Screaming Frog vs Semrush
Both are seo tools. Here is what separates them.
| Screaming Frog | Semrush | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | SEO | SEO |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Price from | Freemium | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 11 | 13 |
| What it does | A desktop crawler that finds what a site audit tool politely omits. | Keyword research, rank tracking and competitor teardowns in one suite. |
What Screaming Frog is
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that fetches a site's URLs and reports technical SEO problems. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and checks for more than 300 distinct SEO issues. The crawler can render JavaScript, so client rendered pages are crawled as a browser would see them. Custom extraction pulls arbitrary data out of pages using XPath, CSS Path or regular expressions, spelling and grammar checking covers more than 25 languages, and crawls can be scheduled to run automatically. The crawler also connects to Google Analytics, Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights to pull their data in alongside the crawl data. Because the crawl runs on your own machine, that machine sets the ceiling. The application starts in database storage mode with 2GB of RAM allocated, which is generally sufficient for crawls under 200,000 URLs. Memory storage mode keeps the crawl in RAM instead and typically handles 10,000 to 100,000 URLs at the same 2GB default allocation. Crawling more than a million URLs is recommended on an SSD with 16GB of RAM or more, and the stated minimum is a 64 bit operating system with at least 4GB of RAM available. The free version stops each crawl at 500 URLs. A paid licence makes the crawl limit unlimited, bounded only by the machine's memory and disk, and costs 199 pounds per year. Licences are per user, so two people need two separate licences, and each licence runs for one year and must be renewed to continue working. Buying in volume lowers the rate to 189 pounds each for 5 to 9 licences, 179 pounds for 10 to 19 and 169 pounds for 20 or more. Prices can be displayed in pounds, US dollars or euros. The Log File Analyser is a separate product that ingests server logs, verifies search engine bots and reports which URLs those bots requested. It reads Apache logs, the W3C Extended Log File Format and the Amazon Elastic Load Balancing custom log format. The free version is limited to 1,000 log events and one project at a time, and a licence is listed at $139 per year.
What Semrush is
Semrush is a subscription platform covering SEO, AI visibility, content, local listings, advertising and social. It is organised into nine solution areas: Semrush One, SEO, AI Visibility, Traffic and Market, Content, Local, Advertising, AI PR and Social. Named tools include the Keyword Magic Tool, Site Audit, rank tracking, Backlink Analytics and an AI visibility checker. Those tools read from indexes that Semrush builds itself: 28 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks and 808 million domain profiles, held across 142 geographic databases. Four plans are listed, and they differ in how many websites, keywords and AI prompts they cover. The SEO plan is $139 per month, or $117.33 a month on annual billing, and covers 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords. Starter is $199 per month, or $165.17 annually, and covers 5 websites, 500 tracked keywords and 50 tracked AI prompts. Pro+ is $299 per month, or $248.17 annually, and covers 15 websites, 1,500 tracked keywords and 100 tracked AI prompts. Advanced is $549 per month, or $455.67 annually, and covers 40 websites, 5,000 tracked keywords and 200 tracked AI prompts. Users beyond the first are charged separately, at $45 each on Starter, $80 on Pro+ and $100 on Advanced. The SEO Toolkit is sold in Pro, Guru and Business tiers. Pro tracks 500 keywords, audits 100,000 pages a month and returns 10,000 results per report. Guru tracks 1,500 keywords, audits 300,000 pages and returns 30,000 results. Business tracks 5,000 keywords, audits 1,000,000 pages and returns 50,000 results. A single audit is capped at 20,000 pages on Pro and Guru, and at 100,000 pages on Business. Additional users on toolkits other than SEO cost $20 each regardless of tier. Without an SEO Toolkit subscription, Site Audit crawls only 100 pages a month and 100 pages per audit. Unused crawl budget does not carry over between months, and the allowance resets on the first day of each month. A seven day free trial is available.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.