Semrush vs Similarweb: Which SEO Tool is Better in 2026? – 99signals

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With SEO and online marketing going through incredible complexity in the last few months, choosing the right SEO tools has become even more crucial.
Semrush and Similarweb are two of the most popular SEO platforms that offer powerful features but serve slightly different purposes.
While Semrush focuses on providing a comprehensive toolkit for SEO and content marketing, Similarweb excels at offering powerful web analytics and competitive intelligence.
In this detailed comparison between Semrush and Similarweb, we’ll deconstruct the key features of both tools, including keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink tracking, traffic analytics, and more.
By the end of the article, you’ll be able to make an informed decision on which tool you should use to supercharge your SEO.
Let’s dive in.
Side note: To get the most out of this Semrush vs Similarweb comparison post, I’d highly recommend taking advantage of the free trials offered by both tools. This hands-on experience will help you explore their features and apply the insights shared in this article. Use the links below to start your trials and discover which tool fits your needs best!
Table of Contents
Since its launch in 2008, Semrush has consistently been the go-to choice for marketers seeking a powerful solution for their SEO and PPC needs. Its online marketing suite now comprises over 50 tools that are designed to cater to SEO professionals, content marketers, PPC managers, and social media strategists.
Whether you’re working on an organic campaign or optimizing your paid strategy, Semrush provides a treasure trove of data to help drive measurable results in your marketing efforts.
Key Features:
What makes Semrush especially unique is its intuitive interface. You’ll find tools segmented into clear categories like SEO, advertising, content marketing, competitive intelligence, and social media.  
This modular layout makes it easy for you to switch between different features and functionalities without feeling overwhelmed.
After all, when you’re spending over $100 in an SEO tool, you want something that works seamlessly and doesn’t add to your frustration.
With Semrush, you get an intuitive and user-friendly platform that lets you focus on what truly matters—growing your traffic and outperforming your competition.
Founded in 2009, Similarweb is perhaps best known for offering macro-level insights.
This means the tool helps you see the bigger picture, like tracking website traffic trends, audience behavior, and market performance across industries.
You can use it to benchmark your website’s online performance against competitors and analyze market trends.
Unlike Semrush, which has a heavy focus on SEO, PPC, and content marketing, Similarweb dives deeper into traffic analytics and audience behavior.
When it comes to its interface, Similarweb focuses on simplicity and usability.
With its visually engaging dashboards, you can quickly pull insights for presentations or strategy planning—and save yourself a ton of time in the process.
In this section, we will compare Semrush and Similarweb across key areas such as features, usability, pricing, and overall value to help you decide which tool suits your needs best.
When it comes to keyword research, Semrush sets the gold standard, boasting a database of 26 billion keywords—significantly outpacing Similarweb’s 5 billion. Even its most basic keyword research tool, the Keyword Overview report, packs a punch—uncovering insights that many full-fledged keyword research tools can’t match.
But the real standout in Semrush’s Keyword Research toolkit is the Keyword Magic Tool. This tool offers an extensive database of keyword ideas neatly grouped into categories for easy navigation.
You can filter keyword results by keyword difficulty, intent, and SERP features.
For instance, when you enter “small business” into the search bar, you’ll receive thousands of variations, including long-tail keywords and question-based keywords like “How to start a small business,” alongside important keyword metrics like search volume, intent, search trend, and keyword difficulty (KD%).
Then you have Semrush’s Organic Research tool which is excellent for competitor keyword analysis.
You just need to enter a competitor’s domain to uncover the keywords they rank for, their positions, and the estimated organic traffic they generate for each keyword.
In other words, it helps you determine which keywords are driving traffic to your competitors, revealing untapped opportunities to optimize your own SEO strategy and refine your content plan.
And guess what? This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Semrush’s incredible keyword research capabilities.
With tools like Keyword Strategy Builder and Organic Traffic Insights, you can unlock deeper insights, refine your strategy, and identify high-impact keywords that can drive more traffic to your site and boost your search rankings.
Learn how to make the most of Semrush’s keyword research tools in our detailed guide to Semrush keyword research.
Similarweb does offer keyword insights, but its functionality is somewhat limited compared to Semrush.
The keyword research tool gets the basics right. It can help you identify popular search terms and trends, but it lacks the depth and advanced features that make Semrush a go-to for serious marketers.
If you’re just dipping your toes into keyword research, Similarweb might do the job. But for anything more detailed, like uncovering long-tail keywords or analyzing competitive gaps, you’ll probably find yourself wanting more.
That said, Similarweb does fairly well when trying to show what keywords drive traffic to competing websites.
For instance, when you enter a competitor domain into the search box, the tool reveals their top-performing organic and paid keywords, as well as the percentage of traffic each keyword contributes.
However, Similarweb lacks advanced filtering options and doesn’t offer tools for grouping keywords into clusters, making it less suitable for robust content planning.
Verdict: Semrush wins for its depth, versatility, and advanced filtering capabilities.
Competitor analysis is one of Semrush’s strongest features.
With the Domain Overview tool, you can compare multiple domains side-by-side, analyzing traffic trends, top-performing keywords, backlink profiles, and keyword intent.
The Keyword Gap Tool further highlights keywords your competitors rank for that you may be missing.
A unique feature is Semrush’s ability to track position changes over time.
You can use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to not just keep a tab on your own organic rankings, but also monitor your competitors’ ranking fluctuations.
This insight helps you adapt your strategy in real-time.
Recommended reading: 6 Powerful Ways to Use Semrush to Crush Your Competition
Similarweb approaches competitor research differently. Unlike Semrush, which offers a dedicated toolkit for competitor analysis, Similarweb integrates these insights into its broader Web Intelligence module.
While it lacks a focused competitor research section, it provides a comprehensive view of competitor traffic sources, audience behavior, and market trends within this module.
Similarweb’s Website Analysis tool allows you to analyze any website’s audience demographics and channel traffic performance.
For example, you can quickly track fluctuations and spot traffic trends across your competitor’s key marketing channels.
The Audience Overlap feature is another highlight, showing how your audience overlaps with that of competitors.
Verdict: While Similarweb does a great job in audience and traffic analysis, Semrush provides deeper SEO-specific insights, making it the better choice for SEO-focused work.
Despite numerous Google algorithm updates over the years, backlinks remain one of the most influential ranking signals.
Boasting the largest backlink index among all prominent SEO analysis tools, Semrush offers key features and insights into backlink profiles, domain authority, and competitor link building strategies.
Its Backlink Analytics Tool provides data on referring domains, anchor texts, and link building opportunities.
You can also compare your backlink profile against competitors using the Backlink Gap Tool.
For instance, if your competitors are gaining backlinks from high-authority websites, you can identify and replicate their strategies.
Additionally, Semrush tracks lost backlinks, so you can reclaim valuable links.
Recommended reading: How to Build Backlinks with Semrush: 10 Actionable Tips
Similarweb offers limited backlink insights.
While it can identify traffic-driving backlinks to competitors, it doesn’t provide actionable data like domain authority or anchor text details.
Verdict: Semrush is the clear winner for comprehensive backlink analysis.
Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool provides a detailed breakdown of traffic sources, user engagement metrics, and audience geography.
This tool is especially useful for understanding user behavior, such as bounce rates and pages per session for a specific website.
For example, analyzing competitor traffic might reveal that a significant portion comes from referral sources, prompting you to focus on partnership outreach.
That said, Semrush’s Traffic Analytics is an add-on tool to Semrush’s standard package as part of Semrush’s .Trends toolkit. You’ll need to pay an additional $289/month to access Traffic Analytics.
While you can get traffic insights for any website from Semrush’s Domain Analytics, Traffic Analytics is more accurate because it gathers data by analyzing clickstream data (the path the visitor takes through a website) about all of a domain’s sources of traffic, not just from search.
On the other hand, the traffic data generated via Domain Analytics are purely estimations based on keyword positions and their estimated traffic.
Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to Semrush Traffic Analytics
Traffic analytics is where Similarweb shines. Its granular insights into traffic channels (e.g., search, social, direct) are accompanied by detailed breakdowns of geographic locations and  user demographics.
For instance, you can see how much traffic comes from mobile vs. desktop devices, or which regions contribute the most to a competitor’s traffic.
Whether you’re analyzing a direct competitor or exploring a new market, Similarweb’s traffic analytics make it easy to spot opportunities and adapt your approach.
Verdict: While Similarweb offers excellent visualizations and broad insights into traffic channels, Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool edges ahead for its accuracy and depth, thanks to its reliance on clickstream data. If you’re willing to invest an additional $289/month for this add-on, Semrush provides highly precise traffic data across all sources, making it a preferred choice for those seeking detailed competitive insights.
When it comes to technical SEO, Semrush is in a league of its own.
Semrush’s Site Audit tool offers a comprehensive evaluation of your website, scanning for all the major technical and on-page SEO issues that may be affecting your site’s rankings.
These include crawl errors, HTTPS implementation, page speed problems, duplicate content, and broken links. The tool categorizes issues into errors, warnings, and notices, making it easier to prioritize fixes that will have the most significant impact on your site’s performance.
A standout feature of Semrush’s technical SEO capabilities is the Core Web Vitals report, which aligns with Google’s ranking factors.
Additionally, it provides actionable recommendations with step-by-step guidance to resolve issues, making it suitable for beginners and experts alike.
For larger websites, Semrush’s crawl budget optimization ensures all pages are efficiently indexed by search engines.
Recommended reading: Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features
Similarweb offers only basic technical SEO capabilities. Its features are limited to surface-level insights, such as identifying broken links and some page performance metrics.
Unlike Semrush, it doesn’t offer detailed site audit reports, prioritize issues, or provide actionable solutions.
If you need detailed technical SEO data analysis, Similarweb may not be the best choice.
Verdict: Semrush is the undisputed leader in technical SEO, offering a full suite of tools for identifying, prioritizing, and resolving issues. While Similarweb provides some basic technical SEO insights, it falls far short of the depth and functionality that Semrush delivers.
Both tools are user-friendly, but their designs reflect their primary focus areas.
Semrush’s interface is geared toward SEO professionals, with tools grouped by category for seamless navigation.
Similarweb’s interface, while visually appealing, is optimized for traffic analysis and market research.
Verdict: Semrush’s organized layout and SEO focus make it more accessible for marketers, while Similarweb’s design appeals to market researchers.
Semrush offers a wide range of support options, including live chat, email, and a comprehensive knowledge base.
It also provides webinars and tutorials to help you get started. Plus, the Semrush blog is packed with actionable tips, industry insights, and updates to keep you ahead of the curve in the SEO industry.
Similarweb primarily relies on email support and an online help center, which can feel less immediate.
Verdict: Semrush offers more robust customer support.
Semrush pricing starts at $139.95/month for the Pro plan, scaling up to $499.95/month for advanced features.
Similarweb’s pricing plans start at $199/month, but the company largely relies on custom pricing based on usage, making it more flexible but less transparent.
Verdict: Semrush’s transparent pricing structure is preferable for budget-conscious marketers.
In the end, if you’re a blogger, entrepreneur, or digital marketer with a focus on growing your SEO presence and refining your content strategy, Semrush is the clear winner.
Semrush’s unmatched depth in keyword research, backlink analysis, and technical SEO tools makes it an indispensable asset for anyone serious about boosting search rankings and driving organic traffic.
From discovering untapped opportunities to monitoring your competitors’ every move, Semrush gives you everything you need to stay ahead in the game.
That said, Similarweb holds its own when it comes to traffic analytics and audience insights.
If your goal is to understand how competitors are attracting visitors, benchmark your site’s performance, or analyze broader market trends, Similarweb offers unique advantages.
Its clean, visually engaging interface makes it easy to extract data for presentations and high-level strategies.
For many, the best approach might even be combining the strengths of both tools—leveraging Semrush for SEO and content campaigns while using Similarweb for audience research and traffic analysis.
But if you’re deciding on just one, and SEO is your priority, Semrush is hands down the tool to bet on.
Ready to decide which tool suits your needs best? Both Semrush and Similarweb offer free trials, allowing you to test out all their key features and see which one aligns with your goals.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on December 8, 2024 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness. 
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it is very informative, I have no idea about Semrush before I read this article, thank you
Great article! Very informative. Personally, I lean towards SemRush as my preferred choice.
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Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…

Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…
A few links on this blog are affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service through one of these affiliate links, I’ll receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
Rest assured, I recommend only those tools that I personally use and genuinely trust. In most cases, you’ll find in-depth reviews, tutorials, and how-to guides of these tools on my blog to help you make informed decisions.

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