Semrush alternative
This page compares Semrush and Stillindexed on price, check cadence and alerts. Semrush is a far bigger product than ours and most people comparing these two should keep it. It covers keywords, backlinks, rank tracking and competitor research, with Site Audit as one part. It also re-crawls on a schedule, which some comparison pages pretend it cannot. The two real differences are how often, and what arrives.
What this page will not claim
It will not claim Semrush cannot automate. Their knowledge base describes scheduled auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis, and an email you enable with the Schedule option in the General settings tab. Their Zapier integration adds custom schedules with Slack or email notifications on completion.
We had to correct exactly this mistake once, on a different tool, so it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving a convenient impression.
The two differences that are real
Cadence. Daily is the fastest published re-crawl. A Tuesday afternoon deploy that ships a noindex is found by the Wednesday crawl. We check monitored URLs every 30 minutes on Starter and every 15 on Agency, so the same deploy is found inside the hour.
What arrives. The Semrush notification tells you the audit completed and the issues list is ready. Ours names the URL, which of seven directives moved, and the value before and after, which is the whole message rather than an invitation to open a report.
Neither difference matters on a site that changes monthly. Both matter on client sites where someone else can deploy without telling you.
The numbers
| Semrush | stillindexed | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | from $117.33/mo billed annually | $39/mo, $79/mo |
| Free tier | 1 demo project, 10 reports a day | None |
| Trial | seven days | None, 30 day refund |
| Fastest re-crawl | daily | every 15 or 30 minutes |
| What it sends | the audit ran, open the issues list | the change, named |
| Scope | a whole SEO suite | seven check families |
Read from semrush.com on 2026-09-01. Site Audit crawl limits are not stated on their pricing page, so none is quoted here.
Choose Semrush if
you want one subscription covering keywords, backlinks, rank tracking, competitor research and auditing. It is a far larger product than ours and its re-crawls are automatic. The two differences are cadence and delivery: daily at the fastest, and what arrives says the audit ran rather than which directive changed.
The honest version of our pitch here is not instead of. It is that a daily audit and a 15 minute check answer different questions, and if you already pay for Semrush the only thing worth asking is whether a day is an acceptable gap on the pages that earn the money.
Questions
Does Semrush Site Audit re-crawl automatically?
Yes. Their knowledge base describes scheduled auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis, and an email you switch on with the Schedule option in the General settings tab. Anyone telling you Semrush only crawls when you press the button is describing something else.
Then what is actually different?
Cadence and delivery. Daily is the fastest published re-crawl, and what arrives tells you the audit ran so you can go and read it. We check every 15 or 30 minutes and the message itself names the URL, the directive, and the value before and after.
Is Semrush more expensive?
Considerably, and it is also a much larger product: SEO $117.33/mo, Starter $165.17/mo, Pro+ $248.17/mo, Advanced $455.67/mo, all billed annually; a Free tier gives "1 demo project" and "10 reports per day". That covers keyword research, backlinks, rank tracking and competitor analysis, with auditing as one component. We do one narrow thing for a fraction of it.
Does Semrush have a free tier?
Yes. Their pricing page lists a free option with "1 demo project" and "10 reports per day", and a seven day trial of the paid platform. We have neither, which is a real advantage to them if trying before buying matters to you.
Should I cancel Semrush and use stillindexed instead?
No, and that would be a strange trade. If you are paying for Semrush you are buying keywords, backlinks and rank tracking, none of which we do. The only question worth asking is whether a daily audit is fast enough for the pages that matter most.
What does stillindexed cost?
Starter is $39 a month for 15 sites, checked every 30 minutes. Agency is $79 a month for 50 sites, checked every 15 minutes. Card first, no free tier and no trial, with a 30 day refund.
Other comparisons: Screaming Frog alternative · Sitebulb alternative.
Check it yourself before believing any of this
We make one of the products being compared, so the useful thing we can offer is not another claim. These run one check against any URL, free, with no account and no email.
If a result surprises you on a client site, that is the thing this category exists to catch. Six checks when a site disappears from Google walks the same ground by hand.
We make one of these two products, and it is the much smaller one. Every claim about Semrush is quoted from semrush.com and dated. If one is wrong, their page wins and we would like to know.