Modern customers discover brands everywhere: Google, ChatGPT, social media, AI-powered surfaces, and more. Your job is to show up consistently across all of them.

A free Semrush account gives you access to essential SEO, AI visibility, competitor research, and content tools that help you get found online—without paying a cent. You’ll get limited queries per day, but enough to understand your visibility, fix issues, and uncover some opportunities.

When you’re ready to go deeper, you can unlock the full platform with a 7-day free trial.

Free Semrush account: Key features

Here’s a quick overview of what’s available with a free Semrush account:

Who the free plan is best for

• Beginners learning SEO
• Small businesses testing Semrush
• Freelancers validating opportunities before investing
• Creators improving one website
• Anyone curious about AI visibility or competitor insights

If you need more than 10 queries per day or want to track many keywords, you’ll outgrow it quickly—but it’s perfect for learning and early optimization

How to use Semrush for free (and where you'll hit limits)

To set up your free account, simply provide an email address and password (no credit card required).

Once you’re set up, here’s how to get the most value from each tool:

1. Benchmark your brand’s online visibility

Today’s customer journey spans both traditional and AI-based search. That means your visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI models matters just as much as your visibility in the SERPs.

The Domain Overview tool inside Semrush’s SEO toolkit gives you a high-level snapshot of how well your brand shows up across both.

With the free plan, you can run 10 domain overview queries per day, which is enough to check your own domain plus several competitors.

Just enter any domain and click “Search.”

Semrush pulls all your essential SEO indicators into one view, including:

• Authority Score: A Semrush metric that evaluates your domain’s overall reputability by looking at backlink quality, organic traffic, and site authenticity
• Organic Traffic: Estimated monthly visitors from search engines
• Organic Keywords: The number of keywords your domain ranks for
• Backlinks: Total external links pointing to your site

You’ll also get a clear view of how often your brand shows up in AI-generated responses:

• AI Visibility Score: A benchmark showing how present your brand is in AI answers compared to your competitors
• Mentions: The total number of prompts or generated responses where your brand appears. More mentions = more exposure in AI-driven experiences
• Cited Pages: How many of your URLs are referenced or linked within AI answers
• Platform-Specific Mentions and Citations: A breakdown across major AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini

You can run up to 10 Domain Overview queries per day, which is enough to build a strong visibility baseline before expanding your research or activating a trial.

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2. Find high-value keywords

With multiple queries (tool searches) per day, you can use the keyword tool and the website keyword checker to explore keywords.

This is enough to test and identify high-potential search terms for your website.

For example, let’s say you have an online shop that sells coffee.

Search "organic coffee" in the Keyword Tool to find related keywords like "organic coffee beans" or "organic decaf coffee." These niches might be less competitive but highly relevant for your business.

And the potential payoff is real: ranking for a term like “organic decaf coffee” could generate an estimated 2,400 visits per month to your website.

Ready to dig deeper?

Use the Keyword Checker tool to get a snapshot of any keyword, analyzing its popularity and competition level.

You’ll see metrics such as:

• Monthly Search Volume: Total monthly searches for a keyword
• Keyword Difficulty: A percentage score that measures how challenging it will be to rank for a keyword
• Search Intent: The searcher’s goal (looking to purchase, gather information, find a website, etc.)
• SERP Results: Current top-ranking pages for the keyword

Pro tip

For organic SEO, prioritize keywords with solid volume, manageable difficulty, and clear informational or transactional intent.

Every new search (in any Semrush keyword research tool) counts toward your daily limit.

Plan ahead and use your limits wisely to get the most keyword research out of the free plan.

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3. Check your website for technical issues

Technical issues can hurt both your search rankings and your AI visibility.

Semrush Site Audit tool helps you spot these problems quickly so you can fix them before they impact traffic or customer experience.

With the free plan, you can crawl up to 100 URLs per month—enough to audit your most important pages and address high-impact issues like:

• Indexing problems: Understand why Google can’t find your important pages
• Page speed issues: Identify factors slowing down your site and frustrating visitors
• Broken links: Find dead-end links or orphaned pages that disrupt both users and search engines
• Security warnings: Address HTTPS issues causing “not secure” warnings for site visitors
• AI search: Identify technical issues that may be limiting your AI visibility

And more.

For example, if you run an online store, a free audit might show slow product pages or missing product descriptions—issues that affect both rankings and sales.

The Site Audit tool provides details about which pages are affected and how to fix them.

BestSelf Co., a motivational stationery retailer, used Semrush's Site Audit to identify and fix technical issues, including slow load times. This led to a 40% increase in organic traffic and a 17% rise in leads within three months.

Pro tip

Use your 100-page allowance to audit the sections that matter most: your homepage, product pages, and blog posts. These improvements can create the biggest lift in rankings and increase the chance that AI tools will cite your content.

If you have a large website, the 100-page limit will only cover a small portion. In this case, consider signing up for a trial to run a full audit across all pages and get a more detailed list of recommendations.

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4. Monitor your SEO rankings

To see whether your SEO and AI visibility efforts are actually working, you’ll want to track how your rankings change over time. Semrush’s Position Tracking tool shows you exactly that.

With the free plan, you can track up to 10 keywords, giving you a focused view of your most important search terms.

Position Tracking helps you:

• Monitor local rankings: Track performance at the ZIP-code level—ideal for local businesses
• Compare competitors: See how your rankings stack up against others in your space
• View daily updates: Track day-to-day movement to spot trends early
• Measure visibility: Understand your overall presence in search, not just individual keywords
• Identify SERP feature opportunities: Find chances to win high-visibility placements like featured snippets or local packs

This visibility makes it easier to understand which SEO efforts, like content updates, new pages, and technical fixes, are moving the needle.

Setting up Position Tracking is easy:

1. Create a campaign by entering your domain and target location
2. Enter your list of target keywords

Focus on keywords that bring in business, not just those with high search volume.

After setup, your report will populate with daily data.

Pro tip

Set up alerts for ranking changes to stay updated on progress or areas that need attention.

The free plan’s 10-keyword limit works for small sites, but it can feel tight if you’re managing many pages.
If you activate the trial, you can track:

• Up to 500 keywords on the Starter plan
• Up to 1,500 keywords on the Pro+ plan

Take it from Hepper, which used Semrush to grow its website to over 3 million monthly organic visitors in just nine months:

Semrush was an absolute game-changer for our content strategy. This tool was incredibly helpful for figuring out which articles our audience wanted to read, and the data we got from Semrush ultimately allowed us to publish more than 5,000 articles and grow our organic visitors from almost nothing to more than 3 million per month.

Simon Treulle, CEO of Hepper

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5. Analyze your backlink profile

Backlinks (links from other websites pointing to yours) are key to SEO. They act as endorsements, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.

They can also influence your AI visibility because a stronger backlink profile reinforces the authority signals that LLMs rely on when selecting sources to reference.

Semrush Backlinks tool reveals who's linking to you, what they're saying about you, and how you compare to competitors.

When you analyze your domain, you'll find:

• Link quality: How trustworthy your backlinks are
• Referring domains: Which websites are linking to your content
• Top pages: Which pages attract the most backlinks

With a free plan, you can run up to 10 searches per day. This lets you analyze your own backlink profile or peek into your competitors' link building strategies.

For example, if you run a health-focused coffee business, you may find that your competitor’s blog post about coffee's health benefits has earned links from multiple nutrition websites.

This insight can guide you toward creating similar content to attract those valuable links.

Further reading:

• Link Building for SEO: A Guide to the Basics
• How to Get Backlinks in 2026: 10 Tactics That Actually Work

6. Optimize your most important pages

Small changes to your important website pages (like updating titles, improving heading structure, or adding related keywords) can lead to significant ranking improvements in search engines and even increase the likelihood of being cited by AI platforms.

Semrush's On Page SEO Checker identifies changes that will have the biggest impact on your key pages.

With a free account, you can set up one campaign with a limit of 10 pages or keywords.

The free version of this tool provides:

• Content suggestions: Ideas for improving your written content
• Title & meta description tips: Ways to make these key elements more effective
• Keyword usage guidance: How to better incorporate search terms
• Technical checks: Basic technical issues affecting your page performance
• Competitor insights: How your page compares to top-ranking competitors

For the best results within the free limits, prioritize pages that already have some search visibility but haven't reached their potential.

This may include your homepage, product pages, or conversion pages, where small improvements can have a big impact on your business.

For example, updating a slow-loading product page with a clearer title and stronger meta description can improve both rankings and conversion rates.

If your site has many pages, the 10 page limit means you can only optimize a small portion.

A trial unlocks the ability to:

• Analyze all your important pages
• Access AI-powered content suggestions tailored to your industry
• Get prioritized recommendations based on potential traffic impact
• Track on-page improvements over time
• Generate detailed reports of your progress

7. Set up local SEO monitoring

For businesses with physical locations, appearing in local searches (e.g., "coffee shop near me") is essential for attracting nearby customers.

Accurate business listings across the web ensure your business appears when customers search locally.

Semrush's Listing Management tool helps you track where your business appears online and assess the accuracy of your listings.

With the free plan, you can run a basic scan that provides:

• A grade for your overall online presence
• The number of NAP (name, address, phone) citations that need fixing
• Your average star rating
• The number of reviews for your business

Focus on correcting any critical NAP inconsistencies and ensuring your Google Business Profile is accurate to maximize the impact of the free plan.

Other free Semrush tools for local SEO include:

• Map Rank Tracker: Track your Google Maps ranking with a visual heatmap (50 free credits per month)
• AI Business Description Generator: Optimize your Google Business Profile description
• Review Link Generator: Create direct links for collecting customer reviews
• Review QR Code Generator: Encourage in-person reviews at your business

For businesses with multiple locations or those in competitive local markets, you may quickly encounter the limitations of the free tools.

Want to see a real local business’s results from Semrush? BetterVet used Semrush to rank No. 1 for 1,900 keywords, growing organic traffic by 2,000% in just one year.

“Semrush was crucial in helping us boost our local and national presence in a very competitive industry.”

Kevin McReady, Sr. SEO Manager at BetterVet

Want to dive deeper into local SEO? Sign up for a trial of the Semrush Local Toolkit.

This gives you access to advanced features like automated distribution of your business information, review monitoring, and a heatmap report to track local rankings.

8. Create content with AI tools

If you struggle with generating ideas or structuring content, Semrush’s free content creation tools can help.

The SEO Writing Assistant fine-tunes your content for both readers and search engines. With the free plan, you can create or review one piece of content.

Simply input your draft to get an overall content score based on:

• SEO optimization
• Tone of voice
• Originality
• Readability

The free version provides basic feedback on readability and SEO, helping you refine your content before publishing. You can also install an extension and work directly from Google Docs.

In addition, Semrush offers several free AI writing tools (no account required).

• Generate: Use the AI Text Generator, Title Generator, and Summary Generator to create original content, headlines, and summaries.
• Rewrite: Refine your content with the Paraphrasing Tool, Paragraph Rewriter, and Sentence Rewriter.
• Analyze: Check grammar, spelling, word count, and reading time with the Proofreader and Word Counter.

Each tool offers three free uses per day and can generate up to 300 words of text, allowing you to create and polish your content.

If content creation is a priority and you’re hitting daily limits, consider a trial of the Semrush Content Toolkit, which offers more tools to help you build and scale your content production.

9. Analyze social media performance

To establish a solid social media presence, you need to know which posts resonate with your audience and what strategies your competitors are using to win.

Semrush’s free tools give you the insights to measure what works and find new content ideas to stand out.

Start with this free version of Social Tracker, part of Semrush’s Social Toolkit to:

• View the past 30 days of performance data
• Track page likes and follower growth
• Analyze posting activity and engagement
• Identify top-performing posts
• Compare your performance with competitors

You can also try a free yet limited version of Social Content AI. This tool helps you:

• Get 27 content ideas based on your website or business description
• Generate ready-to-use captions
• Discover visuals and video suggestions
• Find relevant ideas tailored to your niche

These free tools provide solid insights and ideas for improving your social media strategy without any cost.

If you’re managing multiple social media channels or need more detailed analytics, consider signing up for a trial of the Semrush Social Toolkit. It offers a set of interconnected tools designed to streamline and automate social media marketing.

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10. Get SEO guidance from Semrush’s AI-powered Copilot

SEO can be time-consuming, requiring analysis of complex reports and data points, such as keyword analytics, backlink profiles, and technical audits.

Semrush's Copilot acts as your personal SEO advisor, simplifying complex data and providing tailored recommendations based on your specific results.

With your free account, you get basic Copilot functionality within your SEO Dashboard.

Once you launch tools like Position Tracking or Site Audit, Copilot will start offering recommendations based on your site and competition.

How Copilot Helps:

• Explains your data: Translates complex SEO metrics into simple, understandable terms
• Finds important patterns: Highlights trends you might have missed in your reports
• Guides tool selection: Points you to the right Semrush tools for specific tasks
• Saves research time: Provides quick insights without needing to dig through multiple reports

For example, Copilot might alert you to keywords where your rankings are dropping or suggest new keyword opportunities, helping you adjust your content strategy efficiently.

When to consider the 7-day free trial

A free Semrush account gives you a strong starting point for understanding your online visibility. But as your strategy grows, the limits of the free plan can slow you down.

Here’s when it makes sense to activate the 7-day free trial:

• You’re hitting daily limits: If you regularly run out of your 10 daily queries and have to wait until tomorrow to keep researching, it’s time to upgrade
• Your site has more than 100 pages: The free Site Audit scans up to 100 URLs. Larger sites need full audits for accurate recommendations
• You need deeper competitor insights: If you’ve identified competitors but can’t fully analyze their strategies, a paid plan gives you unlimited research power
• You’re scaling content production: Free keyword tools work for small tests, but structured content planning requires full data and tools like Keyword Strategy Builder
• You want more accurate rank tracking: Tracking more keywords or multiple locations/devices requires the Starter or Pro+ plans
• You want advanced AI visibility insights: The trial unlocks the full AI Visibility Toolkit, where you can analyze mentions, citations, sentiment, and share of voice across AI models

The 7-day trial gives you complete access to every toolkit (no commitment) so you can understand which features support your growth.

Semrush One comparison table: Free vs. Starter vs. Pro+

Want to try everything before committing? The 7-day free trial unlocks all features across all toolkits so you can explore without limits

Pro tip

Take advantage of Semrush Academy courses to master the advanced features you now have access to—they'll help you extract maximum value from your investment.

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FAQs about Semrush's free vs. paid plans

Do I need a credit card to create a free account?

No, you can sign up without any payment information. However, if you want to start the 7-day free trial, you’ll need to enter credit card details.

How quickly do most subscribers hit the free account limits?

The daily limit of 10 queries can be reached in a single research session, especially if you’re actively exploring keywords or analyzing multiple domains. Tracking limits (10 keywords, 100 pages) may also become restrictive as your strategy grows.

What's the biggest difference between free and paid accounts?

It comes down to scale. The free plan allows you to track 10 keywords—great for a personal site or testing the waters. But if you're running a blog, managing clients, or growing a business, you'll quickly outgrow those limits.

With a paid plan, you can track up to 500 keywords (Pro) or 1,500+ (Guru), audit entire websites, and unlock AI-driven tools that help you compete at a higher level. It’s the difference between checking your SEO health once in a while—and having a real strategy.

Can I upgrade to a paid plan later and keep my projects?

Yes, all your projects and data are preserved when you upgrade from a free account to a paid plan.

Can I test out the full capacity of the Semrush tools for free?

Yes! You can sign up for a seven-day free trial and use all that Semrush has to offer before deciding on a plan that suits your needs. You can cancel at any time during the trial period, and you won’t be charged.

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