Semrush vs. SpyFu

Semrush

722 Reviews and Ratings

SpyFu

132 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Semrush	Score 8.6 out of 10	N/A	Semrush is a relatively popular search engine optimization tool set from the company of the same name based in Pennsylvania and founded in 2008. Largely the platforms relies on competitive intelligence, and features SEO staples like backlink checking, keyword analysis to refine SEO and PPC campaigning and locate low-cost / high-yield keywords, analysis of competitors who co-occupy desired ad and listing spaces, domain vs. domain analysis, as well as site audit and domain tracking. Semrush can…	$129 per month
SpyFu	Score 7.9 out of 10	N/A	SpyFu is the eponymous SEO and PPC research platform from the company in Scottsdale, Arizona focused on "spying" on competitors, or basically using their behaviors to refine your own through keyword and content analysis, and backlink poaching. This positional search engine optimization and paid listings management platform touts the ability to lower costs and raise rankings via a Kombat-oriented approach... basically a cute way of saying "it makes comparisons" of how well your site does in niche…	$39 per month

Pricing

Semrush

SpyFu

Editions & Modules

Pro: $129.95
per month
Guru: $249.95
per month
Business: $499.95
per month

Basic: $39
per month
Professional: $79
per month
Team: $299
per month

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Semrush	SpyFu
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

Optional

No setup fee

Additional Details

17% discount for annual pricing.

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Semrush	SpyFu
Considered Both Products	Semrush Kyle Crocker Online Marketing Analyst Chose Semrush We have used a few similar products to SEMrush at different points. Generally the breadth of information in SEMrush is one of the biggest reasons to use it. If your focus is more specific on SEO Moz Pro might be a better choice. If you are exclusively focused on SEM/PPC it … Incentivized Helpful? Austin Voigt Senior Analyst - Paid Media Chose Semrush SEMRush is definitely better than SpyFu in terms of the amount of data you get, the detail of the data, and the accuracy of the data. SpyFu is like a beginner's version of SEMRush. SpyFu is great if you're smaller, less experienced, and want to spend less money - but SEMRush is … Incentivized Helpful? AH Annie Hathaway Sr. Manager, Digital Marketing Chose Semrush Compared to Moz: SEMRush is more down to the nitty-gritty. Less fluff. Compared to SpyFu: SEMRush has more functionality and is easier to use. Compared to BrightEdge: in an ideal world I'd want both SEMRush and BrightEdge in my MarTech stack, but SEMRush is inexpensive, and Brig… Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Account Manager Chose Semrush Semrush is nice and working on integrating more SEM. It still does not have as many reporting features for SEM as RavenTools, but you can tell they are working on it. It has more features than SpyFu or BrightLocal. Although I like BrightLocal's interface a little better, … Incentivized Helpful? Dave Davies CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose Semrush I've reviewed a number of tools, and continue to periodically. Semrush easily wins for the breadth of coverage, and it does them well. Some tools designed for a single task win in those tasks, but none compare overall. Some other tools I've looked at are: Authoritas Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Consultant Chose Semrush SEMRush is my personal favorite SEO paid or free tool to use. I personally love the way it breaks up individual projects and allows you to work on each client's site as a whole separate from your other internal or external work. I also love how it allows quickly exported … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Employee Chose Semrush SEMRush has more limited functionality than some of the full-suite options like BrightEdge and Searchmetrics, but the tool is more affordable and still performs to our expectations. We find it to be a good medium-use tool, and combined with some additional keyword-tracking … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Analyst Chose Semrush I like the UI of SEM Rush and the support. Incentivized Helpful?	SpyFu Chandler Elmore Digital Marketing Account Manager Chose SpyFu SpyFu is less robust than SEMRush in a lot of ways. Its keyword tool for example severely lags behind SEMRush. However, SEMRush does not have a solid PPC insight tool like SpyFu. This is reason alone to use both instead of just using SEMRush. We also see that SpyFu does a … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Partner Chose SpyFu I would say that SEMRush is the main competitor. I have used both, and I think they are both great platforms. Incentivized Helpful? Jack Pennuto Senior Vice President Chose SpyFu As an independent company working on our own behalf, SpyFu seemed like a better fit than SEMRush, which appears to be geared more towards agencies or consultants. Additionally, SpyFu offers a lot more features than Linkody, which will be beneficial in the long term. Incentivized Helpful? Rachel Hensley Marketing Chose SpyFu I prefer SpyFu to SEMRush because, for a free version, SpyFu gives more information and has a better, easier to use interface. SpyFu also doesn't give you a max amount of times you are able to view it on the free version which I love and also use often. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Director Chose SpyFu SpyFu is a better choice for competitive intelligence. SEMRush is better for running advanced SEO reports on a domain. Incentivized Helpful? Austin Voigt Manager - Paid Media Chose SpyFu SpyFu is definitely a lower-cost, more simplistic, easier-to-use, less robust tool compared to SEMRush. However, they provide similar information in similar ways. I would say for the serious, large business looking to invest in a hardy tool, SEMRush is great. For the smaller … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Consultant Chose SpyFu Personally, the only tool I use as often as SEMRush. If you have the SEMRush paid version, I personally choose to use that over SpyFu. SpyFu is the best free search analytics tool online though. It has the greatest offerings in its free pack and allows you to have the most … Incentivized Helpful? BM Bill Martin Director of Search Chose SpyFu It is comparable with SEMRush and others Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Employee Chose SpyFu It isn't fair to compare these two tools overall. They have a few shared pieces, but SEMRush is much more expensive but includes many more tools making it a full SEO suite. When looking strictly at the shared tools from both companies (the competitor keyword tools), they stack … Incentivized Helpful? Jake Hundley CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose SpyFu When it comes to assessing the competition, SpyFu is fantastic. I prefer its competitor analysis features much more than SEMRush or any other platform out there. That is what I use SpyFu for. Regarding reporting and integrations, it doesn't quite seem like it's the best option … Incentivized Helpful? JK Jonathan Kagan VP Chose SpyFu Currently we actively use Semrush and Similar Web, along side SpyFu. To be honest, the platforms are fairly interchangeable. Each one has one or two unique things that the other doesn't have. None of it is totally earth shattering. So often it comes down to price, and SpyFu is … Incentivized Helpful? EV Elias Van Son Sr. Paid Search Specialist Chose SpyFu I spent years exclusively using Semrush for this kind of competitor PPC data, and have used Moz in the past on several occasions. I feel that SpyFu is more well-rounded and provides deeper insights than these other products, and honestly, it's just more updated as well. Easier … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Director Chose SpyFu SpyFu has what we needed from Semrush, and Spyfu is more reasonably priced. Spyfu does not have some of the higher level and specific tools, but is great for the price. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose SpyFu Spyfu fails to hit the mark at least when it comes to SEO since both Ahrefs and Semrush has a bigger directory and fetches data from more countries than Spyfu does, however Spyfu offers a great deal when it comes to cost effective solution to almost every digital marketing … Incentivized Helpful? Lisa Arrington Digital Marketing Manager Chose SpyFu Compared to Semrush or Ahrefs, neither of the competitors stacks up against SpyFu in terms of competitor insight of paid ad performance. It can even identify specific ad copy changes, which can be crucial for high-demand periods like Black Friday. In my opinion, SpyFu is an … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Executive Chose SpyFu I was surprised to find I preferred Semrush when it comes to keyword research. SpyFu is great (and less expensive than Semrush), but I felt the data Semrush provided was vaster than SpyFu. I was able to get more competitors spending insights in Semrush than SpyFu. Overall, I … Incentivized Helpful? Rohit Langde Marketing Manager Chose SpyFu SpyFu is more cost-effective than both (Ahrefs and Semrush), but we have to compromise on the data's accuracy. However, the data reporting and user interface of SpyFu make it easy to decipher. For Paid Ads keyword lookup, we prefer SpyFu to any other tool maybe, because it's … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Project Manager Chose SpyFu It's a great little tool that offers pretty much everything you can get from Moz or Semrush at a fraction of the cost. My company uses a few different tools but I always come back to SpyFu because it is so easy to use and their build-in reporting is great. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Manager Chose SpyFu I've used Semrush as well. Semrush does organic SEO analysis better than SpyFu and backlink research. I find the data more intuitive. I much prefer SpyFu for their advertising/PPC analysis and use SpyFu when researching competitors' advertising campaigns. These are the main two … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Consultant Chose SpyFu I use Ahrefs for Site audit, Keyword Research, Backlink analysis, and some parts of competitor analysis. SpyFu I always wanted to keep primary, but it's not doable with the limitation of their database, which forces me to use Ahrefs for that reason. Helpful? Tyler Heaps Director of Marketing Chose SpyFu SpyFu offers the best keyword research platform out there. I have used this for many companies that are still using this tool today. It's always been one of my first marketing software recommendations to companies I work with. For those who understand digital marketing such as … Incentivized Helpful? KJ Kathleen Jasper CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose SpyFu Better price. Much easier to use. Incentivized Helpful? Angela Lyons, MBA Marketing Manager Chose SpyFu Other tools I looked at were too expensive and too confusing. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Partner Chose SpyFu There aren't a whole bunch of companies that does what spyfu does well. I believe Spyfu also has the cheapest paid version of the lot Incentivized Helpful? Christopher Regan Director, Search & Analytics; Contracted Consultant Chose SpyFu It's a key element to my Digital Marketing surveying efforts. Often it proves to have been more accurate, once I have access to Analytics tools such GA or SiteCatalyst, in comparison to its own competitor-set. Helpful?
Top Pros	Pro Keyword research Pro Site audit Pro Competitor analysis	Pro Keyword research Pro Competitor analysis Pro Organic search
Top Cons	Minus Search volume Minus Learning curve Minus Not accurate	Minus Free version Minus Visually pleasing Minus Not always accurate

Features

Semrush

SpyFu

SEO

Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
	Semrush 8.5 148 Ratings 9% above category average	SpyFu 7.2 51 Ratings 8% below category average
Keyword analysis	9.3148 Ratings	6.951 Ratings
Backlink management	8.3141 Ratings	5.839 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking	8.3144 Ratings	8.143 Ratings
Page grader	8.5123 Ratings	7.729 Ratings
Competitive analysis	9.0143 Ratings	9.150 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics	9.0144 Ratings	7.132 Ratings
Site recommendations	8.2133 Ratings	7.030 Ratings
Task management	7.188 Ratings	6.120 Ratings

SEO Channels

Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
	Semrush 7.7 135 Ratings 1% above category average	SpyFu 7.7 38 Ratings 1% above category average
Local SEO	6.0123 Ratings	7.632 Ratings
Social SEO	7.7101 Ratings	8.027 Ratings
Mobile SEO	8.5108 Ratings	8.029 Ratings
Global SEO	8.8109 Ratings	7.034 Ratings

SEO Platform & Account Management

Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
	Semrush 8.5 120 Ratings 1% above category average	SpyFu 8.7 27 Ratings 3% above category average
Multi-domain support	9.0110 Ratings	8.927 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools	8.0114 Ratings	8.518 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Semrush	SpyFu
Small Businesses	Google PageSpeed Insights Score 9.9 out of 10	Google PageSpeed Insights Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.3 out of 10	Advanced Web Ranking Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises	Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com) Score 8.7 out of 10	Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com) Score 8.7 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Semrush	SpyFu
Likelihood to Recommend	9.4 (148 ratings)	8.1 (61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.1 (3 ratings)	10.0 (10 ratings)
Usability	6.9 (4 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Availability	9.1 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	7.3 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	9.9 (17 ratings)	7.6 (13 ratings)
Implementation Rating	7.3 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.1 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Semrush	SpyFu
Likelihood to Recommend	Semrush This is suited to plan for keywords in a single market, but it struggles when you need to consolidate several markets. It is well-suited to discover new keywords directly related to the ones being used currently to expand the content the company is creating to get better results. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	SpyFu If you have a Google ads PPC campaign and then I would say this is more or less essential if you want to know what your competitors are doing. You can get very useful data out of it even if you subscribe for one month. And the pricing is very reasonable. Even if you don't use Google ads, I would say this is still useful for your SEO/SMO team since it gives you a great idea of what keywords and traffic your competitors are working on. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Semrush Great visuals for keyword position tracking, love that you can see the page that is ranking Enjoyed the auto-generated reporting feature (specifically in the context of keyword position tracking) Shows many different and useful views for competitive research Great templated keyword research tools for those who are not as hands-on with SEO I LOVE the Keyword Magic Tool for honing in on longtail, high-opportunity keywords Katie Wojciechowski SEO Copywriter Read full review	SpyFu Keeping a tab on competitors organic and inorganic activities Helps identify where the competitor is getting the backlinks from. Identify competitors top content and the keywords that's bringing them traffic Get proper information of their current and past ADS run on Google. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Semrush Extra seats can be expensive, as [an] agency with multiple team members this can be frustrating Backlink data is not great, misses out a lot of backlinks (better off using a specialist backlink tool like Link research tools LRT) Tracking multiple keywords, across multiple clients can be costly Daniel Drummond Head of Digital Marketing Read full review	SpyFu As with any database, their keyword database has limits, so the data returned is relative to their database, not necessarily the full picture. When SpyFu database or scoring chances, the data provided can spike, thus causing confusion among stakeholders, we're reporting to. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	Semrush I [previously] used Semrush for many years and I cannot find any other tool being so complete and easy to use. Incentivized PB Perrine Bettinelli Online marketing assistant Read full review	SpyFu Love this tool but would like insights from all 3 major search engines not just Google. I would also like deeper understanding of the placement for local businesses on Google Places/Maps. Insight into mobile search rankings and best landing pages per industry would also help :) Overall, SpyFu is a necessity for serious search marketers. Chris Romero SEM Manager Read full review
Usability	Semrush SEMRush has a slight learning curve, but everything is organized really well. Once you learn where everything is, using the software and running reports is incredibly easy. You can easily add new projects, get help for improving on-page SEO, and there are even video tutorials that walk you through the whole system if you still feel uncomfortable with it. Incentivized Tim Sleeper Web Developer Search Engine Optimization Read full review	SpyFu No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability	Semrush Semrush available when you need it! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review	SpyFu No answers on this topic
Performance	Semrush SemRush performs well with few errors! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review	SpyFu No answers on this topic
Support Rating	Semrush I'm in a FB group for Semrush paid users and it amazing! They are fast to respond, take suggestions and help with questions. I have not felt alone in using this product at all. Highly recommend their support team. When I had an issue I can jump into the group and they will help get me the right person to help or even tag their programmers to look at something that is going on. Love the group! Verified User Anonymous Read full review	SpyFu SpyFu comes with a link to tutorial videos. I recommend you watch them. The software is capable of so much you really need to watch the videos and learn how to get the most out of it. When I have a question 90% of the time it's there. When it isn't, and I reach out to them, support is always quick and concise. Incentivized George Louvis Owner Read full review
Implementation Rating	Semrush I did it by myself and do not have a comment! Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review	SpyFu No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Semrush We have used both Ahrefs and Semrush extensively at our agency and Semrush remains the tool of choice. We find that Semrush has the largest selection of tools & features to use, with the highest accuracy, and provides top-tier analysis recommendations. It's really is the ultimate all-in-one tool when comparing other performance measurement tools in the digital marketing space. Incentivized Joshua Poole SEO Manager Read full review	SpyFu I was surprised to find I preferred Semrush when it comes to keyword research. SpyFu is great (and less expensive than Semrush), but I felt the data Semrush provided was vaster than SpyFu. I was able to get more competitors spending insights in Semrush than SpyFu. Overall, I liked the ability to use both in our keyword research for both paid and organic marketing. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Scalability	Semrush Semrush is flexible and scalable software which can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed. Keith Jones I am a CPA Specializing in IRS Tax Resolution and Small Business Accounting Automation & Tax Plannin Read full review	SpyFu No answers on this topic
Return on Investment	Semrush Using Semrush on behalf of our clients, we have seen some impressive growth in organic visibility, traffic, conversion and revenue, across multiple industries. The site checks available with Semrush have helped us to pitch and sell our services, securing new clients. Incentivized SC Sacha Crowther Content Marketing Lead Read full review	SpyFu Helping us track our ranking. It helps solve the problem of ambiguity when it comes to Google Ads. It makes the strategy more clear. You can sift through lots of different online analytics to find the information, but it takes way too long. SpyFu has it all in one place! Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
ScreenShots