Sitechecker vs Semrush: Client Site Alerts or Market Research

The short answer: if you look after 20 client websites and most weeks the job is spotting what broke, Sitechecker's Standard plan covers all 20 with unlimited users for $249 a month, while Semrush's SEO plan stops at 5 monitored websites and one user for $139 (Sitechecker pricing, Semrush pricing). Choose Semrush when the work is finding keywords and competitors in markets you do not rank in yet. Choose Sitechecker when the work is watching sites you already run.

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

On paper they overlap. Both crawl, both track positions, both read Search Console. The difference is which way each one faces: Sitechecker looks inward, at the sites in your care, and Semrush looks outward, at a database of other people's sites and searches. Pick by direction, not by feature count.

What decides it:

1. Price the logins, not the plan. For example, a five-person agency team on Semrush's SEO plan pays $139 + 4 x $45 = $319 a month on monthly billing, using the additional-user price in the Semrush plan table. Sitechecker lists unlimited users on every plan, so those five on Standard still pay $249.
2. Start from the domain list you already have. Count the sites you answer for today. Semrush allows 5, 15 or 40 monitored websites by tier; Sitechecker allows 3, 20 or 50, per the Sitechecker plans page.
3. Write down what a good month looks like before any trial. An alert that reached you before the client did, or a falling count of open audit issues, is a Sitechecker result. A keyword list that turned into ten briefs is a Semrush result.

The two side by side

Three differences that decide it

A database, or a watch list

Semrush sells access to data about the whole web: the homepage claims 29 billion keywords and 43 trillion backlinks, and its SEO plan allows 3,000 Analytics reports a day. Sitechecker's keyword research is a side door by comparison, at 20 to 200 checks a month on its plans page. Its weight sits in Site Monitoring, which logs changes to titles, indexation and pages on a schedule, and in alerts sent to email or Slack.

Who pays for a seat

Semrush includes one user on every tier and charges $45 a month for each extra login on SEO and Starter, $80 on Pro+ and $100 on Advanced, per its pricing page. Sitechecker charges by websites and keywords and lists unlimited users across the board, so an account manager, a developer and the client can all log in at no extra cost.

How the crawl budget is counted

Semrush's SEO plan allows 100,000 crawled pages a month in total and 20,000 for any one monitored site, with JavaScript rendering in Site Audit only from Pro+, per the plan comparison on its pricing page. Sitechecker pools crawl pages across the account: 10,000 on Basic, 50,000 on Standard and 200,000 on Premium. One 60,000-page shop does not fit Semrush's SEO plan as a single site; twenty brochure sites fit Sitechecker Standard easily.

Prices, checked on 24 October 2026

All figures in USD from the Sitechecker plans page and the Semrush pricing page, checked on 24 October 2026. Sitechecker's plans page defaults to the annual figures, so the smaller price is the first one you see; Semrush's defaults to monthly. Compare like with like before anyone signs.

The free test comes first

Start with what Google gives you: Search Console's Pages report shows URLs that left the index, and its Performance report shows which lost clicks. If that covers your site count, neither subscription is urgent. If not, run the free tiers. Semrush's free account caps Analytics at 10 requests a day, with one website and 10 keywords in Position Tracking, according to the FAQ on its pricing page. Sitechecker offers 14 days of full access from its homepage. During those 14 days, count how many alerts were real.

One more thing to read with care. Sitechecker's homepage says that adding users and websites in Semrush or Ahrefs quickly drives up your costs. That is a vendor grading its own homework. The seat arithmetic above holds, but run it with your own headcount, not the one in their example.

One job an assistant can take over

Both vendors document a read-only MCP server. Sitechecker's is hosted, signs in with OAuth, works on paid plans but not during the trial, and allows 10 tool calls a second per connection, according to its MCP introduction. A Monday job it suits: the assistant reads last week's Site Monitoring changes and Search Console clicks for every client project, then drafts a list of pages that changed and lost clicks. A person opens each flagged page in Sitechecker and confirms the change before anything reaches a client report. Semrush's MCP article describes the same kind of read-only link for keyword and competitor questions, metered in API units.

Choose Sitechecker if your job is

• Keeping 10 to 50 client or brand sites healthy, with alerts when titles, indexation or pages change.
• Giving clients and developers their own logins without paying per head.
• Sending branded reports, with a custom domain for the app on Premium.

Choose Semrush if your job is

• Deciding what to publish next from competitor gaps and keyword volumes.
• Researching markets in several countries from one account.
• Checking backlinks and traffic for domains you do not control.

If you already pay for both, plus a third tool that overlaps either, the stack is the problem rather than the tool: two crawlers and three rank trackers on different cards. A one-week Startup Fixer review sorts out which to keep. I sell that review.

Background on each: the Sitechecker entry and the Semrush entry.

FAQ

Can Sitechecker replace Semrush for keyword research?

Not for research at volume. Each Sitechecker plan carries a small monthly quota of search-suggestion and competitor-keyword checks, topping out at 200 of each on Premium, per its plans page. That covers spot checks for client sites, not a content plan built from a database.

Do both track how AI answers mention a brand?

Yes, on different tiers. Sitechecker includes 50, 150 or 250 tracked prompts across five AI models from Basic up, per its plans page. Semrush's SEO plan has no dedicated prompt quota; Starter adds 50 prompts tracked daily and Pro+ 100, per its subscriptions article.

Does a keyword tracked on mobile and desktop count twice?

On Sitechecker it does: one keyword tracked in 2 countries on desktop and mobile counts as 4, per its Rank Tracker guide. Semrush lists mobile data on every plan and multi-location and device tracking from Pro+, on its pricing page.