Almost every price you have seen quoted for an SEO tool is wrong, and not because anyone is lying. Mangools shows $37.70 and charges $61 month to month. Serpstat shows $50 and charges $69. Surfer’s $49 is the annual rate. Peec’s €70 is the annual rate.
Pricing pages default to the annual view and print the monthly equivalent in the big type. Every vendor does it, so every comparison that reads the page without touching the billing toggle repeats it.
Below is every price we could verify at source on September 10, 2026, with the billing basis kept beside each number. We build one of these tools, ContextBolt SEO, so weigh that part accordingly.
- Find the billing toggle before anything else. Half the headline prices in this category are annual rates divided by twelve.
- The tier you need is rarely the advertised one. Semrush MCP starts at $199, not $139. Moz AI visibility starts at $99, not $49. Otterly’s MCP is on the $189 plan, not the $29 one.
- Suites run $129 to $199 for Ahrefs Lite and Semrush Starter. Mid-market is $49 to $109. Specialists go from $18 to $399.
- AI visibility is being bundled fast. Check what your existing plan already covers before adding a $250 tracker.
- ContextBolt SEO is $35 a month with 1,000 credits, covering research, audits, AI visibility and connected Search Console inside your agent. Seven-day trial, 100 credits, card required.
The main tools, with the billing basis attached
| Product | Published price or billing basis | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| ContextBolt SEO | $35/month, 1,000 credits | Credit cost by tool, plus your separate AI app |
| Ahrefs | Starter $29/month; Lite $129/month | Which tools the exact plan opens |
| Semrush | SEO $139/month; Starter with MCP $199/month | Local checkout, AI coverage, seats, MCP eligibility |
| Moz Pro | Starter $49/month; Standard $99/month | Sites tracked, crawl allowance, where AI features start |
| Ubersuggest | US plans advertised from $29/month | Regional checkout, project limits, lifetime terms |
| SE Ranking | Core €109/month, or €87.20/month billed annually in the EUR view | Local price, projects, API credits |
| Mangools Basic | $61 monthly, or $452.40/year shown as $37.70/month | Bundle contents and rank-refresh frequency |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Free to 500 URLs; $279/user/year | It is an annual license, not a monthly plan |
| DataForSEO | Pay as you go, $50 minimum deposit | Endpoint rates and your real request volume |
Three things in that table are worth pulling out, because they are where people overpay.
Ahrefs Starter at $29 is not a cheap Lite. It is a different, much narrower product. Read the caps before you treat $29 as the number to compare.
Semrush’s $139 plan does not have MCP. Its subscription breakdown puts MCP on Starter at $199, and the MCP documentation also lists eligible legacy Classic plans. If you already pay Semrush, check your entitlement before buying access you might hold.
Screaming Frog’s $279 is a year, not a month. Dividing it to $23.25 to sit in a monthly column is a category error, and I have seen comparisons do it.
The mid-market is where the real fight is
Moz, Ubersuggest, SE Ranking and Mangools all sit between the free tools and the $129 suites, and they are where most of the comparison shopping happens.
Moz is $49 for Starter, one website, and $99 for Standard, or $79 billed yearly. AI visibility features start on Standard, so if that is why you are looking, $99 is the number. Moz comparison.
Ubersuggest advertises US plans from $29 and sells lifetime access. Lifetime is a bet on the roadmap rather than a discount, and it does not remove usage limits. Pricing localizes by region, so check your own checkout. Ubersuggest comparison.
SE Ranking Core shows €109 monthly or €87.20 annually in the EUR view, with its own MCP connection that spends the plan’s API credits. That last part matters, because heavy agent use competes with the rest of the suite for the same allowance. SE Ranking comparison and SE Ranking MCP pricing.
Mangools Basic is $61 monthly or $452.40 annually. The bundle now includes API and MCP and an AI Search Watcher. Check the rank-update frequency, because Basic refreshes weekly. Mangools comparison.
Content tools price by document, not by lookup
| Tool | Entry option checked | Relevant limit |
|---|---|---|
| Surfer Discovery | $49/month billed annually | Document allowance |
| Surfer Standard | $99/month billed annually | Documents, team use, AI tracking |
| Frase Starter | $49 monthly, or $39/month billed annually | 10 articles and 50 audit pages a month |
| Clearscope Essentials | $129/month | 50 pages, 50 tracked prompts, 20 drafts |
| MarketMuse | Free tier with 10 queries; paid is demo-led | We could not verify a paid price |
Both Surfer figures are annual rates. Frase’s $39 is too. These tools meter documents and drafts rather than lookups, so a keyword-tool budget does not transfer across.
Comparisons: Surfer, Frase, Clearscope, MarketMuse.
AI visibility needs a denominator
| Tool | Published entry price | What that actually covers |
|---|---|---|
| ContextBolt SEO | Included in the $35 plan | On-demand research, charged against credits |
| Otterly Lite | $29/month | 15 prompts. MCP and API are on the $189 plan |
| Peec AI | €70/month billed annually, €85 monthly | 50 prompts, daily tracking |
| Profound Starter | $99/month published | 50 prompts, ChatGPT only. Live page did not render it |
| Scrunch Core | $250/month | 125 prompts, four engines, multiple seats |
A price per month means nothing here without the prompt count beside it. Otterly at $29 is 15 prompts, which is a sample rather than a picture. Scrunch at $250 is 125 prompts and several seats, which is a different product.
The bigger question is whether you need a separate one at all. Moz Standard, Semrush Starter, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Mangools all include some form of AI visibility now. Check your existing plan before adding a line item. AI visibility tools compared ranks them properly.
The specialists
Crawlers: Sitebulb Desktop Lite is $18 monthly and Pro is $42 for one user, with Cloud from $125 for two or more. Screaming Frog is free to 500 URLs then $279 per user per year. Both do something no research tool replaces. Sitebulb, Screaming Frog.
Competitor research: SpyFu Basic is $39 monthly or $348 annually, and its Pro plus AI tier advertises $59 for the first month then renews at $119. Serpstat Individual is $69 monthly or $600 annually, with MCP starting on Team at $129. SpyFu, Serpstat.
Backlinks: Majestic Lite in the EUR view is €46.99 monthly or €469.90 annually, excluding VAT. The Historic Index starts on Pro and full API access is another tier again. Majestic comparison.
Traffic intelligence: Similarweb Competitive Intelligence is $199 monthly or $1,500 annually, and the package adding SEO and AEO is $399 monthly or $3,996 annually. Do not treat total traffic estimates and organic keyword estimates as the same measurement. Similarweb comparison.
Raw data: DataForSEO is pay as you go with a $50 minimum deposit. Cheap for light use, and you are building the tooling yourself. DataForSEO MCP pricing.
Checked at source on the official pages for SpyFu, Serpstat, Majestic, Similarweb, Clearscope, MarketMuse and Sitebulb on September 10, 2026.
Where ContextBolt sits in this
$35 a month with 1,000 credits, after a 7-day trial. Keyword and SERP research, competitors and backlinks on Ahrefs-grade data, page audits, AI visibility research and a free Search Console connection with daily snapshots. It runs inside Claude, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT, and every successful lookup saves to an SEO Board you can browse, filter and come back to.
The scope, so you can budget it. 1,000 credits is not 1,000 identical lookups, because tools cost different amounts and site audits charge per page audited, up to 50 a run. Rank checks run when you ask, plus the daily Search Console snapshots, and your AI app bills you separately.
What it is genuinely good at is being the whole workflow at one price, rather than a suite plus an AI tracker plus a content tool.
Build the budget from a normal month
Write down what you actually repeat. How many sites. How many keywords need watching. How many pages get crawled. How many articles get written. How many AI prompts need a history.
Then price that same list in two or three tools, with the units written next to the numbers. Annual commitments, seats, add-ons, API usage, and the assistant subscription you are already paying for.
Then look for overlap. The commonest expensive mistake in this category is not picking the wrong tool, it is buying a second one that does something the first one quietly added six months ago.
Test it on one real question
Start the ContextBolt SEO trial with something you actually need answered this week. Pick a keyword and see who ranks and why. Or audit a page that underperforms and ask what to change.
Seven days, 100 credits, card required, and it becomes $35 a month unless you cancel before the trial ends. Judge it on whether you finish with a change you would publish, which is a better test than any pricing table including this one.
