If you’re looking to improve your SEO and gain valuable competitor metrics, Semrush is the best choice. However, you might be thinking about which plan to choose – Semrush Pro or Guru. Pro represents the entry-level plan, and simultaneously, the cheapest one.
The Guru plan offers plenty more but the price difference isn’t negligible. It’s clear that Guru is better overall but the question is whether you should spend more money on it. If you’re unsure which plan to get, we strongly advise reading this in-depth article to the end.
We’ll compare Semrush Pro to Semrush Guru in many key aspects to see if the price difference is justifiable. While we’re at that, we’ll size up Pro’s prices to Guru and see how good of a value both plans are. Let’s make haste and ease your burning dilemma.
Semrush Pro vs Guru: Keyword and Domain Analysis
You’ll immediately notice the difference between the two plans in keyword analysis. The Pro plan limits you to 500 keywords to track, offering daily updates, as opposed to Ahrefs, whose weekly updates are subpar. The Guru plan triples the number to 1,500 – much better!
Interestingly, the Pro plan is rather basic in this regard, as it lacks the historical data that the Guru plan has. To remind you, historical data in Semrush goes back to 2012, so you get well over a decade’s worth of keyword-related information. There are more differences.
Semrush Guru is better than Pro for daily reports, offering 5,000 instead of 3,000. The more expensive plan has 30,000 results per report, whereas, the cheaper deal caps at 10,000. This means you’ll be getting three times more information about keywords in Guru.
Analyze Keywords and Domains With Semrush
There’s another advantage in terms of fresh metrics for targeted keywords. The Pro variant has 250 of these per month, while the Guru bumps it up to 1,000. This is the number of times you can get fresh keyword-related metrics each month, and as you see, it’s much higher.
If you need a tool for researching keywords and doing it VERY efficiently, pick Semrush Guru. The Pro plan is indeed great but the SE Ranking is a bit better value at this price point.
Site Audit and Page Crawling Features Compared
One of the biggest differences between Semrush Pro and Guru is this one. Page crawling has to do with site audits that work in both plans. However, the Pro plan limits you to 5 projects, 100,000 page crawls per month, and 20,000 page crawls per project. Great numbers.
The Guru plan puts these great numbers to shame, with 15 allowed projects, 300,000 page crawls per month, and strangely, identical 20,000 page crawls per project. Key differences are JS or JavaScript rendering and cannibalization reports that, for us, are VERY important.
Cannibalization occurs when two or more pages rank for the same keyword. They endanger each other’s rankings this way and must be re-optimized to rank for different phrases. Semrush Pro doesn’t support cannibalization reports and that’s a serious flaw.
If you pick the Guru plan, this feature is readily available and useful in some crucial moments. Owners of slightly larger and more numerous websites will prefer Semrush Guru over Pro. Bloggers and those with fewer ambitions will find the Pro plan sufficient.
Our team prefers the Guru plan, however, due to its cannibalization reports and other tiny conveniences, including vastly more generous limits.
Perform Site Audits With Semrush Guru
Semerush Guru vs Pro Position Tracking Comparison
Position tracking is vital for your success in the SEO field. While Semrush is one of the top rank-tracking tools, knowing HOW to get the most out of it is paramount.
The Pro plan is pretty good, as it lets you track, as said, 500 keywords and see their changes daily.
On top of that, the Semrush Pro and Guru plans support mobile tracking, letting you see how your keywords perform across different platforms. Here, we come to one more fatal flaw of the Pro plan, which is the lack of Multitargeting.
What in the world is this feature?
Let’s explain it this way. The Pro plan lets you track the website visibility across ONE device, language, and location. We then have the Guru plan that bumps up the number to TEN. This means you can, for example, track the website’s visibility in 5 cities on mobile results, and 5 cities on desktop results.
You can combine various parameters and use different languages but the number of these parameters shouldn’t go over 10. This is handy if you’re looking to expand your visibility to other countries or cities and want your website to “work” outside of the domestic market.
The Business plan is superior in this regard, with unlimited targets per project. Alas, its price of over $415/mo surely won’t fit the bill if you opt for the Pro or Guru plan.
In short, Guru blows Pro out of the water thanks to more thorough position-tracking abilities.
Content Marketing in Semrush Pro and Guru Plans
Guru’s superiority continues in the content marketing section. Sadly, the Pro plan lacks this aspect, and that’s a real shame considering how valuable the content market is. Our team has compared Semrush to SE Ranking, seeing just how superior the former is in this aspect.
However, you have to pay extra for the Guru plan to get this feature.
Is it worth your money? We think it is.
The Guru plan lets you research unlimited topics, and by extension, get unlimited topic ideas with important metrics like difficulty, volume, and so on.
Then, there’s the SEO Content Assistant, letting you use Semrush’s AI to compose and edit articles. The inclusion of 5 plagiarism checks per month will ensure your content’s uniqueness. On top of that, Semrush can function like Grammarly and inspect your pages.
You can fix your grammar, improve readability, and optimize your pages to be more SEO-friendly. The SEO Content Template feature also lets you see LSI keywords, the number of words you should aim for regarding a certain topic, and much more.
We don’t think improving SEO is possible without a proper content marketing tool. If you’re serious about your website and want to bring out the best in it, the Guru plan should be your top priority. The Pro plan is lacking ALL of the features we just discussed.
Semrush Pro vs Guru: Reporting Features Comparison
Semrush has tiny convenient features like reporting, that can be scheduled and improved upon with various third-party integrations. The Pro variant can schedule 5, while the Guru can schedule 20 PDF reports. However, the Guru plan supports Looker Studio integration.
While the Pro’s lack of it isn’t alarming, Looker Studio’s addition is more than welcome. It will streamline your reports and make them more comprehensive. It’s worth noting that both plans support over 20 integrations, such as GSC, Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.
It’s clear that Guru is again better than Pro but this isn’t a very important aspect, at least for us. If you need more PDF reports and Looker Studio, pick the Guru plan. If not, and everything else in the Pro plan suits you better, there’s no going wrong with this plan.
Which Plan Is a Better Value: Semrush Pro or Guru?
Before we directly discuss their prices, let’s first clarify that both plans are tailored to individuals. In fact, even the Semrush Business plan is for one user and additional users will cost you on top. We went into detail on that in our Semrush pricing structure guide.
Additional users will cost you:
- $45 a month per user for Pro
- $80 a month per user for Guru
- $100 a month per user for Business
The Pro plan is more suitable for multiple users value-wise, alas, at the cost of fewer features. Now, what if you don’t want multiple users and would rather work alone?
In that case, despite being ~78% more expensive, the Guru plan is a BETTER value – how so?
Because it offers 3 times more trackable keywords, monthly page crawls, and projects. Its limitations are far more generous and won’t cripple you if your website suddenly grows. This makes the Guru plan very flexible and ready to “accept” your business scaling.
Save 17% on Semrush’s Annual Plans
We can talk about the exact prices but know they’re prone to change. The annual plan with 17% off is much better. In that case, the Pro option costs $117.33/mo and Guru is $208.33/mo. Indeed, the difference is far from negligible. Monthly plans are there too.
However, we don’t recommend them because they’re on the opulent side and are a poor value in the long run. Other commodities such as a 7-day refund policy and a 14-day free trial are here, letting you test both plans for free.
Should I Jump to Semrush Business Instead?
The Business plan is Semrush’s magnum opus. You can’t get better than this, and in this “edition”, this is the #1 SEO tool in the world. The main drawback is its price, which goes as “low” as $416.66/mo for the annual plan. Multiply it by 12 and see how much you’ll pay annually.
This plan supports over 40 projects per account, 5,000 trackable keywords, API access, and the Share of Voice metric. Everything is “oversized” here, with 50,000 results per report, 1,000,000 monthly page crawls, 10 plagiarism checks, and 2,000 SEO content templates.
We think the Business plan is for the most demanding users with multiple websites. This plan will mostly suit agencies that don’t mind paying even for more user seats. Semrush offers bonus tools, such as Semruch Local, Trends, Social Media Management, Agency Growth Kit, and ImpcatHero.
Racking up all of them will whirlwind the price into the sky and make Semrush luxuriously expensive. For us, the Guru plan is the middle ground and already has everything you’ll likely need. Even Semrush’s free SEO tools are amazing if you’re just getting started.
Conclusion: Semrush Guru Wins Over Semrush Pro
After the dust has settled and Guru and Pro plans have battled it to the end, we should digress. To make it clear, we think Semrush is awesome and both plans should suffice for most users in all aspects of competitive research and SEO analysis.
However, the Guru plan is superior overall, and not by a tiny margin. It offers a sizeable increase in trackable keywords, page crawls, projects per account, and reports per page. Not to mention you can analyze 15 domains in Guru, while Pro allows for only 5.
Now, do you need to get Guru over Pro? Perhaps not. Users with “tiny” needs will get along just fine with Pro. But if the website grows and your business flourishes, most likely, you will need to scale to the Guru plan. Our opinion is that you should get Guru right away.
It provides cannibalization reports, JS rendering, and content marketing, all of which will ideally complement your SEO efforts. At ~78% higher price, the Guru plan provides at least 3 times more, making the choice clear if you have enough money to spend on it.
