# SpyFu — SEO

SpyFu by SpyFu holds a panel rating of 2/5 from 6 AI judges (category median 2.5/5), as of 2026-11-04. Provenance: provenance unknown; sovereignty: 2 of 6 dimensions proven.

- Vendor: SpyFu (https://www.spyfu.com)
- Category: [SEO](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo.md)
- Provenance (editorial classification): provenance unknown
- Canonical page: https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/spyfu
- Alternatives: https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/spyfu/alternatives ([markdown](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/spyfu/alternatives.md))
- Data as of: 2026-11-04 · evaluated 2026-11-04 · oldest source captured 2026-11-03

**AI-generated.** Every score, rationale and verdict here is written by a panel of AI judges from public evidence — an analysis, not a hands-on test. Every fact quotes the vendor page it was read from. No score can be bought. How scores are made: https://whats-best.ai/methodology

## At a glance

- Vendor: SpyFu
- Headquarters: Incorporated in United States [S2]
- Data hosting: Outside the EU by default [S2]
- Free plan: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026

## The panel's verdict

Technical audit, SpyFu's strongest area, scored 6: scheduled crawls with a stated default of 100 pages, a JavaScript rendering toggle, sitemap validation, and pre-written, revertible auto-fixes sorted by impact. Rank and index data scores (4 to 6) follow a published method — over 7.2 trillion results across 152 million domains, top 50 organic and top 23 paid results collected monthly, cached Google pages for verification. The weakest columns are sovereignty (0 to 1) and pricing transparency (0 to 2): the privacy policy states SpyFu is located in the United States and that information is transferred out of the EU to the United States, and the only public cost statement is that the Project Management API is free to use. Keyword and content spread 4 to 6 — deep SERP analysis and AI on-page recommendations against no public information on intent classification, topic clustering or German-language depth. Reporting and API at 4 to 5 and data portability at 3 to 4 rest on keyword export, PDF reports with selectable sections and the free API, with no documented exit path for accumulated history.

**Speaks for it:**
- Scheduled crawls with a stated, adjustable default of 100 pages, sitemap validation, orphan-page detection and separate indexable/non-indexable page views.
- Issues tiered as Errors, Warnings and Notices, including an explicit Developer Fix category, with pre-written auto-fixes sorted by impact and revertible.
- A published index of over 7.2 trillion results across 152 million domains, a stated collection scope of top 50 organic and top 23 paid results, and cached Google pages for verification.
- A version 1 Project Management API stated as free to use that can reproduce anything you can do in My SpyFu programmatically.
- Keyword lists exportable in full or filtered before download, and instant PDF reports assembled from user-selected sections.

**Held against it:**
- The privacy policy states SpyFu is located in the United States and that information provided is transferred out of the EU to the United States, and we found no public information on EU hosting options, a data processing agreement or subprocessor locations.
- We found no public information on tier prices, billing periods, per-tier keyword or crawl limits, per-seat costs, overage rates or VAT treatment — the only pricing statements are the free-to-use API and a 1000-per-month custom-keyword limit for subscribers.
- We found no public information on Core Web Vitals or page speed reporting, log-file or Search Console comparison, or structured-data validation.
- We found no public information on search intent classification, topic clustering, content briefs or German-language data depth.
- Collection is stated as monthly, and we found no public information on country, device or local-result selection, any backlink index, exporting historical rankings or audit results, or retention after cancellation.

**Best for:**
- You audit a small or mid-sized site on a schedule and want pre-written, revertible fixes your developers can act on.
- You benchmark competitor SERPs and want a data vendor that publishes its index size, collection scope and cached source pages.
- You want to script your workflow, since the version 1 Project Management API is stated as free to use and covers My SpyFu actions programmatically.
- You need keyword research you can take with you — lists export in full or filtered, and PDF reports are generated on demand.

**Avoid if:**
- You must compute an annual invoice or client rebill from public pricing before committing.
- Your procurement requires EU data residency or a data processing agreement, as the privacy policy states information is transferred out of the EU to the United States.
- You need daily rank tracking or country, device or local granularity — collection is stated as monthly at the top 50 organic and top 23 paid scope.
- You expect to leave a multi-year subscription with your ranking history — we found no public information on historical export or retention after cancellation.

## Scores by judge and criterion

Scores out of 5, each judge scoring independently against the published rubric (v2). "n/r" = not rated: the vendor publishes no price, or the judge found no public information on that criterion.

| Criterion | The In-House SEO Lead | The Agency Owner | The Technical SEO | The Content Strategist | The Data Analyst | The Skeptic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Crawling & technical audit | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Keyword research & content guidance | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 2.5/5 | 3/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 |
| Rank tracking & index quality | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 2.5/5 | 3/5 | 2.5/5 | 3/5 |
| Reporting, integrations & API | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2.5/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 |
| Data portability & exit | 1.5/5 | 1.5/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 1.5/5 | 2/5 |
| European sovereignty | 0/5 | 0.5/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0.5/5 |
| Pricing transparency | 1/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 | 0/5 | 0.5/5 | 0.5/5 |
| **Weighted verdict** | **2.5/5** | **2/5** | **2/5** | **2.5/5** | **2/5** | **2/5** |

### The judges

- **The In-House SEO Lead** (v1.0): Owns organic traffic for one large German site and reports on it monthly. Wants German-language keyword data that is not an afterthought, rankings she can defend when they disagree with Search Console, and audit findings specific enough to become a developer ticket.
- **The Agency Owner** (v1.0): 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.
- **The Technical SEO** (v1.0): Lives in crawl data and log files. Wants JavaScript rendering, crawl budget analysed, indexation diagnosed rather than listed, and regressions caught between crawls. Treats an issue list sorted by count rather than by traffic impact as busywork.
- **The Content Strategist** (v1.0): Decides what gets written and can only commission so much. Wants topic clusters, honest opportunity sizing, cannibalisation caught before it happens, and briefs scored against what actually ranks rather than against keyword density.
- **The Data Analyst** (v1.0): Wants the numbers in the warehouse, not in a PDF. Cares about a documented API with published credit costs, bulk historical export, and whether three years of ranking history leaves with the customer or dies with the subscription.
- **The Skeptic** (v1.0): Knows every vendor claims the largest index and the most accurate rankings, and that no buyer can check either. Reads instead for what can be held to: refresh frequency, stated limits, credit costs per endpoint, and what the invoice does when the team adds a seat.

## European sovereignty — proven facts

Built only from facts on the vendor's own pages; a dimension we could not prove is left open, never scored as zero. Headline: 2 of 6 dimensions proven.

| Dimension | Finding | Points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Incorporated in US | 0/2 | [S2] |
| Hosting location | Outside the EU | 0/4 | [S2] |
| Hosting options | Not determined | — | — |
| Open source | Not determined | — | — |
| Data processing agreement | Not determined | — | — |
| Transfer impact assessment | Not determined | — | — |

## Key facts

Each fact is the vendor's own statement, cited to the source page it was read from ([S*n*] → Sources).

**Data**
- Account registration data: name, email address, password [S2]
- Cookies used: yes [S2]
- Credit card retention: no [S2]
- Credit card third party: offsite third party [S2]
- Log collection: IP address, browser type, browser language, date/time of query, cookies [S2]
- Sharing no pii consent: no [S2]

**Hosting**
- Transfer outside EU: out of EU to United States [S2]

**Integrations**
- API docs: yes [S2]
- Project manager docs URL: https://spyfu.com/api/v1/project-manager [S12]
- Workflow context: Site Audit integrates with SpyFu keyword research and domain analysis tools in the same platform [S3]

**Legal**
- Disclosure legal process: yes [S2]
- Entity jurisdiction: SpyFu, Inc., copyright 2026 [S2]
- Policy changes notice: yes [S2]

**Pricing**
- Project management API free: v1 · yes [S12]

**Product**
- Access path: https://www.spyfu.com/siteaudit · Projects > Site Audit [S3]
- Ads geo time limits: ads may be geo-restricted and limited by time of day and day of week [S6]
- Ads rollup: rollup of all ads seen on the SERP for the keyword [S6]
- AI recommendations: title tag improvements · meta description recommendations · heading structure · alt text suggestions · content improvements [S3]
- Audit categories: technical SEO, metadata, content quality, internal linking, sitemaps, crawlability, accessibility-related SEO, duplicate content, social metadata, broken internal and external links [S3]
- Audit workflow: Crawl, Analyze, Prioritize, Generate Recommendations, Implement Improvements [S3]
- Autofix: most issue types can be fixed automatically; fixes are pre-written and sorted by impact [S4]
- Autofix: yes · JavaScript snippet · about two minutes, one-time [S3]
- Autofix requires target keyword: yes [S3]
- Autofix revert: yes [S3]
- Broken link detection: Internal broken links · External broken links · Insecure HTTP references [S3]
- Cached page: View Cached Page shows the Google SERP page data was gathered from [S6]
- Cached page verification: Cached Google page view available in term stats for ad verification [S7]
- Catastrophic findings: red banners show catastrophic site-level findings, prioritized first [S4]
- Crawl refresh: running a new crawl after changes gives a fresh score [S4]
- Custom keyword access: yes [S8]
- Custom keyword data start: 1 [S8]
- Custom keyword limit: 1000 · yes [S8]
- Custom keywords shared: yes [S8]
- Data source google serp: Google's actual Search Engine Result Pages · yes [S6]
- Database collection scope: 23 · 50 [S8]
- Default crawl limit: yes · 100 [S3]
- Domain appearance icon: icon shows how many times a domain appears on the SERP [S6]
- Domain strength scale: domain strength · 1 · 100 [S6]
- Estimated monthly clicks: estimated monthly clicks per URL at its SERP position [S6]
- Health score guidance: 70s-80s · 50 [S3]
- Historical ads: yes [S7]
- Historical monitoring: yes [S3]
- Index size: 7200000000000 · 152000000 [S9]
- Indexable pages tabs: Indexable · Non-indexable [S3]
- Internal link opportunities: orphan page identification · internal linking opportunities [S3]
- Internal links search toggle: Target · Source [S3]
- Issue action categories: Auto-Fixable · Review Issues · Developer Fix Issues · Monitor Issues [S3]
- Issue counting method: top counts every instance; Issues section groups instances into named issue types counted once [S4]
- Issue prioritization: Errors · Warnings · Notices [S3]
- Issue severity tiers: actively hurt search performance, address first · informational, lowest priority · hold pages back, not breaking anything [S4]
- Js rendering toggle: Off · Crawl Settings > Rendering · yes [S3]
- Keyword export: yes [S11]
- Keyword submission: yes · yes · 1 [S7]
- Link health labels: Link Health · anchor · follow · image · follow · canonical · follow [S3]
- Monthly rollups: Monthly roll-ups available [S9]
- Monthly search volume: SpyFu runs millions of search terms each month [S7]
- Pdf reports: PDF reports generated from the page [S9]
- Pdf reports availability: Create instant ready-to-send PDF reports [S10]
- Primary secondary keywords: primary keyword: main target term; secondary keywords: supporting related terms [S3]
- Project management API: My SpyFu Project Management API allows programmatic access to all My SpyFu actions [S12]
- Ranking data freshness: Ranking data is live [S9]
- Recommended order: catastrophic findings · pre-written fixes by impact (Errors tier first) · warnings [S4]
- Recrawl speed: re-crawls typically take a few minutes for smaller sites [S3]
- Report access point: Create Report button located on overview pages [S9]
- Report section selection: Users can select which sections to include via checkboxes [S9]
- Scheduled crawls: yes [S3]
- Score update trigger: after each completed crawl · no [S4]
- Search scope: Ranking data covers only the first 2 pages of ads per searched term [S7]
- Serp analysis ads: SERP Analysis includes a Current Ads section showing the most recent ads seen for the keyword, including geo/time-restricted ads not visible on every search [S5]
- Serp analysis ads: yes [S6]
- Serp analysis cached page: View Cached Page option lets users check the cached SERP used to collect the data, per ranking URL [S5]
- Serp analysis domain multiplicity: Domain column shows icons (e.g. x2) when a domain has multiple pages ranking for the same keyword [S5]
- Serp analysis domain strength: URL Results table includes a Domain Strength metric indicating the domain's overall SEO presence [S5]
- Serp analysis estimated clicks: Estimated Monthly Clicks calculated per domain for its traffic on the keyword from current position [S5]
- Serp analysis metrics: SERP Analysis page starts with summary metrics about the keyword, split into two sets: ranking difficulty metrics and ranking outcome metrics [S5]
- Serp analysis ranks: SERP Analysis tab shows ranks and rank changes for specific content and URLs [S6]
- Serp analysis URL results: SERP Analysis includes URL Results table with rank, rank changes, titles, and URLs from last data collection [S5]
- Serp homepage edu gov count: homepages count · .edu/.gov sites count [S6]
- Serp overview ranking difficulty: variety of metrics displayed on the page · ranking difficulty [S6]
- Serp results and diversity: Google result count · domain diversity percentage over time [S6]
- Serp SEO clicks value: monthly SEO clicks · relative ad dollar value of #1 spot clicks [S6]
- Serp social pages: shows social media pages appearing on the SERP [S6]
- Serp title URL keyword weighting: keyword in title · keyword in URL/H1 [S6]
- Site audit: AI-powered site audit that turns site issues into fixes [S1]
- Site audit issues: 100 [S1]
- Site health score: yes [S3]
- Site health score range: Site Health Score is a 0-100 number reflecting overall technical condition [S4]
- Site health score thresholds: 90 · 70 · 70 · 89 [S4]
- Sitemap validation: whether sitemap is discoverable · whether pages are missing · whether consistent with crawler findings [S3]
- Sitewide badge: SITEWIDE badge marks issues affecting every or nearly every page [S3]
- Target keywords: yes [S3]
- URL data rank order: ranking URLs in rank order with month-over-month rank change [S6]
- URL goto link: Go To icon opens ranking URL in new tab [S6]

## Questions

### Is SpyFu European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where SpyFu is based. Its vendor, SpyFu, is incorporated in United States, per [the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026](https://whats-best.ai/evidence/17744).

### Where does SpyFu store data?

SpyFu stores customer data outside the EU by default, per [the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026](https://whats-best.ai/evidence/17744).

### Does SpyFu have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026.

### What are the best alternatives to SpyFu?

As of 4 Nov 2026, the panel rates [SE Ranking (3.5/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/se-ranking), [SISTRIX (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/sistrix) and [Semrush (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/semrush) highest among the other 37 SEO products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is [SISTRIX](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/sistrix) (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: [how scores are made](https://whats-best.ai/methodology#ordering). The full list, with European products first: [SpyFu alternatives](https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/spyfu/alternatives).

## What this page leaves out

- We found no public information on compliance on the pages we read (spyfu.com, spyfu.com/privacypolicy, help.spyfu.com/en/articles/16112706-spyfu-site-audit-overview, help.spyfu.com/en/articles/16705007-site-audit-faq-issues-and-overview, help.spyfu.com/en/articles/5225508-what-s-in-the-serp-analysis, help.spyfu.com/en/articles/5449128-get-a-breakdown-of-the-serp-analysis-feature and 6 more). If the vendor publishes it somewhere else, send us the page.
- 34 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 3 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 2 support facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 1 data fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 1 integrations fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material.

## Sources

- [S1] Vendor page: https://www.spyfu.com (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S2] Privacy policy — found from the homepage: https://www.spyfu.com/privacypolicy (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S3] Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/16112706-spyfu-site-audit-overview (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S4] Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/16705007-site-audit-faq-issues-and-overview (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S5] Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/5225508-what-s-in-the-serp-analysis (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S6] Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/5449128-get-a-breakdown-of-the-serp-analysis-feature (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S7] Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/2968612-i-know-that-i-rank-on-more-fewer-words-than-what-you-have-listed-what-s-going-on (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S8] Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/3047864-add-custom-keywords-to-the-spyfu-database (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S9] Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap: https://www.spyfu.com/custom-reports (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S10] Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/collections/1734313-spyfu-reports (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S11] Data portability & exit — found from sitemap: http://help.spyfu.com/en/articles/2968663-download-all-of-my-competitor-s-keywords (checked 2026-11-03)
- [S12] Data portability & exit — found from sitemap: https://developer.spyfu.com/reference/my-spyfu-project-management-api (checked 2026-11-03)

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Cite as: whats-best.ai, "SpyFu — SEO", AI panel analysis, as of 2026-11-04. https://whats-best.ai/software/seo/spyfu

Corrections: https://whats-best.ai/correct/1497?target=page