Mangools vs Semrush: Features, AI Tracking and Pricing Compared (2026)

Mangools starts at $37.70 a month billed yearly. Semrush starts at $117.33. Each covers keyword research, backlink checks, rank tracking and AI answer tracking, but they’re built for different people.

Mangools is a small bundle of tools with KWFinder at the center, and every plan includes its AI Search Watcher for tracking brand mentions in AI answers. Semrush is a large suite with far more data. It adds site audits, daily rank tracking and extra toolkits for most of marketing.

Pick Mangools if you run a blog or small business site and want easy keyword research and AI answer tracking at a low price. Pick Semrush if you run SEO for a growing business or agency and need site audits and deep competitor data.

Mangools vs Semrush at a glance

What is Mangools?

mangools.com

Founded

2014, with the first version of KWFinder

Founder

Peter Hrbáčik

Headquarters

Bratislava, Slovakia

Starts at

$61/mo, or $37.70/mo billed yearly (Basic)

Free plan or trial

Free plan with 5 KWFinder lookups per 24 hours; 48 hour refund on paid plans

Best for

Bloggers, freelancers and small sites

What Mangools does today

Mangools is a set of SEO tools sold as one bundle. KWFinder finds keywords and shows their difficulty. SERPChecker breaks down the Google results for a keyword, and SERPWatcher tracks your rankings. LinkMiner checks backlinks, and SiteProfiler shows the main SEO metrics for any domain. AI Search Watcher tracks how AI answers mention your brand.

You can’t buy one tool alone, because the tools depend on each other. KWFinder’s difficulty score, for one, comes from SERPChecker. Limits reset every 24 hours.

Mangools history

Peter Hrbáčik launched the first version of KWFinder in August 2014, and he still runs the company as CEO. KWFinder 2.0 came out in March 2016, and work on SERPChecker began a month later. In May 2016 the tools came together under one brand, Mangools. That September the team opened an office in Bratislava.

New tools followed each year. SERPWatcher arrived in July 2017 for rank tracking. LinkMiner came in January 2018 for backlinks, and SiteProfiler joined in September 2018 as the fifth tool. An SEO browser extension came out in October 2018, then KWFinder 3.0 with a new design in May 2019.

Mangools has grown without outside investors. By 2024 it had 1.1 million users and 25,000 paying customers. Its newest tool, AI Search Watcher, tracks brand mentions in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and six other AIs. Every plan now includes it, along with API and MCP access.

What is Semrush?

semrush.com

Founded

2008

Founders

Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitri Melnikov

Headquarters

Boston, Massachusetts

Starts at

$139/mo (SEO plan)

Free plan or trial

Free account with 10 reports a day, plus a 7 day trial

Best for

SEO teams and agencies

What Semrush does today

Semrush is a cloud marketing suite built around SEO. Its SEO plan covers SEO alone. The Semrush One plans (Starter, Pro+ and Advanced) combine the SEO Toolkit and the AI Visibility Toolkit, so they add AI search tracking.

Each plan includes one user. Traffic and market data, local SEO, content, social, ads and AI PR come as separate toolkits you can add.

Semrush history

Semrush started as SEO data inside a browser. Its roots go back to Seodigger and SeoQuake, a Firefox extension, and the name comes from SEM, short for search engine marketing. Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitri Melnikov founded the company in 2008. In December 2020 it changed its styling from “SEMrush” to “Semrush.”

In 2018 Semrush raised $40 million in a round led jointly by Greycroft, E.ventures and Siguler Guff. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021 under the ticker SEMR. Purchases of other marketing companies followed, including Backlinko in 2022 and Exploding Topics and Third Door Media in 2024.

In March 2025 Semrush launched its AI Toolkit to track brands in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Semrush One came in October 2025 and put the SEO Toolkit and the AI Visibility Toolkit in one plan. That November, Adobe agreed to buy Semrush for $1.9 billion. The deal closed on April 28, 2026, and Semrush now runs as part of Adobe.

Mangools vs Semrush keyword research

KWFinder is the reason most people pick Mangools. Type a keyword and you get related ideas, questions and a difficulty score on one screen. Type a competitor’s domain instead and you see the keywords it ranks for. Search volumes usually run about a month behind.

Semrush’s database holds 28.8 billion keywords. Its SEO plan includes basic keyword research and competitor analysis. Starter adds the full keyword research and optimization tools, and Pro+ adds keyword cannibalization analysis.

If you want each keyword’s Google top 10 with the sites AI Overviews cite, Arrowsterr’s Organic Search shows both on one screen.

Stronger: Semrush for depth, with a far larger database for niche and long tail keywords. Mangools for ease of use, which counts most if you only research keywords a few times a week.

Mangools vs Semrush backlink data

Semrush wins on backlinks. It runs its own crawler, which reads about 10 billion pages a day, and its index holds 43 trillion backlinks and 808 million domains. That link data sits next to its keyword and audit data.

LinkMiner draws on Majestic’s fresh and historic index, 9.5 trillion backlinks in all. Basic allows 100,000 backlink rows a month, Premium 500,000 and Agency 1.2 million. That covers quick checks of a competitor’s top links. Each vendor counts links its own way, so the totals don’t compare one to one.

Mangools vs Semrush rank tracking and site audit

Mangools has no crawler for technical SEO. Its free SEO Content Optimizer is a separate mini tool, and nothing in the bundle checks a whole site for broken links or redirects. Semrush includes Site Audit on every paid plan. To see whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, run the free AI crawler checker.

Rankings are closer. SERPWatcher is easy to set up and tracks any number of domains within your keyword limit. Weekly updates work for small sites that publish now and then. If a ranking drop costs you money, you’ll want daily data, and Mangools only gives you that on Agency.

Stronger: Semrush, on both counts: daily rankings on every plan, plus a site audit Mangools doesn’t have.

Mangools vs Semrush AI visibility tracking

Here Mangools gives you more on its entry plan. Every plan includes AI Search Watcher PRO with 500 monitored prompts and unlimited monitors. It runs each prompt twice to smooth out changes in AI answers, and it shows your average position and citations next to your competitors. Every monitor gets checked once a week, on Tuesdays.

Semrush’s SEO plan includes AI visibility reports for any domain and AI sentiment, with no prompt tracking quota. Prompt tracking starts on Starter with 50 prompts daily, and Pro+ tracks 100. Advanced has a custom prompt limit. Semrush also has prompt research, which shows topics and prompts people ask AI, and an AI-ready Site Audit.

For more tools in this space, see our guide to the best LLM tracking tools. Arrowsterr’s AI Visibility checks ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode every day.

Stronger: Mangools on a small budget, with 8 AIs and 500 prompts on every plan. Semrush if you want daily checks that include Perplexity, with the AI data sitting next to its SEO research.

Mangools vs Semrush pricing

Every Mangools plan includes API and MCP access. Extra seats share the main account’s limits. If a paid plan isn’t for you, Mangools gives a full refund within 48 hours of payment.

Semrush bills monthly or yearly, with one user per plan. AI prompt quotas start on Starter.

Arrowsterr: a Mangools and Semrush alternative for AI search

Arrowsterr is an AI visibility and SEO research platform. It shows how AI answers talk about your brand, then gives you the keywords and content plan to grow that share.

It fits Mangools users who want AI answers checked every day, with Perplexity in the mix. It also fits small teams that like Semrush’s research but want a lower entry price and a writer that turns gaps into published pages.

arrowsterr.com

Arrowsterr features

• AI Visibility tracks your brand on ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode daily, and on Claude and Perplexity weekly. See AI Visibility.
• Organic Search gives you keyword research with volume, difficulty, intent, questions and the Google top 10 with AI Overview sources. It also finds competitor keyword gaps. See Organic Search.
• The Sources report shows which sites AI answers cite, so you know where to get mentioned.
• Topic Bank and Content Plan turn gaps into a plan. On Pro and up, the Agentic Writer drafts and publishes. See Agentic Content.
• Site audit crawls up to 200 pages and flags AI crawler blocks and page issues. Zippie, its AI agent, fixes them through your CMS.
• The MCP server pulls your data into Claude and other AI tools, and the API pulls it into your own apps.

Arrowsterr pricing

Every account starts with a 7 day trial of both toolsets, no card needed.

Arrowsterr vs Mangools and Semrush

Start your free trial of Arrowsterr, with both toolsets for 7 days and no card.

Which should you choose: Mangools or Semrush?

Pick Mangools if:

• You want keyword research that is quick to learn.
• You run a blog, niche site or small business site.
• You want AI answer tracking on a low priced plan.
• Weekly rankings are enough for you.

Pick Semrush if:

• You need site audits for technical SEO.
• You want daily rankings on every plan.
• You do deep competitor or backlink research.
• You want SEO and AI data next to local, content and ads toolkits.

Building SEO for a young company? See our list of the best SEO tools for startups.

Mangools vs Semrush FAQ

Is Mangools cheaper than Semrush?

Yes. Mangools Basic is $61 a month, or $37.70 a month billed yearly. Semrush’s SEO plan is $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed yearly. Semrush does include site audits and daily rankings, and Mangools Basic has neither.

Is Mangools good for beginners?

Yes. The design is easy to learn, and each tool does one job. KWFinder shows keyword ideas and difficulty on one screen. A free account lets you try it with 5 lookups a day.

Does Mangools have a site audit?

No. Mangools has no site crawler for technical SEO. If you need to find broken links or crawl errors across a site, use Semrush or a separate audit tool.

Does Mangools track ChatGPT?

Yes. Every paid plan includes AI Search Watcher PRO, which tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Mistral and Llama. It monitors up to 500 prompts and checks them once a week.

Can Mangools replace Semrush?

For keyword research and AI answer tracking, many small sites can switch. You lose site audits and Semrush’s larger databases, and rankings update weekly below the Agency plan. Agencies and technical SEOs usually need more than Mangools has.

Who makes Mangools?

Mangools is a Slovak company led by its founder and CEO, Peter Hrbáčik. He launched KWFinder in 2014, and the tools took the Mangools name in 2016.

Summary: Mangools vs Semrush

If your week is keyword research plus a look at how AI answers mention you, Mangools covers it from $37.70 a month billed yearly, with 8 AIs on every plan. Once you need technical audits, or daily rankings without paying for Agency, Semrush is the next step.

Start with Mangools’ free account and Semrush’s 7 day trial, then compare them on the keywords you care about.