Semrush Free Trial: 7 or 14 Days, and How to Cancel in Time

Semrush lets you try its paid SEO plans free for a week, and starting the trial takes a couple of minutes. The part that catches people is the end. Start on a Monday, forget about it, and the following Monday Semrush bills $139 or more for a month it won’t refund.

This guide covers what Semrush’s own pages say about the trial: how long it lasts, the card check, which plans it covers, what is switched off, and the exact steps to cancel without being charged. Every Semrush detail below was read on its pricing page, knowledge base and legal pages on October 22, 2026.

If a week turns out to be too short, the last sections cover your options, including Semrush’s free account and other SEO tools with their own trials.

How long is the Semrush free trial?

Seven days, if you start it from Semrush’s own site. Semrush’s subscription guide lists a 7-day free trial for every SEO and AI Search plan, and for most of its other toolkits, from Traffic & Market and Local to Content, Social, Advertising and AI PR. Its free trial page puts it in one line, “Try Semrush free for seven days. Cancel anytime.”

You’ll also see 14-day trials in search results, mostly in reviews and video descriptions. Those come through partner links. We followed Gizmodo’s link on October 22, 2026. It opened a page on semrush.com that said “Try Semrush free for 14 days” and offered “Unlimited access to all Semrush One tools.” Its button went to a Semrush signup carrying a partner promo code.

So the 14-day offer is real, and it sits on Semrush’s own site. But it belongs to that link, not to the standard trial. We couldn’t see which plan it starts or the charge date without creating an account, so read both at checkout before you enter a card.

The same subscription guide sets three more rules worth knowing before you start.

• One trial per toolkit: “Each toolkit trial can be activated once per account.” You can trial Social today and Advertising next month, but not the SEO toolkit twice.
• Past customers may not get it: “If you currently have, or previously had, a trial or paid subscription for one or more toolkits, you aren’t eligible for free access to the SEO or Traffic & Market Toolkits.” If you trialed any Semrush toolkit before, expect the SEO trial to be off the table.
• The other 14-day trial is for agencies: The guide’s 14-day trial is for the Agency Partners Platform add-on, a listing in Semrush’s agency directory. It isn’t a longer trial of the SEO tools.

Does the Semrush free trial need a credit card?

Yes. Semrush answers this on its pricing page, under “Am I charged when I enter my credit card?” The answer reads, “We will charge a nominal amount to your credit card to check its validity; once confirmed, it will be immediately refunded. Until your Semrush trial period ends you won’t be charged.”

So expect a small hold on your statement on day one, which goes back. The first real charge comes when the trial ends. Semrush’s refund policy says it plainly. “If you begin a subscription with a free trial, your first payment will be charged automatically at the end of the trial period unless you cancel beforehand.”

If you’d rather not hand over a card at all, Semrush’s free plan is the option for that. It needs an email address and a password, and it’s covered further down.

Which plans the trial covers, and what they cost after

A Semrush trial is a trial of one specific plan. You pick it at signup. When the seven days end, the subscription guide says your account “converts to the plan you selected unless you cancel,” and “you’re billed at the standard rate for the plan you chose.”

Here is what the pricing page showed on October 22, 2026. It showed prices in pounds from here. Converted at the exchange rate the page itself uses, they match Semrush’s published US prices.

Many guides still list Advanced at $549 a month. On October 22 the pricing page showed “Custom” and a “Request demo” button in its place, so Advanced has no self-serve trial.

Two more things about plan choice. Starter costs $60 a month more than SEO for the same SEO limits. The extra buys AI search tracking and the MCP access Semrush’s docs describe. And the AI Visibility Toolkit sold on its own, at $99 a month, has no free trial at all, per Semrush’s toolkit guide.

For what every limit on each plan buys, see our Semrush pricing breakdown. If the reason you’re trying Semrush is to get its data inside Claude or ChatGPT, which plans include the MCP server is its own question, answered in Semrush MCP and API pricing.

What you can and can’t do during the trial

Semrush says its trials “provide access to most core features,” and the limits are the plan’s own. Its free account guide puts a number on one of them. A trial lets you track up to 500 keywords on Starter and up to 1,500 on Pro+.

The big exception is exports. The subscription guide says “exporting data is disabled during the trial period. This restriction applies across trial subscriptions, even if exports are normally included in the paid version of the plan.”

That matters more than it sounds, because Semrush’s own pages disagree on it. Its blog post on making the most of the trial tells you to export your keyword gap lists and Site Audit issues before the trial ends. The knowledge base says exports are off. Trust the knowledge base, and plan to copy what you need by hand.

A few more limits shape what a week can show you.

• Rank tracking needs days: Position Tracking updates daily, so a campaign you set up on day five shows two or three readings. Set it up first.
• No history on the cheaper plans: Historical data starts at Pro+. On SEO and Starter you see current numbers only.
• Rows per report: 10,000 on SEO and Starter, 30,000 on Pro+. A broad keyword report can run past that.
• Teammates: Each account can add up to 3 users, who get 7 days of free access to the main account’s toolkits, except Traffic & Market.

How to cancel the Semrush trial before you’re charged

Canceling a trial works the same way as canceling a paid plan. Semrush’s cancellation guide lays out the steps. Here they are as written on October 22, 2026.

1. Log in to the account that holds the trial. Semrush only accepts the request from that account.
2. Open the Cancellation Form. Open it directly, or go to Subscription Info, find “Recurring: Active” and follow the “Contact us” link.
3. Answer every question and submit. The form must be complete.
4. Click the link in the confirmation email within 24 hours. Check spam if it isn’t there. Semrush’s guide warns, “If you do not confirm your cancellation within 24 hours, it will not be processed, and billing will continue.”
5. Keep the second email. Semrush sends one more once the cancellation is complete. That is your proof.

Two timing details decide whether you get charged. The confirmation link expires after 24 hours. And the refund policy says cancellations of unpaid trials take effect “within 3 business days of receipt of your request.” A cancel sent on day 7, or on a Friday, can miss the deadline.

So the safe day to cancel isn’t the last one. Do the research you care about in the first few days, then cancel with at least three business days to spare. After canceling, the guide says “you will still be able to access Semrush on a free-level account,” so you keep a login.

If you also started an app from Semrush’s App Center, that one cancels separately. Go to My Apps, open Settings for the app, and click Cancel trial.

If you miss the deadline: Some guides tell you to fall back on Semrush’s money-back guarantee. Semrush’s policy doesn’t support that for a monthly plan. It offers a 7-day money-back guarantee only on first subscriptions of twelve months or longer, bought directly with a credit card, and says “refunds are not available for month-to-month subscriptions.” The cancellation guide adds that payments from a trial that converts are not eligible either.

The free Semrush account, with no trial and no card

If you only want a look around, skip the trial. Semrush’s free plan needs no card. The pricing page lists 1 demo project and “10 reports per day across all vital tools.” Its FAQ adds 10 Analytics requests a day, one website and 10 keywords in Position Tracking. The free account guide adds a Site Audit capped at 100 pages.

Ten requests a day goes fast. A keyword idea search, a difficulty check and one competitor lookup is three already. But it’s enough to check your own domain, see how Semrush lays things out, and decide whether a week of the paid trial is worth your attention.

It’s also where you land after canceling a trial, so the end of a trial isn’t the end of your access.

What to do if a week isn’t enough

Seven days is short for SEO. The data that tells you most, like rank changes and new links, arrives over weeks. Here are your options, cheapest first.

• Plan the week before you start: Write down the five to ten questions you want answered, such as which keywords to target, who outranks you and what your site audit flags. Start the trial on a day you have time, and set up Position Tracking first, since it builds data daily.
• Ask Semrush support: The subscription guide says “Trial upgrade and extension options are limited. Contact Customer Support to check what may be available for your account.” Limited isn’t none. Ask while the trial is still running.
• Use a partner’s 14-day link: It doubles the window, but the once-per-toolkit rule still applies, so it only helps if this is your first SEO trial.
• Pay for one month, then decide: The SEO plan at $139 is the cheapest paid month. Monthly plans aren’t refundable, so treat it as the price of a longer look, and cancel well before the renewal if it doesn’t earn its keep.
• Keep the free account: Ten requests a day is enough to keep checking a handful of keywords after the trial.
• Try a tool with a different shape: If what you wanted from Semrush was answers to SEO questions rather than a full suite, the next section covers trials built for that job.

Semrush alternatives with a free trial

If you’re trialing Semrush to find out whether you need a suite at all, it helps to know what else you can try for free. Here are two, each checked on October 22, 2026. For the wider field, our Semrush alternatives guide compares eight options on price and fit.

ContextBolt SEO: ContextBolt is ours, so weigh the bias. ContextBolt SEO puts SEO data inside the AI app you already use, such as Claude, Cursor or Codex. You ask “what should I write about next”, “who ranks for this and how strong are they” or “what links does this competitor have that I don’t”, and the agent runs the research and answers in plain English. Every lookup also saves to your SEO Dashboard, so the week’s research is still there after the trial. Our guide to keyword research with Claude shows what a session looks like.

The trial is 7 days, with a card at checkout and $0 due today. It comes with 100 credits. Keyword, SERP and domain research costs one credit a call, and backlink research costs three. After the trial it’s $35 a month for 1,000 credits, unless you cancel from the billing portal before the trial ends, and we email you before it ends with the charge date and a cancel link.

It checks a ranking when you ask. It doesn’t track hundreds of keywords daily for a team, and if that’s your job, a suite like Semrush or SE Ranking is built for it. The ContextBolt SEO vs Semrush comparison goes through the trade line by line.

SE Ranking: SE Ranking runs a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, per its FAQ. The FAQ says the trial includes 10 projects, 3 manager seats, 750 tracked keywords a day, keyword, competitor and backlink research at 10 reports a day each, a website audit, and API access with 100,000 credits. After that, Core is $129 a month, or $103.20 a month billed annually. It’s a full suite like Semrush, with daily rank tracking, and its Core plan includes MCP access.

The bottom line

Semrush’s free trial is a fair deal if you treat the end date as the main event. Seven days, a card on file, no exports, and a cancellation that needs a confirmed email and up to three business days to go through. Cancel early and you lose nothing but the rest of the trial. Cancel late and you’ve paid for a month you won’t get back.

Use the week to answer specific questions, not to browse. If the answers say you need a full suite, our Semrush pricing breakdown shows which plan fits. If they say you mostly needed answers to SEO questions inside the AI app you already use, ContextBolt SEO has its own 7-day trial.