Semrush has an official MCP server, and working out what it costs is harder than it should be. Not because Semrush hides anything, but because the answer lives across two pages that use different names for the same plans.
I read both so you do not have to.
- No separate MCP fee. You buy a Semrush plan and the MCP reads that account.
- Not every plan qualifies. Semrush names four that include it, and two more that need an add-on.
- Qualifying plans include 50,000 API units, refreshed on your renewal date.
- On a new subscription, plans that include MCP cost $199 or $299 a month (Starter and Pro+), with about 17% off annually. ContextBolt SEO is $35 a month flat for keyword, rank, backlink and SERP data inside your agent, free for the first 7 days.
- The odd one out is Advanced. At $549 it still needs a separately bought units package.
Which plans include Semrush MCP
Straight from Semrush’s own MCP documentation, these plans include access:
- Semrush One Starter: includes 50,000 API units
- Semrush One Pro+: includes 50,000 API units
- SEO Classic Pro: includes 50,000 API units
- SEO Classic Guru: includes 50,000 API units
And these can use MCP but need units bought separately:
- SEO Classic Business: plus an API units package
- Semrush One Advanced: plus an API units package
Separately, Semrush states that any Trends API plan, Basic or Premium, includes MCP access already.
What those plans cost
Semrush’s pricing page lists tiers by different names than its developer docs, which is the main reason this question gets muddled. Here are the published figures.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| SEO | $139 | $117.33/mo |
| Starter | $199 | $165.17/mo |
| Pro+ | $299 | $248.17/mo |
| Advanced | $549 | $455.67/mo |
The free plan does not include MCP, so ignore that row for this purpose. For what each plan gets you beyond MCP, including seats, tracked keywords and report limits, see Semrush pricing in 2026.
One caveat worth stating plainly. Semrush’s MCP docs name legacy plans like “SEO Classic Pro” while the pricing page shows a newer plan called “SEO” at $139. Semrush’s subscription guide lists MCP access on Starter, not on the SEO plan. The pricing page’s comparison table does tick MCP access on all four plans, SEO included, but the MCP docs still leave the $139 plan out, so do not assume it qualifies. A new customer should plan on Starter at $199. Before you subscribe specifically to get MCP, confirm with Semrush support that the exact tier you are buying includes it. That one email saves a costly mistake.
Does Semrush have an MCP server?
Yes, an official one, run by Semrush. There are two ways to connect it, per Semrush’s MCP documentation.
- The official apps: In Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity, add the Semrush app. In Claude and ChatGPT, tag @Semrush in a chat.
- The server URL: In Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Antigravity, add
https://mcp.semrush.com/v2/mcpas a remote server.
It signs you in with OAuth by default. You can pass your Semrush API key in a header instead.
Connecting is the easy part. Every request spends the API units on your account, so a plan without units gets you a connected server that cannot answer anything. That is why the plan question above matters more than the setup.
The Advanced trap
This is the part worth knowing before you upgrade.
You would reasonably assume that spending more gets you more. On the API side, it does not work that way. The mid-tier plans ship with 50,000 units included. Semrush One Advanced, the $549 tier, does not. It expects you to buy a units package on top.
So a buyer who upgrades from a qualifying plan to Advanced, specifically to get more headroom for agent work, can end up with MCP access that stops working until they make a second purchase. Units come in blocks of 2 million, 5 million, 10 million and 20 million.
That is not a scandal. It reflects Semrush treating API volume as a separate product from platform seats, which is normal for enterprise tooling. It is just genuinely counterintuitive, and nobody tells you at checkout.
How far do 50,000 API units go?
Further than it sounds for a human. Not as far as it sounds for an agent.
API units are Semrush’s metering currency, and each request costs a variable amount depending on the report and the volume of data returned. Semrush’s API docs publish the rates per report, and most are charged per line, so asking for more rows costs more. These are the Analytics API rates. The MCP spends the same units, but Semrush does not publish a cost per MCP call, so treat the table as a guide.
| Report | Units | What 50,000 units buys |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword overview | 10 a line | 5,000 keyword lines |
| Related keywords | 40 a line | 1,250 lines, or about 12 pulls of 100 ideas |
| Keyword difficulty | 50 a line | 1,000 keywords |
| Backlinks or referring domains | 40 a line | 1,250 lines |
So 50,000 units is plenty for checking a few hundred keywords. It is about a dozen proper keyword-idea pulls, or one backlink pull of about 1,250 rows.
The thing that catches people out is how agents behave. You type one sentence. The agent decides that answering it properly means checking search volume, then difficulty, then the live SERP, then which competitors rank. That is four requests from one question, and you did not ask for four.
This is what an agent is supposed to do, and it is why the workflow is better than a dashboard. It also means metered budgets drain faster than your intuition says. Model your usage on the number of questions you ask multiplied by three or four, not by one.
How the pricing shapes compare
Three models exist across the SEO MCP market, and picking the right shape matters more than shaving the price.
Suite bundles: Semrush and Ahrefs both fold MCP into a platform seat. Excellent value if you already pay. An expensive door if you do not.
Pay as you go: DataForSEO charges per call, $50 minimum deposit, no subscription at all. Cheapest per request at low volume, but you are assembling raw API access rather than buying a finished tool.
Flat metered: A fixed fee for a set number of credits you can count on one hand’s worth of arithmetic. Built for people who are not agencies.
Where ContextBolt SEO fits
ContextBolt SEO is ours, so weigh this accordingly.
It is $35 a month for 1,000 credits, hosted, with one URL you paste into Claude, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT. Research tools cost one credit each. Backlink tools cost three. Google Search Console tools are free and never touch your credits. There is a 7-day free trial, no deposit, and no units to model.
Semrush is a platform. Scheduled position tracking, site audits at scale, content tooling and advertising research are its job, and an agency that lives in it will keep living in it. The reader of this page is usually someone else, a person who wants search data in their agent and looked up the MCP hoping it was the cheap way to get it.
What a flat-priced server gives you is arithmetic you can do in your head. A thousand credits, most research questions one credit each, $35. No plan-name decoder ring, no add-on packages, no discovering that the pricier tier needed a second purchase.
The agent is also where you ask, and you still get a dashboard. Every lookup lands on your SEO Dashboard, dated and sorted, with your Search Console numbers beside it, and it is private to you.
If Semrush is already your stack, its MCP is included and this section changes nothing. If you were about to spend $199 a month purely to get search data into your agent, try the free trial first and see whether the cheaper shape covers what you actually ask. The full side-by-side is there if you want the detail.
The bottom line
Semrush MCP is free in the sense that there is no line item for it, and expensive in the sense that a new subscription that includes it starts at $199 a month and the naming makes it easy to buy the wrong one.
Two things to do before you pay. Confirm with Semrush that your exact tier includes MCP, because the docs and the pricing page use different plan names. And if you are eyeing Advanced, check whether you also need a units package, because that tier does not include the 50,000 that cheaper ones do.
Get those two right and it is a solid server on a serious dataset. Get them wrong and you have bought a subscription that does not do the thing you bought it for. If all you wanted was search data in your agent, ContextBolt SEO does that for $35 a month, free for the first 7 days, with one plan and nothing to decode.
