The 8 Best Moz Alternatives in 2026 (Priced and Compared)

Why people are leaving Moz

First, the correction: Moz isn’t dead. J2 Global confirmed on 8 July 2021 that it had completed its acquisition of Moz during Q2 2021, terms undisclosed. J2 renamed itself Ziff Davis later that year. Moz Pro is still actively sold and developed, MozCon still runs, and 2025-2026 releases added AI content briefs and AI Overview tracking.

What’s changed for you is the value gap. Moz Pro runs four tiers: Starter at $49 a month, Standard at $99, Medium at $179 and Large at $299, with roughly 20% off on annual billing. Starter gives you one tracked site and 50 keywords. Standard gives you three sites and 300 keywords. Semrush and SE Ranking give you five at their entry tiers. And the trial is now 7 days with a card, not the 30 days you might remember.

The Domain Authority problem

DA is the main reason people stay, and the main reason they get frustrated. It’s a Moz-built model that predicts ranking ability. It is not a Google metric, and it appears nowhere in Google’s SEO starter guide, which spends a whole section on things you shouldn’t optimise for. If you’re paying $49 a month purely for a number, the free MozBar and Moz’s free domain analysis already give you that.

What reviewers actually complain about

Moz Pro sits at 4.5 out of 5 across roughly 350 verified Capterra reviews, so this isn’t a broken product. The recurring cons are consistent though: you’ll pay more relative to Ahrefs and Semrush, you’ll see keyword and traffic figures that reviewers describe as less accurate than the market leaders, and you’ll find a UI that’s hard to navigate at first. One reviewer said they’d reconsider if the tool were 30-40% cheaper. That’s the whole story in a sentence.

Moz alternatives compared at a glance

The best Moz alternatives, reviewed

1. Ahrefs — the link data upgrade

If backlinks are why you paid Moz, this is your straight swap. Domain Rating replaces Domain Authority, the index is larger, and Site Explorer shows you organic traffic and keyword history that Moz’s domain overview simply doesn’t chart. What you won’t get: competitor research is locked behind paid plans, and credits on the lower tiers disappear fast if you run a lot of exports. Starter is $29 a month, Lite $129, Standard $249, Advanced $449. Pick it if link prospecting is your job.

2. Semrush — the full Moz Pro replacement

Semrush covers everything in Moz Pro and adds PPC intelligence, content tooling and AI-search visibility tracking. Authority Score fills the DA-shaped gap. Ownership changed this year: Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush on 28 April 2026, folding a platform with 28 million users into Adobe’s customer experience stack. Expect deeper Adobe integration and less independence. Plans run $139, $199, $299 and $549 a month. It’s the safest choice, not the cheapest.

3. SE Ranking — the agency pick

You get white-label reports, client seats and a rank tracker that updates reliably, at meaningfully less than Semrush for comparable depth. Its keyword and backlink databases thin out on long-tail and non-English terms, so it’s weaker for research-heavy work. Core is $129 a month billed monthly, about $103 on annual; Growth is $279. The 14-day trial needs no card. Choose it if Moz Standard’s three-site cap is what’s actually hurting you.

4. Mangools — the cheap, pleasant one

Mangools is what most people want when they go looking for Moz Pro alternatives: keyword research, SERP analysis and rank tracking that load in seconds. KWFinder is friendlier than Moz’s Keyword Explorer. You won’t get a serious site audit, the backlink index is small, and there’s no white-label reporting. Basic is $49 a month or $29.90 annual; Premium $69 or $44.90; Agency $129 or $89.90. A 10-day trial needs no card.

5. Ubersuggest — the lifetime deal

Ubersuggest is the only tool here selling you lifetime access, which changes the maths if your needs are stable and simple. Personal is $29 a month, Professional $49, Business $99, with $5 add-ons for extra domains, keywords and seats. Data quality is the trade-off: volumes and difficulty scores drift from Ahrefs and Semrush, and the backlink index is the weakest on this list. Use it for idea generation, not for numbers you’ll defend to a client.

Free Moz alternatives that cover the basics

You can replace most of Moz Pro’s day-to-day value for nothing. The catch is real: free tools work on sites you own, not your competitors’. Here are the top free Moz alternatives worth stacking together.

Google Search Console

This is the single best free alternative to Moz’s SEO toolkit, because it isn’t an estimate. GSC reports your actual impressions, clicks, CTR and average position from Google itself, plus indexing status and Core Web Vitals. Moz’s rank tracker is modelling what GSC measures directly for you. It’s free forever, on unlimited verified properties. The limit is scope: your sites only, 16 months of history, and no keyword volume data.

The rest of the free stack

• Ahrefs Free — Site Audit and Site Explorer on sites you verify, with 5,000 crawl credits per project per month and 1,000 backlinks visible at a time.
• Semrush free account — one project and 10 reports a day, enough for you to run occasional competitor spot-checks.
• Bing Webmaster Tools — free keyword volume data, which GSC won’t give you.
• Screaming Frog — free crawl up to 500 URLs, better technical output than Moz Site Crawl.
• MozBar — still free, still shows you DA and PA, no subscription needed.

What the free stack can’t do for you: competitor backlink gap analysis, historic ranking data, or rank tracking at scale. When you need those, you’re buying a tool.

Moz Local alternatives for listings management

Moz Local is a separate product and a separate bill for you: $20, $30 or $40 per location per month, or $199, $299 and $399 per location per year on annual billing. Listings AI is a $14 add-on unless you’re on Elite. If that’s the line item you want gone, here are your real options.

• BrightLocal — your closest like-for-like. Track starts at $41 a month for one location, Manage at $54, Grow at $65, with a 14-day trial and no card. Citation building is pay-as-you-go from about $2 per citation.
• Whitespark — à la carte, and often cheapest for you. Local Platform is $1 per location per month, Local Rank Tracker from $14, Local Citation Finder from $33.
• Yext — quote-only and annual, roughly $199 to $999 per location per year depending on tier. Deepest publisher network, worst lock-in.
• Uberall — enterprise only, 25+ locations minimum, no trial, no public pricing.

On free alternatives to Moz Local: there’s no genuinely free listings manager. What you can do for free is claim and maintain your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect yourself, then use free scanners to spot inconsistencies. For one or two locations, that’s an hour a month of your time instead of $240 a year.

How to choose

Match the tool to your job, not the feature list.

• You paid Moz for links and DA — Ahrefs. Domain Rating is your closest metric and the index is far bigger.
• You need one tool for a whole team — Semrush. Expensive, but nothing else covers this much ground.
• You report to clients on a budget — SE Ranking. White-label reporting at half the price of the enterprise suites.
• You’re solo and spend under $50 — Mangools, or Ubersuggest if a lifetime plan suits you.
• You have no budget — Google Search Console plus Ahrefs Free plus Bing Webmaster Tools. That trio covers your rankings, technical health and volume data.
• Local listings only — BrightLocal for one to ten locations, Yext or Uberall above that.

Is switching worth it?

Honest answer: often no, and it depends on one question. What do you actually open Moz for?

Stay with Moz if you use it mostly for DA and PA when vetting link prospects, your clients ask for DA by name, and one to three sites is genuinely your scope. At $49 to $99 a month, Moz Pro is still one of the cheaper full toolkits, and its interface is calmer than Semrush’s. Mid-contract on annual billing? Finish it out.

Switch if you’re regularly hitting the 50 or 300 keyword caps, you need competitor backlink data rather than your own, or you’re doing link building where index size decides whether you find the opportunity at all. That’s the point where the extra $30 to $80 a month pays for itself in one campaign.

One thing that makes the decision cheaper than it looks: you don’t have to give up DA to leave. MozBar and Moz’s free domain analysis still return the score without a subscription. So the real question isn’t whether you’ll miss Domain Authority. It’s whether the other 90% of the product is worth what you’re paying.