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Yoast SEO

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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 Yoast BV · yoast.com

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Yoast SEO: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Yoast SEO: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Yoast SEO at a glance

Vendor
Yoast BV
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Yoast SEO 1.5/5, the mean of 6 judges. Yoast SEO is a WordPress and Shopify plugin judged strongest on pricing transparency (5 to 7) and data portability (3 to 6): every tier carries a public price with VAT treatment stated — €118.80 / year (ex. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 20 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 21 Oct 2026. all sources

Yoast SEO alternatives, European ones first →

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

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Skeptic

Panel median The Skeptic This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Skeptic
Crawling & technical audit 1 of 5 0.5 of 5
Keyword research & content guidance 2 of 5 2 of 5
Rank tracking & index quality 0.5 of 5 0 of 5
Reporting, integrations & API 2 of 5 2 of 5
Data portability & exit 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 1.5 of 5 1 of 5
Pricing transparency 3 of 5 3 of 5

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 Skeptic

The captured pages describe crawl configuration — toggles that drop feeds, emoji scripts and search URLs, plus robots.txt rules — rather than a crawler that audits pages, and the vendor itself states the crawl settings "do not have any effect on the crawl rate of a website." We found no public information on JavaScript rendering, Core Web Vitals measurement, or indexation diagnosis at any stated page scale. 2 3

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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 Skeptic

Focus keyphrase analysis with up to four related keyphrases plus synonyms, multilingual readability analysis, and volume, search intent, difficulty and trend figures through the Semrush integration — but the vendor publishes no keyword numbers under its own name. We found no public information on SERP feature composition, topic clustering or content briefs, and no evidence on the depth of German-market data. 1 4 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 Skeptic

The pages named for index quality describe an internal database table holding page metadata, not a ranking feed or a backlink index, and we found no public information on either collected by the vendor. Keyword figures arrive under the Semrush name and performance metrics only via Site Kit from Google — data whose methodology belongs to someone else, so there is nothing stated on frequency, granularity or collection to hold this vendor to. 4 6 9

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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 Skeptic

The dashboard aggregates site-wide SEO and readability scores, filterable by content type and category, and surfaces impressions, clicks, CTR, average position and organic sessions once Site Kit is connected. A REST API ships in the free plugin with developer documentation, structured data support and two output formats, but it is built to deliver metadata to a headless frontend rather than to pull data out; we found no public information on rate limits, scheduled or white-label reports. 8 9

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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 Skeptic

Keyphrases export to CSV in the premium plugin with scores, URLs, titles and descriptions, redirects import and export in CSV including regex rules, and settings move between sites — open-format exports with no metering attached. The indexables pages state the data sits in a table on the customer's own site with post meta kept current "so they can move back or re-import if needed"; we found no public information on bulk export of that full table or a stated retention period after cancellation. 6 10 11

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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 Skeptic

The only fact on record is the contracting entity's name, Yoast BV, with no country stated; we found no public information on hosting location, subprocessors, certification, or a data processing agreement. Keyword queries run through Semrush and analytics through Google, and the scope of what leaves the customer's own infrastructure is not described on the captured pages. 4 5 9

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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 Skeptic

Headline prices are public and explicit about VAT — Yoast SEO Premium at €118.80 / year (ex. VAT), WooCommerce SEO at €178.80 / year (ex. VAT), AI+ at €358.80 / year (ex. VAT), Shopify at $19 / 30 days (ex. VAT) — alongside a free plugin, a 14-day Shopify trial and a published refund policy. What the invoice does when a team adds a site is the open question: we found no public information on how many sites a license covers or what renewal costs. 1 8 11

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Questions about Yoast SEO

Is Yoast SEO European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Yoast SEO is based.

Where does Yoast SEO store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

Does Yoast SEO have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Yoast SEO?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates SE Ranking (3/5), Semrush (3/5) and SISTRIX (3/5) highest among the other 32 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 (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Yoast SEO alternatives.

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 (11)

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

  1. 1 Vendor page yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Data portability & exit — found from sitemap yoast.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →