SpyFu vs Semrush: My Tool of Choice for 2025

To win and retain clients, digital marketing agencies need to deliver consistent growth.

That kind of growth requires data-fueled strategies and comprehensive research.

Here, SEO software can either accelerate or slow progress.

While tools like SpyFu and Semrush both promise to unlock winning SEO strategies, their differences can significantly impact your ability to drive results.

For agencies managing multiple accounts, choosing the right SEO platform isn't just about features and pricing – it's about finding a solution that produces clear ROI for clients.

• Semrush is a comprehensive SEO platform of 55+ tools, ranging from PPC to content planning and market research.
• SpyFu is more narrowly focused on SEO and is best known for its PPC tools.

For this review, I’ll draw on my 10+ years of experience in SEO and my use of dozens of digital marketing platforms.

SpyFu vs Semrush: My Quick Summary

First, here’s a quick overview of my key points.

• Country-based data: SpyFu data is limited to 19 countries vs Semrush’s 119 countries.
• Database size: Semrush is the winner here, with 23+ billion keywords and over 43 trillion backlinks.
• Visual data: Both software platforms offer visual data, but Semrush outpaces. SpyFu leans heavily on tables.
• Powerful filters: Again, Semrush is the clear winner, with each keyword labeled (and searchable) by intent and by 44 SERP features.
• Pricing simplicity: SpyFu is the winner, but Semrush’s complexity in pricing is due to the large number of options available.

Now, let’s compare the 2 platforms across several dimensions.

SpyFu vs Semrush for Domain Analysis

Domain analysis is often the starting point for assessing a client's (or competitor's) website.

Gleaning insights quickly, even while on a discovery call, is important.

Here, the Semrush Domain Overview tool impresses.

After entering the domain, users get a compact summary including:

• Domain Authority score
• Organic and paid search traffic numbers
• Backlinks and referring domains

You can toggle between desktop and mobile data.

And without scrolling down the Domain Overview page, you can choose to view data by country or globally.

• Country-specific data: In Semrush, you can view data from 119 different countries and regions, including Hong Kong. SpyFu offers only 19 countries.
• Global data: Worldwide data is available in Semrush, but not in SpyFu.
• Domain authority score: SpyFu offers no domain authority score on its overview page. (If you click on the SpyFu Backlinks tab, you will see a “Domain Strength” rating for each link.)

With Semrush’s global database, you can also compare Domain Overview metrics between up to 5 countries.

Scrolling down, you’ll find helpful tiles like:

• Traffic distribution by country
• Keywords by intent
• PPC and ads data
• Competitive positioning map

Here are some more differences:

• Search intent: SpyFu doesn’t list search intent next to keywords. So, intent is missing from its Top Keywords display on the Overview page.
• Desktop only: SpyFu offers no option to view mobile data on its Overview page.
• SERP Features: There are no SERP features listed in SpyFu’s domain overview.

In the next section, I’ll go into more detail on SERP features and why they’re important.

Best Features for Keyword Research

Keyword choice is the secret behind delivering results that outperform competitors.

Here again, Semrush impresses in 3 key ways:

• Database size
• Metrics
• Tools

Database size

As of fall of 2023, Semrush had 22+ billion keywords in its database.

Compare that to SpyFu’s 2+ billion.

Keyword Metrics

Both Semrush and SpyFu offer keyword difficulty scores.

However, Semrush also offers:

• Search intent classifications
• 44 SERP features

Having access to this data when sorting keywords lets you create powerful strategies.

Consider also: in 2025, to win in SEO, you must be optimizing for Google’s AI Overviews.

While Semrush provides AI Overview data, it’s completely missing from SpyFu.

To be clear, AI Overviews are a type of SERP feature – one of 44 that Semrush includes in its keyword research data.

SpyFu does offer some SERP feature data. You’ll find SERP features at the bottom of the left-hand column in their Keyword Overview tab.

The label “Universal search in SERP” is a bit unclear. You get 5 icons, which are grayed out if the keyword search you run isn’t appearing in those SERP features.

The green pin indicates a map result for the keyword “best hiking boots for women,” but it is unclear what this result represents.

Also confusing: All the icons are hyperlinked to a SERP Analysis page, which offers no further information on SERP features.

Search Intent

Each keyword in Semrush is displayed with a corresponding search intent:

• I for Informational
• N for Navigational
• C for Commercial
• T for Transactional

This is essential for marketers who need to do competitive analysis and find keywords that are profitable.

Without this data, capturing market share via SEO will be difficult.

While search intent is largely missing from SpyFu, a sole intent, Transactional, can be chosen from a dropdown menu in the Related Keywords tab.

Keyword Research Tools

Semrush offers multiple keyword research tools, including:

• Organic Research
• Keyword Overview
• Keyword Magic Tool
• Keyword Gap

I’ll cover the Keyword Gap tool in more detail below.

Tracking note: Semrush also provides a Position Tracking tool. SpyFu offers Rank Tracking.

SpyFu vs Semrush PPC Tools

Over the years, SpyFu has become known for its PPC tools. How do they compare to those in Semrush?

SpyFu PPC Research

In SpyFu, you’ll find PPC analysis tools in the PPC Research section.

There, you can choose from several tabs, including:

• PPC Overview
• Ads History
• Google Ads Advisor

In the PPC Overview section, enter a domain to start your analysis.

Scroll down, and you’ll find a list of recommended keywords to run Google Ads on.

You’ll also get a list of “Worst Performing Keywords,” which you can set to negative match.

Google Ads Templates: To speed up ad creation, SpyFu’s staff have created a set of templates you can use for ads.

Select your industry, and you’ll get a link to download the corresponding template.

This is a major difference with Semrush. Semrush uses AI to generate ads that you can edit and launch right from the Semrush dashboard.

With SpyFu, you need to download the Google Ads Editor and connect it to your Google Ads account. Then, you must follow several steps to begin using your templates.

As you can see in the video tutorial, there are multiple steps to follow.

You’ll edit your SpyFu ad template and launch your ad campaigns within a Google Ads account.

Semrush Advertising Dashboard

In Semrush, navigate to the Advertising Dashboard to compare features.

The Ads Launch Assistant provides a simple way to create, launch, and manage Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads from the Semrush dashboard.

To use the assistant, you’ll fill out a basic form.

The assistant uses AI to generate an ad for you, which you can edit.

Semrush will also recommend ways to maximize ROI, depending on your business goal.

To use the Semrush Ad Launch Assistant, you’ll need to pay $99/month on top of your monthly Semrush subscription.

However, that $99 buys you a frictionless workflow that speeds up ad management.

There’s quite a bit more in the Advertising dashboard.

For instance:

• The PLA Research tool provides data for Product Listing Ads. Here, you can discover your competitors’ pricing strategies and which keywords cause their ads to appear in Google Shopping results.
• The Advertising Research tool reveals your competitors’ PPC strategies and which keywords they’re bidding on. You’ll also see copies of their ads.

Keep in mind that CPC and Competitive Density data are also available in the Keyword Overview, Keyword Gap, and Keyword Magic Tool.

In fact, using the Keyword Gap, you can narrow your keyword search to results contained within a given competitive level range. (In Semrush, competitive level is termed “Competitive Density.”)

Best Competitor Analysis Tools: SpyFu or Semrush?

Crafting a winning SEO strategy requires smart analysis of competitors plus a plan to outperform them.

For this, I’ve found Semrush’s competitive research tools to be indispensable. In particular, I rely on the Keyword Gap tool to surface valuable insights.

Semrush Keyword Gap

Using the Semrush Keyword Gap, you can identify which keywords your competitors are ranking high for but which you’re ranking lower – or not at all – for.

The filters are where the magic is.

For instance, you can filter a keyword list by:

• Keyword difficulty
• Search intent
• Volume
• Keyword
• Position (e.g., 1-10)

This is how you can target keywords that are easy to rank for and signal buying intent.

You can also find and choose valuable keywords that your competitor isn’t ranking for. Or you can intentionally target those they’re ranking on page 1 of SERP for.

If you choose the latter tactic, you can begin siphoning off their prospects (and revenue) by ranking on the same page. This is one of my favorite techniques.

SpyFu Kombat

By contrast, SpyFu’s Kombat tab offers no SERP feature information.

Search intent labels are also missing, although you can choose “Transactional Intent Keywords” from a dropdown.

Using salomon.com as our main domain and using SpyFu Kombat’s Transactional keyword option, the results were disappointing.

Indeed, there was no clear way to display and sort, side-by-side, as you can in Semrush, results from 2 or more competing domains.

Semrush Backlink Gap vs SpyFu Backlink Kombat

You can quickly find high-quality backlinks that competitors have won and reach out to referring domains directly from the Semrush dashboard.

Simply add up to 4 competitor domains. The results are initially sorted, in descending order, by “AS” or Authority Score.

For instance, running a comparison between salomon.com and rei.com, we see the top domains linking to the latter include:

• BBC
• Canva
• Deloitte

As with the other Semrush tools, the filters make nearly any comparison possible.

SpyFu’s Backlink Kombat isn’t a tool, but rather a way of using their Backlinks page.

Namely, you can enter 2 domains to find backlinks that lead to both domains. Or choose to “exclude pages that already link to me.”

This is very limited.

SpyFu’s Backlink Builder does provide country-level sorting, but remember that it offers data for only 19 countries, compared to the 119 in Semrush.

In addition, SpyFu doesn’t provide anything similar to Semrush’s sorting filters.

Analyzing Market Trends in Semrush vs SpyFu

While Semrush and SpyFu have tools to analyze competitor keywords and backlinks, Semrush also offers a set of market research tools called .Trends.

Here are a few of the things you can do with .Trends.

Market Explorer: Investigate Competitors and Audiences

Enter a domain into the Market Explorer, and you’ll get a visual map of competitors.

Each competitor is plotted in 1 of 4 quadrants:

• Niche players
• Game changers
• Leaders
• Established players

Those familiar with Gartner’s Magic Quadrant will see some similarities, but the quadrant measurements differ.

Mouseover or click on a competitor dot to get traffic overview information.

Below, we clicked on hwesta.eu, a “Game Changer,” and see organic search traffic is up.

Using the Benchmarking Report in .Trends you can determine how this competitor is growing their traffic.

One2Target: Get Audience Insights

Next, you can use One2Target to get audience demographic information on competitors, spanning:

• Employment status
• Income brackets
• Household sizes

Remember, data in Semrush can be parsed by country.

Behavioral metrics include audience interests, sites they frequent, and social media platforms they prefer.

This information can guide, for example, which sites you run ads on.

EyeOn: Track Competitors

You can set up ongoing tracking of competitors with the .Trends EyeOn tool.

This will track competitor trends in publishing, ads, and social media.

Opting into .Trends will add $289 to your monthly Semrush bill.

Does that sound high? Early in my career, I worked for a company that paid over six figures per market research report. Their total annual bill ran into the millions.

At that time, Semrush had not yet launched. So, .Trends was not available.

Thank goodness, the cost of market research has significantly decreased over the years.

Backlink Analysis and Link Building: How Does SpyFu Compare with Semrush?

A good backlink strategy can boost rankings and increase the valuation of an online business.

Regarding the latter, I worked on a fascinating link building project that significantly boosted the valuation of a portfolio of websites. This led to their successful sale at the height of the pandemic.

The value of backlinks can, in many ways, be measured in dollars and ROI, whether that comes via sales of products and services, attracting investors, or sale of the web property.

How do SpyFu and Semrush compare for backlinks analysis?

Database size: Semrush's database has 43 trillion backlinks. I could not find a corresponding figure for the SpyFu database.

SpyFu offers a Backlinks tab in its SEO Research and Keyword Research sections.

These backlink metrics, set up as a table, include a Domain Strength metric, that corresponds loosely to Semrush’s Domain Authority score.

Sort results by clicking on a column like Page Monthly Organic Clicks.

You can filter by blog, affiliate links, .gov/.edu, and more.

If you choose the Backlinks tab in the Keyword Research section, you’ll get “the best backlinks to help you rank” on a given keyword.

However, it’s not clear how the initial results are sorted. They’re not listed in the order of any of the column metrics.

If link building is part of your work portfolio, you should select Semrush.

You’ll get a set of link building tools that simplify tasks and provide far more data than SpyFu.

For example, the Backlink Analytics tab provides an overview with helpful visuals.

Note that you can add up to 4 competitors for analysis.

Scroll down, and you’ll find tiles that sort backlinks by:

• Categories of referring domains (e.g., sports, travel and tourism)
• Top anchors
• Backlink types (e.g., text, image, etc.)
• TLD distribution
• Country of origin

Next, the Link Building Tool helps you find and select the best backlink prospects for a given domain.

The Backlink Audit tool surfaces technical issues that can occur when black hat link building tactics are used.

Semrush vs SpyFu: Site Audits

Site audits, like domain analyses, are foundational for assessing client needs.

As experienced marketers know, site audits cover technical SEO issues, such as crawlability and speed, that may impact rankings.

SpyFu doesn’t have a dedicated site audit tool, but Semrush does.

With Semrush, you’ll get 10 site audit metrics, including:

• Crawlability
• Errors and Warnings
• International SEO issues
• HTTPS
• Internal Linking
• Core Web Vitals

Marketers can get more details by using the Log File Analyzer.

Ease of Use

I like SpyFu’s clean interface. It beats Moz by a long shot. However, it relies heavily on table layouts and doesn’t offer as many data visuals as Semrush does.

Charts and graphs can help users absorb key data points quickly.

Additionally, some SEO essentials, like search intent labels for all keywords, are missing in SpyFu.

Semrush offers the most filters of any SEO software I know of. That makes it easier to get the data you need.

By contrast, SpyFu offers relatively few filters.

What Do Customers Say About Semrush and SpyFu?

I read a number of reviews of both SpyFu and Semrush. Below, I highlighted some trends I noticed.

SpyFu Pros

• Small teams and solopreneurs appreciate the low cost.
• Marketers praise the increases in traffic and conversions.
• Users see SpyFu as the “sweet spot” between tools that offers too little and those that are too complex.

SpyFu Cons

• Several reviews cited data accuracy issues, such as discrepancies with Google Analytics data or months-long lags in European data
• A UK user complained that support is only available during US business hours
• Other complaints include “not enough data” and the inability to get data from US states

Semrush Pros

• Users like the ability to save keyword lists and say the software is “easy to use.”
• The Keyword Magic Tool is a favorite, with users praising its usefulness.
• Semrush's data is described as “immense” and “the best engine for research.”

Semrush Cons

• Some users complained about the complexity of Semrush pricing and features that require additional fees.
• Others complained about the monthly subscription price.

Pricing Comparison

Comparing pricing between SpyFu and Semrush can be tricky because the platforms offer different features and charging methods.

Let’s start with subscriptions.

SpyFu vs Semrush Subscription Pricing

As listed below, both software platforms offer discounted subscription prices if you pay annually.

You’ll pay more for month-by-month billing.

Plan	Price	Key limitation
SpyFu Basic	$33/month	6 months of historical data
SpyFu Pro	$58/month	No content marketing toolkit.
Semrush Pro	$117.33/month	No historical data
Semrush Guru	$208.33	Limited to 15 projects
Semrush Business	$416.66/month	Limited to 40 projects

While a SpyFu subscription provides “unlimited searches and downloads,” the platform doesn’t come close to providing the variety and amount of data in Semrush.

For example, the Semrush Guru plan includes a content marketing toolkit.

Conversely, some tools in Semrush require additional fees. For instance, if you have a Pro subscription, .Trends costs an additional $289/month.

The key when using Semrush is to not choose every tool. Simply choose what you need.

Semrush vs SpyFu: My Recommendation

Given its ease of use and incredible array of data, my recommendation is to choose Semrush.

Semrush has arguably become the industry standard. Familiarity with it will help you when applying to agencies or corporations.

In my view, SpyFu is not a top competitor to Semrush. It simply doesn’t have the data or features to compete head-to-head.

Ahrefs comes closer; you can compare Ahrefs vs Semrush here.

When comparing SpyFu and Semrush, it’s helpful to keep in mind these key differences:

• Semrush is a comprehensive SEO and PPC platform offering 55+ marketing tools. This makes it a strong pick for agencies.
• SpyFu is focused on SEO and is known for its PPC tools. Not surprisingly, it attracts small teams and solopreneurs.
• Semrush includes far more data, including the ability to sort data by US states and city regions, plus 119 different countries.

Get started today with a Semrush free trial or SpyFu’s affordable $9 first-month offer.

With hands-on experience, you’ll quickly learn which tool is the best fit for you.