The survival of online businesses depends on many factors, SEO quality is, by far, the most crucial one here. No doubt about it.

If you’re facing problem deciding between SEMrush and SpyFu, you are in the right place.

If you’ve landed here, you’re already know that SEMrush and SpyFu are two of the most popular SEO tools on the market. 

SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit with competitive intelligence capabilities.While, SpyFu focuses purely on competitor analysis.

So to maintain a level playing field for this comparison, I’ll be evaluating SEMrush and SpyFu solely on features linked with competitor research.

I’ll be taking the following four parameters into account:

• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• Link Review
• Usability and accessibility
• Overall features
• Pricing

Now without further delay, let’s compare SEMrush and SpyFu, and find out which SEO tool is the best.

SEMrush and SpyFu Overview

SEMrush’s predecessor, SEOquake company, was first launched by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov as an SEO browser extension in 2007 before being rebranded as SEMrush in 2008. 

It has since gone on to become one of the leading cloud-based SEO services on the market with over 5 million users across the world.

The SEMrush platform features a comprehensive set of tools for site audit, keyword research, position tracking, SEO and PPC competitor analysis, on page SEO checker, backlink analytics, and much more.

SEMrush currently manages close to 20 billion keywords and 789 million domains in 142 geo databases.

SpyFu was founded by Mike Roberts in 2006 to help businesses craft their SEO and PPC strategies. Mike’s business philosophy is to turn your rivals into your best advisors and that philosophy is at the core of SpyFu.

As the name suggests, SpyFu lets you spy on your competitors’ online strategies and analytics. You can use it to gather insights on your organic as well as paid competitors.

SpyFu’s data is collected from Google search results in the US and UK. The tool won’t show you full results outside of these countries, which just might be SpyFu’s biggest drawback.

With that introduction of the two tools out of the way, it’s now time to put these tools to the test.

Competitor Analysis

It’s no secret that the business world is often a race between enterprises with identical solutions targeting the same prospect base.

Now, of course, I’m all about fair play when it comes to contests. And to some extent, this is regulated by commercial legislation.

But get this. Search engine ranking is an open front. No rules apply here. Ok, maybe on branding. But everything else is open to dirty tricks. Including using your competitor’s brand as keywords to rank better.

How’s that? Well, the cool thing is that SpyFu and SEMrush can be war engines with considerably lethal ammunition for this.

1) Spyfu

Notice the word “Spy”? Certainly a James Bond of sorts we have here. That’s why I was super excited to try out its provisions for combating competitors.

SpyFu doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to competition analysis. It goes for the jugular by granting access to the valuable info your competitors would do anything to protect.

By now, you’re aware that for starters, you’ll gain insight into your competitors’ keywords. This should help you establish the keyword strategy that your site should be emulating.

Sounds juicy. But that barely scratches the surface here. SpyFu’s aggressiveness extends past this to give you all the details about your competitors’ respective SEO strategies.

I’m talking about things like the organic growth of your selected keywords against other sites, competitors bidding on your PPC AdWords, backlinks that are boosting other sites’ rankings, overall competitors’ ad performances, marketing campaigns by other domains plus their corresponding impact, and more.

And you don’t even have to keep refreshing the reports to stay up-to-date. SpyFu essentially handles that by sending notifications when your competitors change their strategies.

Come to think of it, this is quite a lot of data to follow up on. That’s why SpyFu uses lists, graphs, and charts to simplify everything for quick interpretation.

2) SEMrush

SEMrush will also give your competition a headache. It doesn’t only go into the specifics of where your competitors are succeeding. It also delves into areas that they are failing, to help you identify spots that you can launch a counter strategy from.

And speaking of which, SEMrush doesn’t let you go alone. It gives you valuable tips on how to beat your competitors on their strengths and weaknesses.

As we’ve seen with SpyFu, the analysis doesn’t only apply to keywords. That’s just a single component of the whole equation. SEMrush also covers the whole SEO strategy, identifying all the areas of interest.

In essence, you’ll get historical data to establish any algorithmic ranking patterns and possible ranking penalties in the past, the ability to see other sites that share the same position with yours relative to your main competitors, insights on new opportunities, reports on the overall performance of your competitors’ organic and paid search campaigns, review several domains side by side to determine comparative power, plus view updates on developing competitors.

Verdict

As we’ve seen, SpyFu and SEMrush are very thorough in competition analysis. It even gives you chills when you think that your competitors might be leveraging them against your site.

They both assess keywords and the corresponding SEO strategy, including paid search campaigns. The subsequent reports help you identify ROI, strengths and weaknesses, plus possible opportunities you can take advantage of.

That said, SEMrush generates slightly more detailed information than SpyFu. It digs deeper into some elements to identify certain aspects that might have been left out by SpyFu.

Take the brief report on top organic competitor keywords, for instance. While SpyFu leads at the list level, SEMrush goes ahead to identify the precise number of common keywords shared with organic competitors.

Keyword Research

Although, countless Google algorithm updates over the years, the importance of keyword research has remained constant.

While outdated keyword research practices get penalized by Google, a unique approach to keyword research is often rewarded with higher Google rankings.

As a result, keyword research is at the core of any SEO or PPC campaign. It helps you get a deeper understanding of your target audience and what they are searching for online.

Both SEMrush and SpyFu uncover a ton of keyword data to help you in your quest to craft the kind of content that satisfies both users and search engines.

1) Spyfu

SpyFu means business when it comes to keyword research. That’s something you’ll notice as soon as you log into the system. 

And the best thing overall is the fact that everything is broken down into the finer details that matter.

To perform competitor-based keyword research on SpyFu, simply type in your competitor’s domain in the search box, and once you get the overview report, navigate to the “Top Keywords” section of the report and click on “View all organic keywords” at the bottom of the table.

Play with the filters on top of the table to get the most relevant competitive keyword data for your campaign.

To get started with traditional keyword research on SpyFu, visit the “Keyword Research” tab and enter your seed keyword(s).

You’ll get a quick summary of all major keyword metrics (monthly volume, estimated clicks, etc.) and a list of similar keywords and question-based keywords.

Below this data, you’ll find a wealth of PPC keyword data in the “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” and “Most Successful Advertisers and Their Best Ads” sections.

2) SEMrush

SEMrush is an Amazon forest in itself. Basically, everything bundled up in one solution. So, it’s understandable if it takes you longer than SpyFu to find your footing in keyword research.

And don’t be misled by the Keyword Analytics tab. It’s not the only element dealing with keywords here. The Organic Research tab under Domain Analytics is also incredibly useful.

And it does exactly what you probably assume by now. It will show you the specific keywords that a website is ranking for.

Well, of course, the list might be long and quite confusing. That’s why SEMrush also comes with a filtering tool to help you pick out specific sets of keywords that match your desired parameters.

You can also track how various keywords have affected a site’s overall rankings through the Position Changes tab. And that includes information on keywords that might have been dropped or lost.

Now, let’s move on to the Keyword Analytics tab. This is where you come if you’re unsure about the keywords to capitalize on for the best possible ranking.

For every word typed, the system scans through search engines to show you other related suggestions that rank well. That’s how you establish both primary and secondary keywords.

Fairly good, but not as impressive as the new Keyword Magic Tool by SEMrush. This is the mother of brainstorming keywords. 

Thanks to its extensive filters and powerful metrics, you can accurately determine the precise keywords that would actually boost your site’s organic traffic.

Verdict

It’s quite obvious that both SEMrush and SpyFu are extremely handy in Keyword research. And very similar too. In fact, it almost feels like their developers simply copy pasted each other’s keyword research provisions, and then maybe edited the names for branding purposes.

They both provide SEO overview, domain versus domain keyword assessment, keyword tracking, keyword rank history, plus powerful metrics for keyword suggestions. So, in a nutshell, it’s a tie here.

Link Review

Apart from keywords embedded in content, link building is another element that is, without doubt, universally critical to SEO. 

According to Andrey Lipattsev, Google’s Search Quality Senior Strategist, links and content are two of the most crucial determinants of a site’s ranking on Google.

And that’s why 41% of large corporations are prioritizing on link building, although they consider it as the most difficult SEO tactic.

So, to make everything much simpler, SEMrush and SpyFu also come with a myriad of features to support link review.

1) Spyfu

SpyFu has quite a number of helpful provisions for assessing not just your links, but also your competitors’ overall link framework. In the end, it adds up to a comprehensive report of their entire SEO structure.

First off, you’ll be able to view a solid list of the external links from any site. Plus, of course, a corresponding list of inbound links from other domains to that specific site. And to make the whole picture clearer, SpyFu further breaks this down into types of inbound links leading to the site.

To top it off, you’ll gain an insight into social statistics, traffic estimates, and overall strength of each link. And to drill down to the most important links, you can use the filtering tool to sort through the mess.

2) SEMrush

SEMrush is also fairly decent in link review. It crawls through websites to identify incoming links, then generates information on their performance against competitors, all link sources, plus overall link strength.

Through this tool, you’ll get to know the specific IP addresses of your site’s backlinks, content marketing types that generate the backlinks, the sources of your competitors’ strong backlinks, plus if your backlinks are actually genuine or spam.

Verdict

For tools that principally market themselves as keyword research solutions, their link review features are quite remarkable, to say the least. They both generate detailed reports on inbound and outbound links for any website.

However, a closer scrutiny reveals that SpyFu’s backlink reports are more detailed than SEMrush’s. In the overview, for instance, SEMrush generates backlinks with the link URL and anchor text. SpyFu, on the other hand, goes ahead to show page organic clicks, domain organic clicks, and the corresponding keywords.

Usability and Accessibility

Effective UI plays a huge role in compelling users to interact with a tool on a regular basis. 

It’s one of the reasons why some users may prefer WhatsApp over Facebook Messenger, or why some users may have Headspace as their go-to meditation app versus other meditation apps like Calm and Buddhify.

Similarly, some users may prefer one SEO tool over the other because of how comfortable they are with their UI. I’m not saying UI is the only factor, but it’s certainly a key factor in getting us hooked to spend more time with the tool.

In terms of UI, both SEMrush and SpyFu have their strengths and weaknesses. Both tools have gone through several redesigns over the years, but they have maintained the same color palette.

I personally find SEMrush’s UI to be better structured and easier to use, but that may just be because I’ve been using it on a daily basis since early-2015.

If you’re a novice SEO user, you may find yourself getting a bit overwhelmed with the features and find it difficult to navigate to different areas within the tool.

On the other hand, I’ve always found SpyFu’s interface to be simple, but dull and outdated. The simplicity of the interface certainly makes it easier to use and more beginner-friendly than some of the other SEO tools on the market. 

But once you’ve spent some time playing with the different features and settings, you can’t help but think you’re using a product that’s stuck in the past.

Sections such as “AdWords Advisor” and “AdWords Templates” simply reinforce the feeling that you’re using a product that’s not been updated in quite a while (Google retired the AdWords brand in 2018.). Clearly Semrush is leading here.

Overall Features

1) Spyfu

• API access
• Custom branded reports
• Backlinks profile exports
• Introduce your own keywords
• Adwords advisor reports
• In-depth SEO reports
• Sales leads filtering
• Export advanced contact information
• More than nine years of Adwords history
• More than nine years of organic ranking history
• Unlimited backlink results
• Data exports
• Paid keywords analysis
• Organic keywords analysis
• Backlink search assessment
• Keyword research
• Domain research

2) SEMrush

• Review competitor ranking
• In-depth insights into ad campaigns
• Keyword metrics tracking
• Compare several websites
• Pie chart and line graph display
• SEO metrics assessment
• Review competitor ad texts
• Review competitor organic strategy
• Track site ranking
• Keyword research
• Backlink tracking
• AdSense analysis
• Advertising research
• Organic research
• Crawl audit tool
• Comparison of domains by keywords
• Position tracking
• Domain-specific keyword ranking

Pricing

1) Spyfu

The bad news here is that SpyFu, unfortunately, does not offer a free trial. That makes it technically impossible to take it for a test drive. You’ll have to pay to use it.

But, here’s the good news. The service comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. Therefore, even when you’re forced to pay to try it out, you can still request for a refund if its provisions turn out to be underwhelming.

That said, there are three principal plans- Basic, Professional, and Team.

Basic- Costs $33 per month if you pay yearly, or $39 per month if you choose to proceed with the month-to-month option. Some of its provisions include:

• 10 AdWords Advisor PPC report
• 10 small domain SEO report
• 10,0000 top lists results
• 5,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings
• 250 sales leads and domain contacts
• Unlimited search results
• Unlimited domain overview PDFs
• Unlimited data exports

Professional- Costs $58 per month if you pay yearly, or $39 for the first month then $78 per month thereafter if you choose to proceed with the month-to-month option. Some of its provisions include:

• All Basic features
• White labeling
• 30 AdWords Advisor PPC report
• 10 medium domain SEO report
• 30 small domain SEO report
• 50,000 top lists results
• Custom branded reporting
• 10,000 API rows returned
• 15,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings
• 500 sales leads and domain contacts

Team- Costs $199 per month if you pay yearly, or $299 per month if you choose to proceed with the month-to-month option. Some of its provisions include:

• All Professional features
• White labeling
• Unlimited AdWords Advisor PPC report
• 10 large domain SEO report
• 30 medium domain SEO report
• Unlimited small domain SEO report
• 5 user accounts
• 75,000 top lists results
• 10,000 API rows returned
• 40,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings
• 2000 sales leads and domain contacts

2) SEMrush

Thankfully, SEMrush is a bit open to the whole free-trial concept. But it’s limited to 14 days, and only applies to SEMrush Pro. However, if you’re lucky, you might stumble upon an offer from its affiliate partners, which essentially extends the trial period to 30 days.

If you’re satisfied with the features, extended use comes in 4 different packages.

Pro Plan– Built for startups and freelancers with a limited budget. It costs $99.95 per month, or $999.40 if you prefer paying annually to save $200. In addition to SEMrush standard features, you’ll be provided with:

• 5 scheduled PDF reports
• Crawling for up to 100,000 web pages
• Tracking for up to 500 keywords
• 5 projects
• 3,000 reports per day
• 10,000 results per report

Guru Plan– Ideal for developing marketing firms plus small and medium enterprises. It costs $199.95 per month, or $1999.40 if you prefer paying annually to save $400. In addition to SEMrush standard features, you’ll get:

• Historical data
• Branded PDF reports
• 20 scheduled PDF reports
• Crawling for up to 300,000 web pages
• Tracking for up to 1500 keywords
• 50 projects
• 5,000 reports per day
• 30,000 results per report

Business Plan– Optimized for enterprises with a large web presence, e-commerce projects, and large agencies. It costs $399.95 per month, or $3999.40 if you prefer paying annually to save $800. In addition to SEMrush standard features, you’ll get:

• Product listing ads
• Historical data
• Branded PDF reports
• 50 scheduled PDF reports
• Crawling for up to 1,000,000 web pages
• Tracking for up to 5,000 keywords
• 200 projects
• 10,000 reports per day
• 50,000 results per report

Enterprise Plan– on the other hand, is a custom package for heavy users with extensive needs. Instead of quoting a fixed price, the team at SEMrush is willing to negotiating with prospective users. In addition to SEMrush standard features, you’ll get:

• Add-on features upon request
• Unlimited crawling of large websites
• On-site training
• Custom keyword databases
• Custom limits

Verdict

Although it only spans two weeks, you’ve got to appreciate the free trial offer by SEMrush. SpyFu might argue that their money-back guarantee is risk-free, but the simple truth is that it can never match up to SEMrush’s free trial.

However, all things considered, SpyFu beats SEMrush in the price wars. It’s cheaper and perfectly affordable for small and medium scale users. 

Large-scale users, on the other hand, are better off with SEMrush’s Enterprise plan, which can comfortably accommodate custom needs at a negotiated price.

Conclusion

At the start of the post, I made a point about how this comparison is a not a battle among equals. SEMrush is an all-purpose SEO tool while SpyFu is more focused towards competitor analysis.

But based on my analysis, even from a competitive intelligence perspective, SEMrush is a far superior tool. 

As highlighted above, your competitive analysis would be incomplete without tracking your competition’s performance on social media. And that’s something SpyFu currently lacks.

The other major drawback with SpyFu is that it has just two geo databases (US and UK), as compared to SEMrush’s 142 geo databases.

If you’d like to stave off your local competition and rank higher in the local SERPs, you’re better off going with SEMrush.

That said, if you’re on a shoestring budget, but still need to use a decent competitive intelligence tool for your business or blog, then SpyFu is perhaps your best bet. 

Otherwise, SpyFu and SEMrush both equally measure up when it comes to SEO overview, domain keyword assessment, keyword tracking, keyword suggestions and rank history.