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Semrush

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Semrush Holdings, Inc. · www.semrush.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Agency Owner

Weighted verdict

Runs forty client sites and rebills the licence. Wants multi-client management, white-label reports a client can receive unedited, and per-seat costs that do not punish a growing team. Reads "contact us" on a pricing page as a margin problem.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Agency Owner

Crawling & technical audit

How this is scored

Site crawling at real scale: what the crawler finds, how deeply it checks, whether Core Web Vitals and indexation problems are diagnosed rather than merely listed.

0 — No site crawler; the product is keyword data only.

3 — A crawler with a low page cap that reports broken links and missing tags, with no prioritisation and no rendering of JavaScript.

5 — Scheduled crawls at a stated page limit, JavaScript rendering, issue categories with severity, and Core Web Vitals pulled per template.

8 — Log-file or Search Console integration to compare what the crawler sees against what Google fetched, indexation and canonical diagnosis, structured-data validation, and issues prioritised by traffic impact rather than count.

10 — The audit is diagnostic rather than a list: crawl budget analysed, rendering differences surfaced, regressions detected between crawls with the deploy that caused them inferrable, and remediation guidance specific enough for a developer ticket.

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The Agency Owner

The Site Audit engine is real: documented modules for crawlability and indexability, canonicals, structured data, mobile parity and rendering, Core Web Vitals judged against Google's published good and poor bounds at the 75th percentile, Search Console data referenced in the workflow, and multi-million-page crawling on the Enterprise tier. We found no public information on log-file analysis, regression detection between crawls, or whether issues are prioritised by traffic impact rather than count — the captured pages promise a prioritized fix list without stating the ranking basis. Strong enough to bill clients against, a step short of diagnostic. 4 2 8

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Keyword research & content guidance

How this is scored

Keyword discovery, intent classification, SERP feature analysis and on-page guidance — judged on the depth of the German-language data as much as the English.

0 — A keyword list with volumes from one source and no intent or difficulty signal.

3 — Volume and difficulty for major markets, with thin or stale German data and no SERP feature detail.

5 — Keyword research with volume, difficulty and intent across German and other EU markets, SERP feature presence, and basic on-page recommendations.

8 — Topic clustering, competitor gap analysis, SERP composition tracked over time, content briefs with entity coverage, and cannibalisation detection.

10 — Research and guidance close the loop: opportunity sized against realistic traffic, content scored against what currently ranks rather than against a keyword density heuristic, and recommendations that reference the specific pages in the customer's own site.

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The Agency Owner

Volume, difficulty and CPC are documented alongside a rich SERP-feature picture including AI Overviews, a 30-day SERP volatility chart, on-page gap recommendations, keyword cannibalization analysis on the ProPlus tier, and monthly snapshots back to 2012. We found no public information on intent classification, topic clustering, content briefs with entity coverage, or the depth of the German-language data, which matters as much as the English for my German clients. Cannibalisation detection across forty sites earns it a mark above the middle. 6 2 8 5

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Rank tracking & index quality

How this is scored

The proprietary data: ranking accuracy and frequency, backlink index size and freshness. Scored on what the vendor documents about their own data, because nothing here can be verified from outside.

0 — Rankings and backlinks with no stated update frequency, no country or device granularity, and no documentation of how either is collected.

3 — Weekly rankings for one country and device, a backlink index with no stated refresh cadence or size.

5 — Daily rankings with country, language and device selection, local results, and a backlink index with a documented crawl frequency.

8 — Rankings at stated frequency across many locations including city-level, SERP feature attribution, backlink index size and refresh published, lost-and-found link detection, and historical data retained for the life of the account.

10 — The vendor is accountable for their own data: methodology documented, index size and freshness published and updated, historical rankings retained and exportable in full, and discrepancies against Search Console explained rather than hidden.

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The Agency Owner

The vendor puts its own numbers on the record: 26.4 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domain profiles and 142 geo databases, with daily updates documented, rankings at city and country level on desktop and mobile, and a Map Rank Tracker with heatmaps for local work. Historical keyword snapshots back to 2012 are exposed through the API, and even the position-calculation cap at twenty-one is documented rather than hidden. We found no public information on the backlink index refresh cadence, lost-and-found link detection, or any explanation of discrepancies against Search Console. 10 6 7 5 8

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Reporting, integrations & API

How this is scored

Getting the data out and in front of someone: dashboards, white-label reporting for agencies, Search Console and analytics integration, and an API a team can build on.

0 — On-screen views only; export is a manual CSV and there is no API.

3 — Scheduled PDF reports and CSV export, one analytics integration, no API worth building against.

5 — Customisable dashboards, scheduled reports, Search Console and analytics integration, and a documented API with stated limits.

8 — White-label reporting with client access, data-warehouse or BigQuery export, multi-site and multi-client management, and an API with credit costs published per endpoint.

10 — The tool is a data source rather than a destination: full historical export in open formats, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, integrations the vendor maintains, and reporting an agency can hand a client unedited.

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The Agency Owner

This is nearly my wishlist: a Pro Report add-on with branding and white-labeling, monthly/weekly/daily scheduling, sharing by link and twenty-plus external integrations, Google Analytics and Search Console on the Base tier, up to forty monitored websites on the Advanced plan, and API v3 and v4 with OAuth 2.0, a checkable unit balance and per-endpoint costs such as twenty units per keyword-metrics request. Two things hold it back: we found no public information on data-warehouse or BigQuery export, and the terms allow API use solely for internal business purposes, routing any tool with external users to a sales conversation — friction when you rebill forty licences. 2 9 10 5 11

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Data portability & exit

How this is scored

Whether the ranking and crawl history — the only thing a multi-year subscription actually accumulates — remains the customer's when they leave.

0 — No bulk export; history is visible in the interface and nowhere else, and ends with the subscription.

3 — CSV export of current views only, with historical data capped or unavailable in bulk.

5 — Bulk export of rankings, keywords and crawl results including history, via interface or API.

8 — Complete historical export in open formats without credit metering that prices it out of reach, plus a documented retention period after cancellation.

10 — Exit is designed for: the full account exportable including every historical data point, API access sufficient to mirror the data continuously, and a stated grace period during which the archive remains retrievable.

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The Agency Owner

Exit terms are at least written down: a documented thirty-day minimum before erasure after termination and a thirty-day backup window after suspension notice, with API export in JSON or CSV and keyword snapshots back to 2012. But the API is metered in units per request, the terms prohibit caching received data beyond one month without written consent — which blocks mirroring history continuously — and scraping is barred. We found no public information on a complete bulk export of a full account's ranking and crawl history. 11 5 7

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the account and crawl data live and who the contracting entity is. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted lower here than in categories holding personal data, because an SEO tool mostly holds the customer's own strategy rather than their customers' identities.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and site or user data of unclear scope leaving the EU.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published, and any analytics or Search Console data handling described with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a DPA that covers the crawl and analytics data the tool ingests.

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The Agency Owner

The contracting entity is Semrush Inc., a Delaware corporation in Boston, and the privacy policy states personal data may be transferred to the United States and to US service providers, with Standard Contractual Clauses cited as the safeguard and a Prague entity named as joint controller. We found no public information on data residency for account and crawl data or on a published subprocessor list — the captured pages name only incidental processors such as Google Analytics. Tolerable for a tool holding my clients' strategy rather than their customers' identities, but not something I could hand a German client unedited. 11 3

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

The category where the headline price is least often the invoice. Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost including keyword limits, crawl credits, API units, extra users and client seats — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but keyword limits, crawl credits or the cost of an additional user are unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with the main limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (extra seats, API credits, historical data) is unpriced or metered opaquely.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with keyword, crawl and API limits, overage rates, per-seat costs, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given keyword count, crawl volume, API usage and team size, with overage and every credit cost published.

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The Agency Owner

The add-on ledger is refreshingly exact — Base Report at €9.59/mo, Pro Report at €19.18/mo, additional users starting at €43/mo, Lead Generation at €86.31/mo — with per-tier website and keyword limits stated and fees stated as exclusive of taxes. But we found no public information on the headline tier prices, the monetary cost of an API unit, per-tier crawl caps, or overage rates, and Enterprise sits behind "Custom pricing available" and a demo request, which for anyone rebilling licences reads as a margin problem. Priced well at the edges, not yet computable as an invoice. 2 11 5

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 11 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026, 2 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap developer.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap www.semrush.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →