An affordable SEO plan in 2026 costs about $40 to $140 a month if you buy software and do the work yourself, or $500 to $2,000 a month if you pay a small agency or freelancer to do it. On the software side, entry plans run from Mangools Basic ($37.70 a month billed yearly) to SE Ranking Core ($129 a month, $103.20 billed yearly) and Semrush's SEO plan ($117.33 billed yearly). On the services side, 64% of agencies charge under $1,000 a month, according to SE Ranking's 2024 survey of 260 agencies.
This guide compares both kinds of SEO plans with prices checked on each vendor's pricing page in October 2026, breaks down SE Ranking's new plan structure, and gives you a quick way to see what an agency package really buys.
Key takeaways
- Cheapest full SEO suites, October 2026: Mangools Basic $37.70/mo (yearly), Moz Pro Starter $49/mo, SE Ranking Core $103.20/mo (yearly), Semrush SEO $117.33/mo (yearly), Ahrefs Lite $129/mo.
- SE Ranking now sells two self-serve plans: Core ($129/mo, 2,000 tracked keywords, 10 projects) and Growth ($279/mo, 5,000 keywords, 30 projects), with 20% off on yearly billing.
- Agency SEO plans cluster between $500 and $2,000 a month: 42.8% of providers in Ahrefs' survey charge in that range, and the single most common bracket is $501 to $1,000.
- At Ahrefs' surveyed average of $111 an hour, a $750 monthly plan buys under 7 hours of work. Ask what those hours go to.
- Annual billing saves 17% to 35% on most SEO software. Commit only after a month on the monthly plan.
What is an SEO plan?
An SEO plan is a recurring package that pays for search optimisation work or tools, usually billed monthly. The term covers two different purchases:
- Software plans give you the tools (keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, backlink data) and you do the work.
- Service plans (also called SEO packages or retainers) pay a freelancer or agency to do the work: audits, content, on-page changes, links and reporting.
A third option sits between them: platforms that do part of the work automatically, such as writing and publishing articles. We cover those below. If you're looking for an SEO plan in the strategy sense (a document that says what to do), use our SEO strategy template instead.
SEO software plans compared (prices checked October 2026)
These are the entry and next-step plans of the main all-in-one SEO suites, in USD, from each vendor's pricing page. "Yearly" is the monthly equivalent when you pay for 12 months upfront.
SEO software plans and pricing, October 2026
| Mangools Basic | — | $37.70/mo ($452.40/yr) | 200 | Unlimited domains | Free account |
| Moz Pro Starter | $49/mo | $39/mo | 50 | 1 site | Trial on higher plans |
| Moz Pro Standard | $99/mo | $79/mo | 300 | 3 sites | Free trial |
| SE Ranking Core | $129/mo | $103.20/mo | 2,000 | 10 projects | 14 days, no card |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129/mo | Up to 17% off | 750 | 5 non-verified, unlimited verified | Ahrefs Free plan |
| Semrush SEO | $139.95/mo | $117.33/mo | 500 | 5 sites | 7-day trial, limited free plan |
| Moz Pro Medium | $179/mo | $143/mo | 1,500 | 10 sites | Free trial |
| Semrush Starter | $199/mo | $165.17/mo | 500 | 5 sites, adds AI search tracking | 7-day trial |
| Ahrefs Standard | $249/mo | Up to 17% off | 2,000 | 20 non-verified, unlimited verified | Ahrefs Free plan |
| SE Ranking Growth | $279/mo | $223.20/mo | 5,000 | 30 projects | 14 days, no card |
| Semrush Pro+ | $299/mo | $248.17/mo | 1,500 | 15 sites | 7-day trial |
Click a column header to sort.
Three things the table doesn't show:
- Seats cost extra. Ahrefs adds users at $40 a month each on Lite, Semrush from $45, SE Ranking from $16. A three-person team can double the headline price.
- Credits cap the "unlimited". Ahrefs Lite gives 1,000 credits per user per month; Mangools limits lookups per 24 hours. Heavy research days hit these.
- Most suites now sell AI search tracking. Semrush splits it into its Starter and Pro+ plans, SE Ranking sells an AI Search add-on, and Moz and Ahrefs include prompt tracking in their plans.
For a deeper look at the two biggest suites and their cheaper rivals, see Semrush alternatives and Ahrefs alternatives. If you need something under $50, our cheap SEO tools guide covers single-purpose tools from $7 a month.
SE Ranking plans and prices in 2026
SE Ranking replaced its older Essential, Pro and Business tiers with two self-serve plans, Core and Growth, plus a custom Enterprise plan. Here is what each includes, from SE Ranking's pricing page in October 2026:
| Core | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| Price, monthly billing | $129/mo | $279/mo |
| Price, yearly billing (20% off) | $103.20/mo | $223.20/mo |
| Projects and manager seats | 10 projects, 1 seat | 30 projects, 3 seats |
| Keywords tracked daily | 2,000 | 5,000 |
| AI prompts tracked daily | 100 | 250 |
| Pages audited per month | 250,000 | 2 million |
| Historical data | 6 months | All time |
| Content Marketing articles | 25 | 50 |
| Local Marketing | 3 locations, 1,500 local keywords | 3 locations, 1,500 local keywords |
| Research API credits | 25,000/mo | 100,000/mo |
Add-ons as of October 2026:
- Agency Pack: +$69 a month, yearly billing only. White-label platform and reports, 30 client seats, Agency Catalog listing and a lead generator.
- AI Search: +$89 a month ($71.20 yearly) for 200 tracked prompts across AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT.
- API: +$45 a month, yearly only, for 3 million credits. A standalone SE Ranking API plan starts at $179 a month.
- Extra capacity: extra keywords from $22.40 (Core) or $32 (Growth), extra manager seats from $16, extra locations from $18.40.
The 14-day trial needs no credit card and is fully functional with starter limits (10 projects, 750 tracked keywords a day). For a single site or a freelancer with a handful of clients, Core is the plan. Growth makes sense once you manage more than 10 projects or need more than one seat.
SE Ranking vs WooRank for a small budget
These two get compared often, but they do different jobs. WooRank is a website review and audit tool: its Pro plan covers 1 website, 50 tracked keywords and a 2,500-page crawl, and Premium covers 5 websites, 250 keywords, white-label PDF reports and a lead-generation widget. WooRank loads its prices by region, so check the page for yours.
SE Ranking Core tracks 2,000 keywords across 10 projects and adds keyword, competitor and backlink research that WooRank doesn't offer. If you mainly need audits and client-facing site reviews, WooRank fits. If you need to research and track rankings, SE Ranking gives far more per dollar.
Agency and freelancer SEO plans: what they cost
Service plans are where "affordable" gets slippery, because the price tells you how many hours you're buying, not what those hours will produce. Two surveys give the clearest picture:
- Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers: 78.2% charge a monthly retainer, the most common bracket is $501 to $1,000 a month (20.4% of respondents), 68.8% charge $2,000 or less, and the average hourly rate is $111.
- SE Ranking surveyed 260 agencies, mostly small ones serving small and local businesses: 64% charge under $1,000 a month, and 45% charge $50 to $100 an hour.
Monthly SEO retainers charged by agencies
Hover or tap the chart for exact values.
Agencies in the US and Canada charge more: 22% of them bill over $2,000 a month, against 9% in Europe (SE Ranking). Ahrefs found the same pattern, with providers who serve clients worldwide averaging $3,474 a month against $1,557 for local ones.
How many hours does an SEO plan buy?
This is the quickest reality check on any package. Enter the monthly price and the provider's hourly rate (ask them, or use the survey average).
Interactive calculator
How much work does your SEO plan pay for?
Hours of SEO work per month
6.1
- Hours per week
- 1.4
- Cost over 12 months
- $9,000
At the defaults, a $750 plan buys about six hours a month. That's enough for technical fixes and on-page work on a small site, or one or two well-researched articles. It isn't enough for content, links and technical work all at once, whatever the proposal says.
What each budget tier usually includes
| Monthly budget | What's realistic | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Under $500 | One focused job: an audit, local listings, or a couple of optimised pages | "Guaranteed rankings", bulk backlink counts |
| $500 to $1,000 | Ongoing on-page work and reporting on a small site, light content | Reports full of rankings for keywords nobody searches |
| $1,000 to $2,500 | Strategy, 2 to 6 pieces of content a month, technical fixes, some outreach | Long minimum contracts before results are measurable |
| $2,500 and up | A full program: content, digital PR or link building, technical SEO, CRO | Paying for a big team you never talk to |
Google's page on hiring an SEO is a good filter for any tier: it says "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" and suggests asking how the provider measures success and over what timeframe. Our guide to outsourcing SEO services has more questions to ask.
Where Outrank fits: a done-for-you content plan at $99
Outrank is software that does part of an agency's job: it finds keywords your site can rank for, writes and publishes one long SEO article a day (30 a month) to your CMS, and builds backlinks through its link exchange. Plans as of October 2026, from the pricing page:
| Plan or add-on | Price | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Organic Growth | $99/mo or $999/yr | 30 articles a month, keyword research, backlink exchange, AI images, unlimited users |
| 60 or 90 articles a month | +$85 or +$160/mo | Two or three articles a day for one site |
| Human Curated Service | $1,399/mo | Editors review, fact-check and polish every article |
| Backlink plans | $199, $899 or $1,899/mo | 400, 1,400 or 3,000 backlink credits a month |
| Several sites | 10% to 20% off | 2 to 4 sites 10%, 5 to 19 sites 15%, 20 to 25 sites 20% |
What it won't do: technical audits, rank tracking across competitors, or local listings. Most people pair it with Search Console and one of the suites above. The backlink guarantee promises 15 verified backlinks a month or the plan runs free until you get them, and the 3-day trial lets you see the first articles before paying.
Results take months. On Outrank's results page, the median site reaches 2.04 times its pre-Outrank Google clicks after seven months, and sites publishing 30 or more articles a month grew faster (2.27 times) than those publishing under five (1.07 times).
Affordable SEO API options
If you build your own tools or dashboards, you don't need a full suite. The cheapest ways to get SEO data programmatically, as of October 2026:
- DataForSEO: pay as you go, no subscription, $50 minimum top-up. SERP data from $0.0006 per result page and keyword data from $0.0012 per task. Cheapest for occasional or bursty use.
- SE Ranking API add-on: +$45 a month on a yearly plan (3 million credits), on top of Core or Growth. Core also includes 25,000 research API credits a month.
- Ahrefs: API and MCP access is listed on every paid plan from Lite ($129 a month), within your plan's credit limits.
- Semrush: full API data integration sits on the custom-priced Advanced plan; Starter and above include MCP access for AI assistants.
New to this? Our explainer on what an API is in SEO covers the basics.
How to choose an affordable SEO plan
Interactive checklist
Before you pay for an SEO plan
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If your bottleneck is the work itself rather than the tools, our guide to SEO services for small businesses compares the service options in more depth.
FAQ
How much does an SEO plan cost per month?
SEO software plans cost about $40 to $140 a month at entry level (Mangools Basic $37.70 yearly, SE Ranking Core $129, Ahrefs Lite $129) as of October 2026. Agency and freelancer SEO plans usually cost $500 to $2,000 a month; Ahrefs' survey found the most common bracket is $501 to $1,000 and SE Ranking's found 64% of agencies charge under $1,000.
What are SE Ranking's plans and prices?
SE Ranking sells Core at $129 a month ($103.20 billed yearly) and Growth at $279 a month ($223.20 billed yearly), plus a custom Enterprise plan. Core includes 10 projects, 2,000 keywords tracked daily and 250,000 audited pages a month; Growth includes 30 projects, 5,000 keywords and 3 manager seats. Prices are from SE Ranking's pricing page in October 2026.
What is the most affordable SEO plan for a beginner?
For a beginner with one site, Moz Pro Starter ($49 a month) or Mangools Basic ($37.70 a month billed yearly) cover keyword research and rank tracking without a steep learning curve. Pair either with free Google Search Console. If you'd rather not do the writing yourself, Outrank's $99 plan researches, writes and publishes articles for you.
Is SE Ranking cheaper than Semrush?
At entry level they are close: SE Ranking Core costs $129 a month and Semrush's SEO plan about $140 a month (or $103.20 and $117.33 billed yearly). SE Ranking's entry plan tracks more keywords (2,000 against 500) and more projects (10 against 5), so it is cheaper per tracked keyword.
Are monthly SEO packages worth it?
A monthly SEO package is worth it when the scope is specific and measurable, the provider shares your real Search Console data, and you can leave month to month or after a short pilot. Divide the fee by the provider's hourly rate to see how much work you're actually buying, and be wary of any package that guarantees rankings.
What is the cheapest SEO API?
DataForSEO is usually the cheapest for occasional use: it has no subscription, a $50 minimum top-up and SERP data from $0.0006 per page as of October 2026. If you already pay for SE Ranking, its API add-on costs $45 a month on yearly billing.
