Semrush vs SISTRIX

Semrush

The audit modules go deep — crawlability and indexability, redirects, canonicals, structured data, Core Web Vitals measured against Google's published good and poor values at the 75th percentile, mobile rendering parity, even AI-crawler access — and the Enterprise tier promises multi-million-page crawling, which matters at my scale. But we found no public information on crawl page limits per plan, scheduled crawl cadence, log-file analysis or prioritisation by traffic impact, and nothing that turns findings into a diagnosis with regression tracking between crawls.

SISTRIX

Crawls run weekly by default at stated quotas up to 4 million URLs per month, JavaScript rendering is described as based on the same technology as the official Googlebot, error categories from missing meta descriptions to broken links come with fix suggestions sorted by importance, and Core Web Vitals are available as both lab and field data with daily Lighthouse measurements kept permanently. We found no public information on log-file analysis, canonical or indexation diagnosis, or issue prioritisation weighted by traffic impact, and structured data appears only as a missing-tag check — so the audit is closer to a prioritised list than a diagnosis.

Semrush

Volume, difficulty, CPC and traffic estimates, SERP feature coverage including AI Overviews and the Local Pack, on-page gap recommendations and keyword cannibalisation analysis are all documented, on a database of 26.4 billion keywords across 142 geo databases with history back to 2012. We found no public information on intent classification, topic clustering, competitor gap analysis or content briefs, and nothing on the depth of the German-language data — for the site I run, that gap decides whether planning happens here or elsewhere.

SISTRIX

German data is the headline rather than an afterthought: the largest keyword database for the German and European market, automatic topic clustering as the basis for a content strategy, competitor keyword gap analysis from any competitor URL, and an intent model whose method — scoring SERP elements for "Intent: Do" and "Intent: Know" — is publicly documented. We found no public information on content briefs with entity coverage, cannibalisation detection, or SERP composition tracked over time, which is what separates the top tools in this criterion.

Semrush

Daily position updates at city and country level on desktop and mobile, unpersonalized results, published index sizes of 43 trillion backlinks and 808 million domain profiles, and documented calculation details such as capping average position at 21 beyond position 20 — that is a rank tracker whose numbers I can largely defend. What the captured pages do not document is a backlink refresh cadence, lost-and-found link detection, or any handling of disagreements against Search Console, which is the conversation I have every month.

SISTRIX

The update methodology is documented more openly than most: important keywords daily, the rest weekly, longtail at least monthly with the stated guarantee of never working with data older than a month, keywords automatically shifting to faster cycles when demand changes, and daily project keywords for specific cities across more than 200 country and language combinations. Public accountability stops at the backlink index and the defence of the numbers — we found no published index size or refresh cadence, no lost-and-found link detection, and no explanation of ranking discrepancies against Search Console.

Semrush

This is the strongest area for a team like mine: API v3 and v4 with per-endpoint unit prices (keyword metrics at 20 API units per request), a checkable unit balance, OAuth 2.0, MCP for AI tools, and white-label reporting priced as an add-on at €19.18/mo. We found no public information on data-warehouse or BigQuery export, v4 is still in Early Access with pricing subject to change while v3 is deprecated, and tools with external users are routed to sales.

SISTRIX

The API is documented and buildable: JSON or XML over HTTP with GET and POST, a sandbox for request building, a fair-use policy, a free key, wrappers in PHP, Python, NodeJS and cURL, and credit costs "based on the number of data points retrieved" with functions without a listed price free. Connectors cover Google Sheets, Excel and a free Google Data Studio community connector the vendor itself describes as still in development; we found no public information on BigQuery or data-warehouse export, or on white-label reporting for clients.

Semrush

Ranking history back to January 2012 is retrievable via the API in JSON or CSV, and the terms grant thirty days after suspension to back up stored data. But every export request is metered in API units, use is limited to internal business purposes, cached data may not be kept beyond one month without written consent, and on account deletion the vendor may delete everything with no responsibility — so continuously mirroring my multi-year history is not something the captured terms allow.

SISTRIX

Export is genuinely multi-channel — CSV, Excel and Google Sheets, chart exports as PDF, CSV or PNG, raw Lighthouse JSON downloads, and an API returning JSON or XML — with weekly export credits per package and 10,000 further credits per week bookable monthly for 75 Euro. But history depth is package-dependent (three months on Start, the full eleven years only from Professional), exports and API queries draw on the same credit pool, and we found no public information on any retention period after cancellation.

Semrush

The contracting entity is a Delaware corporation in Boston, and the privacy policy confirms transfers of personal data to the United States and to affiliates, with Standard Contractual Clauses as the safeguard; an EU joint controller in Prague exists. We found no public information on hosting location or EU data residency options, and the named subprocessors cover merchandise delivery and marketing tags rather than the core crawl and analytics chain.

SISTRIX

The captured pages name SISTRIX GmbH as the company and the homepage carries marketing copy that data stays in Europe, but we found no public information confirming the contracting entity's jurisdiction, the hosting infrastructure behind that claim, a subprocessor list, or a DPA covering the crawl and Search Console data the tool ingests. A bare "Europa" on a marketing page is not evidence I can take into a data-protection review.

Semrush

Plan limits are concrete — 5 to 40 websites and 500 to 5,000 daily tracked keywords, with API access from Advanced — additional users start at €43/mo, reporting add-ons are exactly priced, and the terms state fees are exclusive of taxes. We found no public information on crawl page limits per plan, overage rates or a minimum term, and the captured facts give no headline subscription figure for the tiers themselves.

SISTRIX

Every tier is public with VAT treatment stated — 119 €, 239 €, 419 € and 799 € per month, each "zzgl. MwSt." — plus monthly cancellation, and the metered items are priced: additional crawled pages from 0,14 € to 0,21 € per 1.000 Seiten, extra projects from 5,99 €, further user accounts at 24,90 €, and 75,00 € for 10,000 additional weekly credits. With crawl quotas, export and API credits and included users published per tier, I can compute a real annual invoice for a known crawl volume and team size; only the Enterprise programme is individually quoted.