Where SE Ranking wins on numbers
Tracked keywords is the widest gap. SE Ranking Core covers 2,000 against Moz Standard's 300, and SE Ranking Growth covers 5,000 against Moz Large's 3,000. SE Ranking checks those keywords daily. If rank tracking at scale is the reason you are buying, this is the number that settles it.
Projects follow the same shape. Core carries 10 against Moz Standard's 3, and Growth carries 30 against Moz Large's 25, so an agency running many client sites hits organisational limits later on SE Ranking.
Keyword research is metered differently on each. Moz's pricing page caps Standard at 150 keyword queries a month, roughly five a day, before you pay for more. SE Ranking lists keyword research as an included feature on Core but publishes no comparable monthly query cap, so there is no equivalent figure to set against Moz's 150, only the absence of a stated limit.
Seats are the sharpest cost difference. SE Ranking charges from $16 a month for an additional user; Moz's pricing page lists additional user seats at $49 a month each on any plan. A four-person team on monthly billing runs $177 on SE Ranking Core against $246 on Moz Standard, where three extra seats at $49 add $147 on top of the $99 base.
API access is included from the entry plan on SE Ranking, at 25,000 credits a month on Core and 100,000 on Growth. Moz sells its API as a separate product rather than bundling it into a Moz Pro plan, so pulling data into a dashboard or an automated report is an extra purchase.
Where Moz wins
Domain Authority is the honest answer. Moz created the 0-to-100 DA score, and it is the link metric the wider industry recognises. Clients and prospects ask for it by name in outreach, pitches and reporting, and no competitor metric carries the same recognition. If your work involves convincing other people about a site's strength, speaking in DA is an advantage in itself.
The tools around it reinforce the point. Link Explorer is Moz's backlink research tool, and Moz publishes free tools, a Domain Authority checker, Link Explorer and Keyword Explorer, that carry the same metrics without a subscription. Moz also offers a free Community account with limited access to those tools, so you can keep a login open between projects. SE Ranking has no free tier at all.
Moz positions itself on simplicity and trust, describing the product as a way to make SEO simple and pointing to twenty years as an established name. For a solo operator or a small team that values a familiar, approachable tool over raw capacity, that counts.
What catches people out on each
SE Ranking counts your keyword allowance per combination of keyword and target, where a target is a search engine plus a country or region plus a language. Track a term on Google and Bing and that is two. Track it across two cities and that is two. So the 2,000 and 5,000 figures are smaller than they look for local or multi-engine work, and you should do the arithmetic on your actual setup. There are also no refunds, only the trial, and full AI search tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Mode is a $71.20 a month add-on rather than part of the plan.
Moz catches people on its own quotas. Additional user seats are $49 a month each, which adds up fast for a team, and the lower plans meter keyword research tightly: Moz's pricing page lists only 150 keyword queries a month on Standard before you pay for more. The cheapest Starter plan covers a single site, and there is no free Moz Pro plan, only the trial and the limited free Community account. All of these are on Moz's own pricing page.
Which one to buy
For most agencies and in-house SEO teams, SE Ranking is the better buy. You get far more tracked keywords, more projects, API access from the entry plan and much cheaper seats, and those advantages compound the bigger your setup gets. Our SE Ranking review goes deeper on the limits, and our SE Ranking against Semrush comparison covers the tier it competes with most directly.
Choose Moz specifically when Domain Authority is the currency your clients or prospects speak in, or when a simpler tool and the free tools matter more than tracking capacity. Our Moz Pro review makes that case in full, and our Semrush and Moz comparison weighs Moz against the other heavyweight. To see where all of them land, our ranked guide to the best SEO tools puts them in order.