows. SpyFu Basic ($39 a month, or $29 a month billed annually) shows 10,000 rows of search results and exports 10,000. Pro + AI removes both limits for $119 a month after a $59 first month, or $89 a month billed annually.
What Semrush doesn't publish
Semrush's pricing page describes its entry SEO plan ($139 a month, $117.33 a month billed annually) as "basic keyword research and competitor analysis" and lists no reports-per-day or rows-per-report figures. Its help center does have a limits table, but it uses the older Pro, Guru and Business names and never maps them to today's SEO, Starter, Pro+ and Advanced plans, so the numbers can't be matched to a plan you could buy.
The free tier is clearer. Without a paid plan you get 10 reports a day across the main tools, and the Keyword Magic Tool shows 10 rows on screen with nothing to export. Exports are also switched off during a paid plan's free trial.
Work out your own number: the SEO Tools Cost Calculator finds the cheapest published plan for your sites, tracked keywords and users.
Sources
- https://ahrefs.com/pricing
- https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/9419051-about-ahrefs-starter-plan
- https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/6061658-what-actions-consume-credits
- https://seranking.com/subscription.html
- https://www.spyfu.com/pricing
- https://www.semrush.com/pricing/seo-ai-search/
- https://www.semrush.com/kb/262-keyword-magic-tool
- https://www.semrush.com/kb/1011-subscriptions
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.