10 Best SpyFu Alternatives For 2024 (Comparison)
Trying to find the best SEO & PPC toolkit for your business? Not sure if SpyFu is a good fit for your needs? No worries—we’ve got you covered!
In this post, we’ll be looking at the best SpyFu alternatives and competitors on the market. All the platforms and standalone tools in this list can make great alternatives to SpyFu and share many of the same features.
Plus, some come with additional tools and benefits that may make them a better choice, depending on what you’re looking for.
The best SpyFu alternatives – summary
TL;DR:
- Semrush – Best SpyFu alternative overall. A complete SEO & PPC toolkit. Ideal for SEO professionals and enterprise customers.
- SE Ranking – Best for individuals. Best SpyFu alternative in terms of balance of features and affordability.
- Serpstat – Another great SpyFu alternative. Includes PPC research.
- Mangools – Best for beginners. Easy-to-use SpyFu alternative.
#1 – Semrush
Semrush is our top pick for the best SpyFu alternative. It’s a complete SEO & PPC toolkit that’s perfect for all types of customers.
Like SpyFu, Semrush comes with all the SEO tools you need to analyze your competitors’ marketing strategies and uncover data-driven insights to inform your SEO and PPC campaigns.
But unlike SpyFu (which focuses mainly on competitive analysis), Semrush is a ‘true’ all-in-one platform. It comes with dozens of different tools to help with all areas of your online marketing campaigns—many of which SpyFu lacks.
For example, in addition to all the main SEO and PPC tools (keyword research, rank tracking, link building, etc), Semrush also comes with social media marketing tools that you can use to schedule posts, generate content ideas, and analyze your competitor’s social performance. SpyFu doesn’t currently offer a similar feature.
Likewise, Semrush also includes its Site Audit tool, which scans your website for over 130 SEO mistakes and helps you to fix them. Again, this is something SpyFu doesn’t offer.
Semrush is also superior to SpyFu when it comes to local SEO. SpyFu only uses two databases in the US and UK, whereas Semrush has 142 databases spread all over the world. As such, you can use Semrush to analyze SERP data in specific regions and supercharge your local SEO efforts.
Given all that, it’s clear that Semrush has a lot to offer—so what’s the catch?
Well, the price. Semrush is considerably more expensive than SpyFu. However, I’d definitely say it’s worth the extra expense if your budget can stretch to it.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| More tools and features | More expensive |
| Accurate and reliable data | Broad feature set might be ‘overkill’ for beginners who only need the basics |
| More global databases (great for local SEO) | |
| Built-in site auditing tool |
Pricing
Plans start at $129.95/month. You can use some of the tools for free (with limitations) if you sign up for a free account. A free trial is also available.
Read our Semrush review.
#2 – SE Ranking
SE Ranking is another great all-in-one SEO software solution like SpyFu. It’s our top pick for individuals (rather than businesses) as it offers a good balance of features and affordability.
Like SpyFu, SE Ranking includes a suite of top-level tools for both SEO and PPC—and there’s a lot to like about all of them.
Its rank tracking tool is very accurate and comes with daily updates so you always know the data you’re seeing about your organic positions is up to date. You can use it to track keyword rankings across all major search engines at the local level (country, region, city, etc.).
SE Ranking’s in-depth website audit tool is another standout feature. It’s a very powerful auditing solution and can help you find tons of on-page and off-page optimization opportunities.
The backlinks analysis tool helps you to check and monitor your link profile (or your competitor’s), and view data on all referring domains. Use it to keep track of your own backlinks or find new link-building opportunities by analyzing rival websites.
SE Ranking’s keyword research tool uses a huge database of over 3 billion keywords, complete with Google autocomplete data. Use it to find high-traffic, low-competition search terms and analyze them using metrics like keyword search volume.
Aside from these core tools, there are a few extra features we really like about SE Ranking. The first is the ‘page changes monitoring’ feature. It alerts you about changes to your site or your competitors’ sites so that you can respond quickly.
Another is the marketing plan. It gives you a step-by-step to-do list to guide your whole SEO strategy and help you stay organized. Just tick tasks off your list as you complete them, or add custom tasks to your list as they come up.
We also appreciate the SE Ranking mobile app. It makes it easy to get work done and keep track of important changes on the go.
But the best thing about SE Ranking—and the thing that makes it stand out from SpyFu—is its pricing model.
It’s extremely scalable, with usage-based plans that are priced based on how many keywords you need to track, how often you want to track them, and the length of your subscription period. This is great for entrepreneurs that only want to use their tools occasionally as you won’t overpay for data you don’t need.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Custom step-by-step marketing plan | Support could be better |
| All-purpose SEO & PPC toolkit | Backlink index not as big as some competitors |
| Scalable, flexible pricing | Not as many advanced/specific SEO metrics |
| Mobile app |
Pricing
Plans start from $23.52/month and increase based on your usage requirements. You can get started with a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).
Read our SE Ranking review.
#3 – Serpstat
Serpstat is another great SpyFu alternative. It’s an all-in-one SEO tool that also includes tools for PPC research and content marketing.
Serpstat boasts a larger overall feature set than SpyFu. You can use its award-winning tools to do everything SEO marketers need to do on a daily basis.
The built-in rank tracker lets you monitor your organic ranking position for all your organic keywords, visualize your rank distribution, view historical SERP data, gather insights into traffic distribution for tracked keywords compared to your competitors, etc.
You can choose the region you want to track rankings in from your settings, which is essential if you’re marketing a business locally.
The backlink analysis tool lets you view comprehensive link data for any domain. See the total number of referring domains and pages pointing to any website, and evaluate those referring domains with metrics like Trust Score, Page Rank, and ad Alexa rank.
You can also keep track of your backlink profile by viewing your new and lost backlinks, or digging through historical data for over 2 years. To quickly evaluate who your most established competitors are, you can view a side-by-side overview of all your main competitors’ backlink profiles. Then, take a deeper look at your most authoritative competitors and find out which of their pages attract the most links to inform your own content strategy.
And of course, that’s not even scratched the surface of what Serpstat can do.
There’s also powerful keyword research tools that can help you find tons of valuable search terms worth targeting, and a site audit solution.
The site audit tool is particularly good. It categorizes all identified issues with a priority system, and grades your website with an SDO score. How-to-fix guides for each issue help you clean up your site.
And let’s not forget Serpstat’s competitor research tools. Use it to find out who your biggest SEO and ad competitors are, see the organic keywords they rank for, monitor their performance over time, and more.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Extensive set of award-winning tools | No social media marketing tools |
| Affordable for individual users | Expensive for teams (multiple users) |
| Local ranking data |
Pricing
Plans start at $45/month if you sign up for 24 months or more upfront. You can get started with a free account, which lets you try the basic features out with daily credits.
#4 – Mangools
Mangools is the best alternative to SpyFu for beginners. It’s incredibly easy to use and has a great UI. You don’t need to be an expert to understand how to use it.
Mangools is an SEO marketers’ swiss army knife. It offers 5 tools rolled into one package.
Its SiteProfiler tool is the main alternative to SpyFu’s competitive analysis features. It’s an SEO analysis tool that you can use to analyze competing sites to uncover insights about things like their authority, Alexa rank, traffic, social media performance, etc.
In addition to the SiteProfiler, you also get access to Mangools’ KWFinder (for keyword research), SERPChecker (for SERP analysis), SERPWatcher (for rank tracking), and LinkMiner (for link building and backlink analysis).
All of these tools are super easy to use. Everything about Mangools is designed to be as simple as possible so that beginners with little to no technical experience can navigate their way around the platform and do everything they need to do without any headaches.
But despite being geared towards beginners, Mangools still has an impressive record of enterprise-level clients. It’s used by big brands like Alexa, Adidas, Skyscanner, and Airbnb.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Beginner-friendly | Not as advanced as other tools |
| Simple interface | Data not always 100% accurate |
| Five tools in one | |
| Excellent SiteProfiler (competitor analysis) |
Pricing
Free plan available. Paid plans start at €29/month, save 35% with an annual subscription. Mangools offer a 48-hour full refund policy.
Read our Mangools review.
#5 – SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite is a fantastic desktop-based alternative to SpyFu. It’s a downloadable all-in-one SEO software solution with dozens of different tools rolled into one.
SEO PowerSuite is an extremely feature-rich solution with tons of tools in its arsenal. Those tools are grouped into four main toolkits: the Rank Tracker, Website Auditor, SEO SpyGlass, and Link Assistant.
The Rank Tracker allows you to track your position in over 300 search engines and find new keyword ideas. It includes over 17 different keyword research tools to make it easy to find keywords your competitors don’t know about.
SEO SpyGlass is for SEO competitor research. You can use it to analyze your competitor’s domains and uncover their most powerful backlinks. They have their own database, however, you can integrate Google Analytics and Google Search Console, giving you more control over your SEO research and goals.
Despite its rich feature set, SEO PowerSuite is very affordable. It offers one of the most generous free plans around and even the premium licenses are a fraction of the cost of some of its competitors.
The reason it’s so affordable is that it’s a desktop tool. The company doesn’t have to pay for all the costs associated with running a cloud-based platform, so they can pass those savings onto the end-user.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Feature-rich | Desktop installation required |
| Easy to use | The download can take a while |
| Incredible value for money | No monthly payment option |
| Generous free plan |
Pricing
You can download and use the standard version of SEO PowerSuite for free. Paid licenses that unlock extra usage and benefits are available starting from $299/year.
#6 – WebCEO
WebCEO is a suite of advanced SEO & digital marketing tools. It’s a great alternative to SpyFu for agencies thanks to its project management and reporting tools, and white label capabilities.
Like SpyFu, it comes with a bunch of tools (23+, actually) to help with all the main SEO tasks: competitor research, link building, keyword research, rank tracking, etc.
On top of that, it has some extra features that make it the perfect tool for agencies. The first of these is its powerful project management tools. Users can create multiple projects, assign user roles, and batch schedule SEO tasks to your team, then use widgets to keep track of their progress.
Next is its white label feature. You can host WebCEO on your own domain under your own branding to set up your own white-label marketing platform. Your clients will never know it’s a third-party solution!
You can even embed an SE Ranking lead generation widget on your agency website to help you get new high-quality, targeted leads into your mailing list. Your site visitors can request an SEO report, delivered by email. Once you have their email address, you can nurture them and sell them additional marketing services.
And of course, no agency-focused toolkit would be complete without powerful reporting capabilities. You can use WebCEO to create beautiful, branded SEO reports and send them out to your clients automatically.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| All-in-one SEO solution | No PPC tools |
| Powerful reporting | |
| White-label | |
| Lead generation widget |
Pricing
Plans start at $33/month billed annually. Plans suitable for agencies start from $83/month.
A free 14-day trial is available.
#7 – Morningscore
Morningscore is another easy-to-use alternative to SpyFu. It’s very straightforward and intuitive, with personalized guides and a simplified interface to make SEO easier.
Like SpyFu, you can use Morningscore to analyze your SEO competition, track your keyword rankings, and check your backlinks.
Its USP is gamification. Unlike SpyFu, Morningscore uses game mechanics to make SEO fun and simple. You can set up ‘SEO Missions’ that encourage you to focus on the most profitable tasks and make it easier to stay organized.
Another unique feature Morningscore offers is estimations of the exact monetary value of SEO in different currencies. This helps you to prioritize the tasks that will provide the best ROIs so you make the most of your marketing budget.
The user interface is really intuitive so anyone can make sense of SEO, regardless of their knowledge or skill level.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Built-in gamification | Lacks PPC tools |
| Estimates the monetary value of SEO tasks | No social media marketing |
| Intuitive interface |
Pricing
Regular plans start from $65/month or $650/year. Enterprise plans start at $685/month or $6,850/year.
You can also sign up for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Alternatively, you can try out a very basic version of Morningscore for just $5/month ($60/year).
#8 – Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another very popular all-in-one SEO platform. Like Semrush, it’s known for being one of the most sophisticated tools in the market and is a favorite of SEO professionals.
Ahrefs is used by some of the world’s biggest companies, including Facebook, Uber, and Netflix—and it’s clear why.
It’s one of the top SEO platforms available, with a reputation for being more accurate and more advanced than its competitors. Its PPC insights may not be as strong as SpyFu, but in all other areas, it excels.
There’s a lot you can do with Ahrefs. Its Site Explorer tool is our favorite feature and is a powerful alternative to SpyFu’s competitor analysis. It gives you a wealth of strategic insights about your competitors.
At a glance, you’ll be able to see what keywords are driving their traffic, which of their pages are performing the best, the websites that are linking to them (and the quality of these sites), and more. You can also gather competitor research and learn all about their paid search advertising campaigns and where they’re funneling paid traffic.
Ahrefs backlink database is also one of the largest in the industry, so it’s fantastic for finding new link-building opportunities.
Other tools include the Keyword Explorer, Content Explorer, Site Audit, and Rank Tracker.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Extensive database | No free trial is available |
| Highly accurate and reliable | Expensive |
| An advanced set of tools | Overages are billed automatically |
| Great SEO & PPC competitor analysis | Same number of report credits available on lowest and highest plans |
Pricing
Ahrefs plans start at $83/month when billed annually.
There’s no free trial available but you can try out the Site Explorer and Site Audit tools for free with limited access if you sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (you’ll need to verify your own site but Ahrefs haven’t been forthcoming about how they’ll use data from users that verify via Google Search Console).
Monthly credits vary depending on plan. If you go over your report allowance, you will be billed for overages automatically and with no warning. Usage can be tracked via a dropdown menu but it can make cost overrun difficult with larger teams.
#9 – iSpionage
iSpionage is one of the best like-for-like SpyFu alternatives. Like SpyFu, it’s primarily geared towards SEO and PPC competitor research. However, it goes beyond SpyFu to offer even deeper insights.
You can use SpyFu to gather insights into your competitor’s target keywords, ads, budgets, and bidding strategies.
However, on top of that, you can also use it to gauge the profitability of their campaigns and get a view of their entire sales funnel, including the landing pages they’re using to turn clicks into conversions. This is something you can’t do with SpyFu alone.
iSpionage has two of its own proprietary metrics that enable you to assess campaign profitability: AEI (Ad Effectiveness Index), and KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index). You won’t find these metrics on SpyFu, but they’re incredibly useful and give you a good idea of which ads and keywords are performing best for your competitors.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Advanced PPC features | SEO tools could be better |
| Proprietary metrics | No free trial/version |
| Analyze your competitor’s whole sales funnel |
Pricing
Plans start at $50/month billed annually. There’s no free trial available but you can try it out risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee, subject to terms and conditions.
You’ll need to be a first-time user and must not download more than 1,000 data points to qualify for the money-back guarantee.
#10 – Moz Pro
Moz Pro is another industry-leading suite of SEO tools. It comes with many of the same tools as SpyFu and stands out for its extensive backlink database and powerful competitor analysis capabilities.
Moz is also the company behind Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) metrics — two of the most important metrics for analyzing your competition.
Our favorite thing about Moz Pro is its link-building tools. It boasts a huge database of over 35.5 trillion backlinks, so you can be sure you’ll have a complete view of your competitors’ link profiles and backlink strategies.
We also like the built-in on-page optimization tool. It gives you prioritized recommendations on how you can improve your on-page content in order to rank higher for your target keywords.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Proprietary authority metrics | Usage limits are more limited than some other tools making it more expensive |
| Large database of keywords and backlinks | No PPC analysis features |
| On-page optimization | |
| All-in-one SEO solution |
Pricing
Plans start at $79/month billed yearly. You can try it out before you buy with a generous 30-day free trial.
Wrapping it up
That concludes our roundup of the top SpyFu alternatives!
As you can see, there are lots of different tools like SpyFu out there to choose from—and there’s a lot of overlap between them—so which one should you choose?
Well, it mostly comes down to your budget and the features you’re looking for. Here’s a recap of our top three suggestions:
- Semrush is the #1 best SpyFu alternative, all things considered. It’s an all-in-one SEO and PPC toolkit that can do pretty much everything SpyFu can and more.
- SE Ranking is the best alternative to SpyFu for individuals. It offers a good balance of features and affordability and is highly scalable.
- Serpstat is another awesome SpyFu alternative that you should check out if neither of the above is a good fit for you. It comes with 30+ tools for SEO and PPC.
We hope this post helped you find an SEO & PPC toolkit that’s a good fit for your business. While you’re here, you might also enjoy our roundup of SEO statistics. Good luck!
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