I Tested 6 Moz Alternatives. Here's What's Worth It (2026)

If you’ve been doing SEO for a while, you probably remember Moz.

It was one of the first SEO tools on the market, launching back in 2007, and Rand Fishkin’s blog was genuinely one of the best places to learn SEO in those early days.

I’ve tried Moz twice over the past few years. Both times, after about a month of testing, I ended up switching back to Ahrefs or Semrush.

Here’s what kept pushing me away from using Moz:

The interface feels outdated compared to modern tools
Keyword volume is shown as ranges, not exact numbers
Key reports, like Top Performing Pages, are missing
The Domain Overview doesn’t give you enough data for a proper site assessment
No quick way to benchmark competitors organically
No global keyword volume estimates

Out of curiosity, I also checked recent Reddit discussions to see what other SEO professionals think about Moz. The consensus is pretty clear: most people think Moz hasn’t kept up with the competition.

One comment that stood out mentioned that Moz’s organic traffic estimates are significantly off compared to real Google Search Console data.

If you’re looking for solid Moz Pro alternatives that give you reliable data without breaking your budget, here’s what I’ve personally used and would actually recommend.

These days, I honestly don’t see the point in sticking with Moz or bouncing between different SEO tools if I already have a few I trust and use every day.

If you’re on the hunt for solid Moz Pro alternatives that won’t break the bank and actually give you reliable data, I’ve got some great picks to share. These are tools I’ve personally used and recommend.

Before we get into the list, here’s what I paid attention to when choosing these alternatives:

How reliable the data is
The price
How easy it is to use

P.S. This post includes a few affiliate links. If you decide to try any of these tools, I might earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Just being upfront about it! I’m only recommending tools I’ve used myself and truly believe in.

Quick Comparison: Best Moz Alternatives (2026)

Based on the criteria I mentioned earlier, I’ve picked a few SEO tools that I think are the closest alternatives to Moz.

Let me quickly walk you through each one so you know what they’re about:

Tool	Best For	Pricing
1. Semrush One	Combines Semrush’s SEO toolkit with new AI search features to help your brand be found in AI.	Starts at $199/month. Includes 50 prompts tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews. MCP access. 500 keywords tracking. Free trial: 14 days.
2. Search Atlas	All-in-one AI and SEO platform and an alternative to Writesonic.	Starts at $99/month. With a Growth plan ($199/month), you can track visibility across ChatGPT, AI Mode, and Gemini. 50 keywords for tracking. Free trial: 7 days.
3. Ahrefs	An AI SEO platform that you can use for all your SEO tasks. You can also connect it to LLMs.	Starts at $129/month. You can track up to 5 domains. 6 months of historical data 750 tracked keywords. Free trial not available.
4. SE Ranking	Covers pretty much every SEO task and lets you automate the processes.	Starts at $129/month to track 2,000 keywords and 100 prompts daily. An add-on available at $71.20/month for an additional 200 prompts. Free trial: 14 days.
5. Ubersuggest	For small teams’ and startups’ SEO needs without enterprise-level pricing.	Starts at $29/month for the Individual plan, or $290 one-time for lifetime access. The Starter plan includes 10 prompts for one domain and 125 keywords. Free trial: 7 days.
6. Writesonic	AI SEO automation tool with a built-in AI agent.	Starts at $49/month for access to SEO and content automation toolkits. To use the AI search tracking tools, you’ll need the Professional plan, which costs $249/month. You can track up to 100 prompts. Free trial: 7 days.

1. Semrush One

Best Features: Keyword Magic Tool, powered by AI, to provide you with thousands of keyword ideas for your website, AI Visibility Overview, Prompt Research, and more.
Pricing: Starts at $199month for the Semrush One
Free trial: You can use Semrush’s free plan to run 10 searches a day, or sign up for a 14-day free trial.

Semrush was the second SEO tool I tried, right after Ahrefs, when I started my career as an SEO specialist. Since then, it has become one of the tools I rely on the most, both for my own website and for client work.

It’s probably one of the most well-known Moz alternatives that has been on the market since 2008.

Over the years, Semrush has evolved a lot. It’s not the same tool it used to be.

Today, the platform includes more than 55 features for different marketing tasks. These features are organized into seven toolkits, which makes it easier to find the tools you need for a specific project.

Here’s a quick overview of what each toolkit includes:

SEO Toolkit: Covers everything from keyword research and site audits to link building and domain analysis. In simple terms, it gives you the main tools you need to plan and improve your SEO strategy.

Content Toolkit (formerly ContentShake AI): Helps streamline content production, from creating content briefs to writing and optimizing articles.

AI Visibility Toolkit: A newer toolkit that lets you track how your brand appears in AI Overviews and AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Social Media Kit: Lets you manage and schedule posts across your social media accounts from one place.

Advertising Toolkit: Helps you research, plan, launch, and improve your online ad campaigns.

Local Business Kit: Designed for managing your local presence, including your Google Business Profile and customer reviews.

Traffic & Market: Helps you analyze competitors (in a friendly way) to see what’s working for them and how they’re growing.

The Semrush One plan combines the SEO Toolkit and the AI Visibility Toolkit in one subscription, so you can manage your SEO efforts and track your visibility in AI search tools in the same place.

If you’d like to explore all the features in more detail, I also published a full Semrush review.

Semrush’s older pricing plans, Pro and Guru, now only include access to the SEO Toolkit. Pricing starts at $139.95 per month. It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s still less than what I used to pay for Ahrefs, which was $199 per month.

Before committing to a paid plan, I’d suggest trying the free trial first. It’s a good way to explore the tool and see if it’s actually worth the price for your needs.

As a small bonus, my partner links give you a 14-day free trial of Semrush One instead of the usual 7 days. So you get a full two weeks to test everything and decide if it’s the right fit.

If you’re interested in deeper insights into your website’s performance in AI search results, Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit (included in the Semrush One plan) can help. It analyzes how visible your brand is in AI Overviews and across LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Here’s what the Semrush AI Visibility toolkit include:

1 domain for brand performance analysis
300 daily queries in AI Analysis reports
25 prompts for prompt tracking
AI Search Checks in Site Audit for up to 100 pages
Coverage across 8 regions: US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Spain, Japan, and Mexico
Access to 213 million prompts in Semrush’s AI search database

In simple terms, Semrush shows you how AI search engines see your brand compared to your competitors. It also provides practical suggestions on how to improve your business, product, and marketing so you can better meet user needs and appear more often in AI-generated search results.

Semrush MCP

With the Semrush MCP server, you can connect Semrush data to AI tools like Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Visual Studio Code, Gemini, and ChatGPT.

In simple terms, this allows AI tools to use real Semrush data when generating answers instead of relying only on general AI knowledge.

The good news is that MCP access is now available to all Semrush users, not just enterprise customers like before. This means you can use up to 50,000 API credits when working with LLMs.

Comparing Semrush and Moz

It’s worth mentioning that Semrush has one of the largest keyword databases on the market. Therefore, it can spot and show more data for your domain than Moz.

Below, you can see the numbers I could find for Semrush (up-to-date numbers here) and Moz. You can see that Semrush’s keyword database is much larger, letting you find more keywords through its Keyword Research Toolkit and track more keywords for your website.

If you frequently do keyword research, Semrush is a solid alternative to Moz.

Semrush keyword database: 27.9 billion keywords in 142 locations (as of March 2026), 3.6 billion keywords in the USA alone.
Moz keyword database: 1.25 billion keywords.

Now, while Moz actually has a larger backlink database on paper, it missed a bunch of referring domains and backlinks pointing to my site. So if link building is a big part of your daily SEO work, that’s something to keep in mind.

Semrush backlink database: 43 trillion backlinks and 390 million referring domains, with 10 billion URLs crawled per day.
Moz backlink database: 44.8 trillion backlinks and 1 billion referring domains.

It’s also worth mentioning that Semrush’s Domain Overview report is much more insightful than Moz’s. With just one click, you can check a site’s authority, organic keywords, traffic, top pages, and top keywords—it’s all right there.

Semrush has a free plan that actually gives you access to a bunch of tools. And if you want to test out the Semrush One version, there’s a 14-day free trial.

Let me also show you how the keyword research toolkit and keyword metrics compare for both tools.

Tool description	Semrush	Moz
Assess any keyword potential, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent, to name a few	Keyword Overview	Explore by Keyword
Generate thousands of keyword ideas with one seed keyword	Keyword Magic Tool	Keyword Suggestions
Create topic clusters based on a seed keyword	Keyword Strategy Builder	Topic Tree Map (It’s part of the Keyword Suggestions tool that doesn’t work)
AI-powered keyword research with custom output for your domain	AI Keyword Research	Not available

2. Search Atlas

Unique features: AI SEO assistant (OTTO SEO), Site Visualization, and a Keyword Magic Tool.
Pricing: Starts at $99/month for the Starter plan.
Free trial: You get 7 days free. After that, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to keep using it.

Search Atlas is an all-in-one SEO tool built with agencies in mind, and it even comes with its own AI assistant called OTTO SEO.

I first noticed it on social media because their ads were everywhere. I talked more about that in my comparison of Semrush vs. Search Atlas.

Naturally, I got curious. I wanted to see if it could be a more affordable alternative to Moz and what kind of features it actually offers.

To me, Search Atlas feels like a mix of Semrush and Ahrefs. It has a similar layout and many similar features. If you’ve used either of those tools, you’ll feel right at home.

Here’s an example: the Site Overview report inside Search Atlas looks a lot like what you’d see in Ahrefs or Semrush.

It even has a Keyword Magic Tool. Yes, it has the exact same name as the one in Semrush. You can plug in a seed keyword and get a bunch of ideas.

Semrush offers a few more filters, but honestly, I didn’t think that was a big deal.

And just FYI, Moz doesn’t offer anything like this.

I’ve also published an in-depth Search Atlas review recently to help you get a detailed overview of the tool’s features and data accuracy.

Search Atlas isn’t perfect, but its numbers were pretty close to what I saw in my Google Search Console. Sure, it’s just an estimate for one month, but it gives you a solid sense of what’s happening on your site.

I even tried to find something like Semrush’s “Stats” page. After searching around (and asking ChatGPT for help), I stumbled across a Facebook comment that gave me a little more context.

One significant advantage is that the Search Atlas team actually responds to comments on their ads. You don’t see that often with SEO tools.

This also makes me think they pull performance data directly from your Google Search Console and then use it to give you helpful suggestions. If I find out more about how their data works, I’ll update this post.

All in all, I think Search Atlas is a strong alternative to Moz. It offers more features and uses AI to help with site audits and insights.

You can try it free for 7 days, but you’ll need to enter your credit card info. I know it’s a bit annoying, but they won’t charge you unless you stick with the paid plan.

Note that if you cancel your trial before it ends, you’ll lose access to the tool immediately. So, try to make the most of those 7 days.

P.S. I actually got the chance to meet Fidan and several other Search Atlas team members in person at the SEO IRL conference in Toronto in the fall of 2025.

3. Ahrefs

Unique features: AI Content Grader, AI Content Helper, Brand Radar, Broken links
Pricing: Starts at $129/month for the Lite plan
Free trial: Not available. But you can use Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools for free with limited features once you verify your domain authority

Ahrefs has been the very first SEO tool that I’ve used since 2015. The user interface hasn’t changed much since then, but the number of features has increased over the years.

I’ve used Ahrefs for all kinds of things, like:

Doing keyword research
Tracking how my keywords rank over time
Seeing how adding more pages affects my organic traffic
Spotting technical issues on my site
Checking out my competitors’ top pages
Monitoring new and lost backlinks

…and honestly, so much more.

They offer a Starter Plan for $29/month. It’s a budget-friendly option made for small businesses or solo website owners like me. You still get access to most of the main tools, just with some limits.

Here’s what you can do with the Starter Plan:

You get 100 credits per month (each time you open a report, apply a filter, or dig deeper into data, it uses one credit)
Track up to 40 keywords
Use their AI Content Helper for one document—great for optimizing content
See what people and AI are saying about any brand or topic using Brand Radar
Analyze different websites with the Site Explorer

After using Ahrefs for over 10 years, I can confidently say it’s one of the most powerful SEO tools out there, especially for big or complex projects.

Also, if you compare domain overview reports in Ahrefs vs. Moz, Ahrefs just gives you way more data in one place. That makes it easier to quickly decide if a site is worth guest posting on, how it’s performing overall, and more.

Similar to Semrush, Ahrefs provides lots of details and metrics for keyword analysis. In the Keyword Overview report, you’ll find data on:

How hard is it to rank for a keyword
Search volume (both global and by country)
The search intent for every keyword
Keyword suggestions
How much traffic the keyword could bring
A look at who’s ranked in the top 10 over time
The SERP overview
Ad history
An overview of the AI search performance, including AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot
And much more!

Moz, on the other hand, doesn’t show most of this. Personally, I wouldn’t rely on it for keyword research.

Here’s one thing I really want to point out about Ahrefs — their organic traffic numbers aren’t quite accurate!

So, I wouldn’t recommend relying on that metric to assess how well a site is doing organically.

For example, in my case, Ahrefs shows my organic traffic as about twice what it actually is. But interestingly, their number is pretty close to my total traffic from all sources combined.

If you want to see how visible your website is in AI search results but don’t want to spend $199/month on Ahrefs’ Brand Radar, you can try their free AI tool to run a quick visibility check.

So, if you are looking for a decent Moz alternative, Ahrefs is a go-to solution for all SEO-related needs.

I suggest starting with Ahrefs’ free Webmasters Tool if you have a verified domain. It’s a great way to try it out and see if it fits what you’re looking for.

4. SE Ranking

Unique features: AI Overviews Tracker, Agency Success Kit, Local SEO toolkit.
Pricing: Starts at $65/month for the Essential plan.
Free trial: There’s a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out first. After that, you’ll need to upgrade to keep using it.

SE Ranking is worth trying if you’re looking for an affordable SEO tool. It’s built for agencies, business owners, and SEO pros, and it packs a lot of useful features into one platform.

You can do everything from keyword tracking to website audits, backlink monitoring, competitor research, and more.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what SERanking has to offer:

Keyword Generator – Similar to Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, this helps you come up with keyword ideas based on your main topic.
Keyword Grouper – Groups similar keywords together based on what people are looking for (search intent).
Keyword Rank Tracker – Keeps an eye on where your keywords rank in Google and other search engines.
AI Overviews Tracker – A newer feature that lets you analyze AI-generated search snippets for your target keywords.
On-Page SEO Checker – Helps you improve individual pages by spotting what’s missing or what could be better.
Website Audit – Scans your site for technical issues and tells you how to fix them.
Backlink Checker – Looks at your backlink profile and checks out your competitors’ too.
Competitor Analysis Tool – Shows you what keywords your competitors are ranking for, how much traffic they get, and even their ad strategies.
AI Content Generator – Helps you write and optimize content using your keywords, and it works with Google Docs.
Local Marketing Toolkit – Great for local SEO; helps you reach more people in your area.
Agency Success Toolkit – Built for SEO agencies with features like a lead generator, SEO report builder, and API access.

I personally gave SE Ranking a shot when I was looking for a better alternative to Moz. These days, I mostly use Ubersuggest and Semrush, but SERanking is still a solid choice if you’re on a tighter budget.

For $65/month, you get access to a massive database of 4.2 billion keywords and 1.9 billion backlinks across 188 countries. You can manage 5 websites and track up to 500 keywords—pretty close to what Semrush offers.

If you run an agency, SE Ranking’s Pro plan lets you track up to 2,000 keywords across 30 domains and gives access to 3 users for just $119/month.

Note that there’s no free plan. After your 14-day trial, everything gets locked unless you upgrade.

To unlock the Agency Success Toolkit, you’ll need the Pro ($119/month) or Business ($259/month) plan and a yearly commitment.

You can save 20% if you choose the annual plan.

One more thing: if historical data matters to you, the Pro plan only gives you 3 months of it. To access all historical data, you’ll need the Business plan.

I get that it can feel a bit confusing, but with historical data, you can track long-term trends and performance.

5. Ubersuggest

Unique features: Top SEO opportunities report, Chrome extension, Keywords by Traffic report
Pricing: Starts at $29 monthly or $290 lifetime to manage one domain
Free trial: There’s a 7-day free trial and a limited free plan.

For $290, you could pay for a couple of monthly SEO tool subscriptions. But with Ubersuggest, that same amount gets you a lifetime plan as long as you’re only managing one website.

I grabbed their Individual plan back in December 2024 to keep tabs on my site’s performance, check out what my competitors are doing, and do keyword research. I’ve been using it daily ever since.

Honestly, Ubersuggest is a pretty solid alternative to Moz, especially if you’re running a small business or side project and don’t want to spend a ton.

Here’s what you get for $29/month or $290 for life:

1 user seat to manage 1 domain
150 keyword searches per day
Track up to 5 competitors
See which pages and keywords your competitors are ranking for
Scan up to 1,000 pages on your site
Access 20,000 keyword suggestions
200 content ideas
Track up to 2,000 backlinks from the past 3 years
Monitor new/lost backlinks from the last 30 days
Get access to SEO training and support

One thing I really like is that Ubersuggest regularly updates keyword rankings, and in my experience, some of its data is even more accurate than Moz, especially for my top-performing keywords.

With the Individual plan, you can track up to 125 keywords for your domain. But if you need more, you can pay an extra $5/month to add 250 more keywords, which is pretty reasonable.

Unlike Moz, Ubersuggest gives you two helpful tools: AI Keyword Overview and Keyword Ideas, both of which help you come up with new keyword targets based on your seed keyword.

You can also use their Keyword Research Toolkit to explore ideas and filter them by country or other criteria, which makes it easier to find the best opportunities.

I believe that Ubersuggest’s keyword volume numbers aren’t always accurate.

For instance, Ubersuggest shows 2,900 searches/month for “AI SEO tools” in the USA, but Moz reports just 1,800.

On the flip side, their keyword difficulty estimates seem to be fairly close to what I see on Ahrefs and Semrush.

Since I’m on the Individual plan, I don’t have access to all the features, such as the AI summary. Still, the data that is available is quite useful.

I was curious where Ubersuggest gets its numbers from, so I looked into it. According to one of their posts, here’s how they estimate organic traffic:

They start with a monthly search volume for each keyword
Then look at which websites rank for those keywords and in which positions
They estimate how many clicks each position typically gets
Finally, they combine that with page-level traffic data and, if available, info from other countries

People on Reddit seem split on Ubersuggest, but I agree with one comment I saw—it’s a great tool for tracking if you’re running a small business or a personal project.

If you’re not ready to invest in something more expensive like Ahrefs or Semrush, Ubersuggest is definitely worth a try.

6. Writesonic

Best for: SEO specialists, content writers, and small to mid-sized businesses.
Top features: GEO, Chatsonic (AI agent), and the AI Article Writer.
Pricing: Plans start at $249/month and include SEO, content tools, plus AI search tracking and optimization. A 7-day free trial is available (no credit card required). There’s also a free plan.

I’d heard about Writesonic before and even tried it briefly last year, but it didn’t really stick with me.

In January 2026, I decided to test Writesonic and signed up for the Professional plan ($249/month), which includes SEO tools, content creation, and AI search tracking.

There are cheaper plans, like the Lite plan at $49/month, but they don’t include AI visibility-tracking features.

I’ve tested a couple of its automated AI workflows.

The content creation process is one of the most detailed I’ve seen. It walks you through multiple steps to help “train” the AI, from choosing the article type and research sources to customizing the outline and tone. The system also analyzes your writing samples, reviews competitor pages, adds internal links, and optimizes the content for SEO before generating a full article.

The generated content didn’t quite meet my quality standards, so I didn’t use it. Writesonic uses the following LLMs to power their chatbot, Chatsonic, and content generation workflows: GPT4o, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and more.

Just an FYI, you can use Claude’s most advanced plan, Sonnet 4.6, for free.

Still, the content generation workflow itself is impressive and shows how much AI output depends on how well you train the system to understand your voice and experience.

Writesonic also offers AI search visibility (GEO) tools that track citations, brand mentions, and rankings across platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

The GEO feature took some time to start working for me, but once it did, it provided useful insights, although some of the numbers didn’t fully match what I saw in other SEO tools.

Overall, if you’re curious about Writesonic, it’s worth testing with the 7-day free trial.

If you do try it, the Professional plan is the one that unlocks the AI features the platform is built around.

What’s the best alternative to Moz?

I’ve been doing SEO for years, trying things on my own and testing a bunch of different tools along the way. These days, I mainly use Semrush. But that wasn’t always the case. It actually took a while to figure out which tools I could trust and which ones had the right features for what I needed.

If you’re on the hunt for a Moz alternative, start by asking yourself: What do I actually need this tool for?

Not every SEO tool is built the same. Some are amazing for digging up niche keywords. Others are better for tracking backlinks or coming up with content ideas.

So before you pick a new tool, think about what you do most often. Are you focused on boosting your organic traffic? Checking out what your competitors are doing? Building backlinks?

Your daily tasks should help guide your choice. It’s also worth thinking about your experience level. Some tools are super beginner-friendly, while others (like Screaming Frog) have a bit of a learning curve.

And of course, budget matters, especially if you’re a freelancer or running a small business.

Instead of asking, “What’s the best tool out there?” try asking, “What’s the best tool for me right now?”

That simple shift in thinking can make your decision a whole lot easier.

FAQ

Adding an FAQ section at the end of an article is one of my favorite SEO practices.

It gives you a chance to answer the exact questions people are searching for and can even boost your chances of landing a featured snippet.

I sometimes use AI agents to draft the answers, but I always go through everything myself and edit it. It’s a good balance between using AI for support and keeping the writing genuinely human.

Is Semrush better than Moz?

For most SEO use cases, yes.

In my opinion, Semrush outperforms Moz on data accuracy, keyword database size, and feature depth.

When I compared both tools using my own site data, Semrush came closer to my real Google Search Console numbers.

It also offers features that Moz doesn’t, such as AI search visibility tracking, deeper keyword research tools, and more.

Moz could be friendlier for beginners, but if you’re doing serious SEO work, Semrush gives you more to work with.

Which Moz alternative is best for keyword research?

Semrush is my top pick here, mainly because of the Keyword Magic Tool, which offers thousands of ideas from a single seed keyword, complete with search intent, difficulty scores, and exact volume numbers.

Ahrefs is a close second with its Keywords Explorer. Both are miles ahead of Moz, which only shows keyword volume as ranges and whose Keyword Suggestions tool wasn’t working reliably during my testing.

If the budget is tight, Ubersuggest covers the basics well enough.

Does Moz have a free plan?

Moz does have a free MozBar browser extension, which shows basic Domain Authority and Page Authority scores as you browse.

There’s also a limited free plan, but it won’t get you far since keyword research and site audits are heavily restricted.

If you’re looking for a genuinely useful free option, I’d go with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console instead. Both give you real, actionable data at zero cost.