The 30-second verdict
Pick Semrush if SEO is one part of a wider marketing job. Its advertising research, content marketing toolkit, and traffic analytics have no real equivalent in Moz, and its keyword database is the largest of the two. You're paying for breadth, and at $139.95/month for the entry plan, you should actually use that breadth.
Pick Moz if you want professional SEO data without the platform tax. Its Standard plan costs $99/month ($79 on annual billing), covers 3 sites and 300 tracked keywords, and includes the Domain Authority metric half the industry already quotes in outreach emails. Beginners also ramp up faster in Moz; its interface and learning resources are the friendliest in the category.
Both tools got new owners recently, and we'll get to why that matters below.
Pricing: Moz wins, and it's not close
Semrush's entry plan at $139.95/month buys 5 projects, 500 tracked keywords, and one user seat, with extra seats costing around $45/month each. The next tier, Pro+, runs roughly $248/month on annual billing and adds content marketing tools and historical data. A two-person team on the entry plan clears $2,200 a year before add-ons.
Moz spreads the same money across four plans. Starter ($49/month) handles one site and 50 keywords, which is genuinely enough for a single small website. Standard ($99/month) is the realistic working tier: 3 campaigns, 300 keywords, 400,000 pages crawled per month, backlink analysis, and unlimited scheduled reports. Medium ($179/month) jumps to 10 campaigns and 1,500 keywords, which undercuts what you'd pay Semrush for equivalent tracking. Annual billing takes 20% off every tier.
The caveat on the Moz side is the limits themselves. 300 tracked keywords fills up fast once a content program gets going, and the keyword query caps push active users toward Medium sooner than they'd like. Semrush's limits are roomier per tier; Moz's tiers are cheaper to climb.
Keyword research: Semrush by data, Moz by usability
Semrush's keyword database is the bigger of the two, and features like Keyword Magic Tool make bulk research faster once you know your way around. If you work in competitive niches, thin long-tail markets, or outside the US, the extra database depth shows up in results Moz simply doesn't return.
Moz's Keyword Explorer counters with clarity. Its difficulty scores are conservative and steady, its SERP analysis is easy to read, and the 2026 additions (AI-powered keyword suggestions by topic on every plan, plus AI Overviews data by keyword) close some of the intelligence gap. For a blogger deciding what to write next, Moz answers the question faster. For an agency mapping 5,000 keywords across a client portfolio, Semrush digs deeper.
Backlinks and authority metrics: a split decision
Moz invented the metric everyone still uses. Domain Authority is quoted in link outreach, PR pitches, and guest post negotiations regardless of which tool the parties actually pay for, and Moz's newer Brand Authority score extends the same idea to brand strength. If your work involves convincing other people about site quality, speaking in DA is an advantage in itself.
Semrush counters with a larger, fresher link index. Its Authority Score does the same job internally, and its backlink gap and audit tools are more developed. Neither tool matches Ahrefs here (we cover that in our best SEO tools roundup), but between these two, Semrush finds more links and finds them sooner, while Moz's metric carries more weight in conversation.
Site audits, rank tracking, and reporting
Both platforms cover the weekly workflow: crawl-based site audits, position tracking, and scheduled reports. Semrush's audit flags more issue types and ties into its log file and JavaScript rendering checks, which technical SEOs will appreciate. Moz's audit is simpler but explains problems in plainer language, which is exactly what a small business owner fixing their own site needs.
On reporting, Moz Standard includes unlimited scheduled reports, and branded reports arrive at the Medium tier. Semrush gates its better reporting behind Pro+. Small consultancies sending monthly client PDFs will find Moz cheaper to operate.
The AI search question
This comparison looks different in 2026 than it did two years ago because both tools now track AI visibility, meaning how your brand shows up in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other answer engines.
Semrush is further along. Its AI Visibility Toolkit is a headline product, and Adobe bought the company in April 2026 largely for this capability, citing its own data showing AI-driven traffic to US retail sites up 269% year over year. Moz's equivalent, AI Visibility, is newer and in open beta: it's bundled into the Medium plan and up rather than sold as a separate add-on, and AI Overviews data sits inside keyword research on every tier.
If AI search tracking is a primary buying reason, Semrush is the safer pick today. If you'd rather have it bundled in while it matures than pay for a separate add-on, Moz includes it from the Medium plan up.
The ownership wildcard
Semrush completed its sale to Adobe on April 28, 2026, in a $1.9 billion all-cash deal. Nothing about pricing has changed yet, but Adobe's record with acquired products makes some long-time users nervous, and it's a big part of why searches for Semrush alternatives spiked this year. Moz went through its own version of this in 2021, when Ziff Davis acquired it; the product survived, though development pace has drawn criticism from long-time users since.
Neither ownership situation should decide the choice alone. But if you're signing an annual contract, Semrush's next 12 months carry more uncertainty than Moz's.
Our verdict
Buy Moz if you're a beginner, a solo site owner, or a small team doing SEO and only SEO. The $79/month annual Standard plan delivers most of what a small operation needs at 57% of Semrush's price, and the 7-day trial (available on Standard and Medium) makes the test risk-free apart from remembering to cancel. Read our full Moz review for the plan-by-plan detail, and if you try it and want more data, our Moz alternatives guide covers the upgrade paths.
Buy Semrush if you'll use the platform beyond rankings: PPC competitive research, content optimization, traffic analytics, or serious AI visibility tracking. Per feature it's arguably the better-value tool; the catch is that most small teams never open half of it. Our Semrush review breaks down which plan fits which workload.
And if neither price sits right, that's what our alternatives guides are for, and how SE Ranking compares with Moz sets a capacity-first rank tracker against it. Start with the trials: both cost nothing for a week, and your own data settles this argument faster than any comparison article can.