The SE Ranking vs Moz decision changed in 2026. Both tools now track how your brand shows up inside AI answers, not just Google’s blue links. That single shift breaks most older comparisons, because they compare two traditional SEO suites and ignore the feature that now decides the purchase.
This page is written for solo SEOs, small agencies, and in-house marketers choosing one platform. We compare both on AI search coverage, verified 2026 pricing, and the add-on costs both vendors keep off the pricing page. Most competing articles quote retired plan names and stale prices. We correct those below and show what each tool actually bills you.
Quick Answer
SE Ranking suits teams who need AI visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode in one place. Moz Pro suits teams who value Domain Authority, a gentle learning curve, and a lower entry price. SE Ranking covers more AI engines. Moz Pro is simpler to run.
SE Ranking vs Moz at a glance
Both platforms cover the same core jobs. The differences sit in AI coverage, pricing structure, and how much you pay after add-ons.
| Item | SE Ranking | Moz Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Agencies needing AI visibility plus white-label reports | In-house teams and SEO beginners |
| Starting price | $103.20/mo (Core, annual) or $129/mo monthly | $39/mo (Starter, annual) or $49/mo monthly |
| Free plan | No free plan. 14-day trial, no card needed | No free plan. 7-day trial, card required. Free tools available separately |
| AI engines tracked | AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity | AI Overviews by keyword, plus ChatGPT and Gemini dashboards |
| AI features start at | $71.20/mo add-on (200 prompts) on top of your plan | Medium plan, $143/mo annual, includes 100 prompts |
| Ease of use | Denser interface, more settings to learn | Cleaner, widely rated the easier of the two |
| Standout feature | Five-engine AI visibility tracking in one dashboard | Domain Authority, the industry’s default authority score |
| Keyword tracking | 2,000 daily keyword checks on Core | 50 (Starter) to 3,000 (Large) tracked keywords |
| White-label reports | Agency Pack add-on, $69/mo | Branded reports from Medium plan up |
| Platforms | Web app, API, Chrome extension | Web app, API, MozBar Chrome extension |
What each tool is and who builds it
Moz: The Company Behind Domain Authority
Moz launched in 2004 and was co-founded by Rand Fishkin. The company built its reputation on education and on one metric: Domain Authority. Moz Pro is the paid suite covering keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, and link analysis. Moz Local is a separate product for business listings and citations.
Moz is a real, established company, not a reseller or a rebranded white-label tool. That question gets asked often because so many SEO tools are thin wrappers around someone else’s data. Moz owns its link index and its own crawler.
SE Ranking: The All-in-one Challenger
SE Ranking has run for over a decade and positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to Semrush. The platform bundles rank tracking, keyword research, site audits, backlink checking, and reporting. Its newest module, the AI Search Toolkit, is the reason it now appears in AI visibility roundups alongside purpose-built AEO tools.
Winner: tie, because both are established vendors with their own data, and neither is a repackaged tool.
AI search visibility: the feature that decides this comparison
Traditional rank tracking is now table stakes. The real gap between these platforms is what they see inside AI-generated answers.
What SE Ranking tracks
SE Ranking’s AI Search Toolkit analyses answers generated by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews. The toolkit monitors AI answers tied to the prompts you track, and checks for both linked and unlinked references to your brand, products, or business names. You see whether your site is mentioned, whether the mention carries a link, and where you sit among the cited sources.
Two details matter for competitive work. SE Ranking lets you monitor how often competitor domains get cited, so you can watch visibility trends over time, and it stores cached copies of AI answers so you can see how models describe brands. It also flags queries where competitors appear in AI answers but your brand does not.
What Moz Pro tracks
Moz shipped AI Visibility in 2026. You enter your brand name, define which terms count as mentions, add up to three competitors, and the tool tracks how your brand appears in ChatGPT and Gemini responses. The dashboard shows where in the response you appear, not just whether you were named, and plots your share of mentions against competitors on a timeline. AI Visibility sits on the Moz Pro Medium plan and above.
Moz pairs this with two supporting tools. AI Research surfaces the conversational prompts people ask AI assistants about your category, alongside organic search volume data, and AI Content Brief turns that research into a structured brief.
Correction: Several comparison pages still state that Moz has no AI tracking at all. That was true through most of 2025. It is wrong for 2026. Moz Pro now ships AI Visibility dashboards. The accurate criticism is narrower: Moz covers fewer engines and gates the feature behind a mid-tier plan.
Winner: SE Ranking, because five-engine coverage and unlinked mention detection beat two-engine dashboards for anyone doing serious AI visibility work.
SE Ranking vs Moz Pro pricing, Including The Costs Nobody Lists
Headline prices mislead on both platforms. Here is what each actually charges once you add what most teams need.
Plan prices and limits
| Item | Moz Pro | SE Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Number of self-serve plans | 4 (Starter, Standard, Medium, Large) | 2 (Core, Growth) plus custom Enterprise |
| Entry plan (monthly) | Starter $49 | Core $129 |
| Entry plan (annual) | Starter $39 | Core $103.20 |
| Mid plan (monthly / annual) | Standard $99 / $79 | n/a |
| Upper plan (monthly / annual) | Medium $179 / $143 | Growth $279 / $223.20 |
| Top self-serve (monthly / annual) | Large $299 / $239 | Enterprise, quote only |
| Annual discount | About 20 percent | 20 percent flat |
| Sites or projects | 1, 3, 10, 25 by tier | 10 (Core), 30 (Growth) |
| Keyword tracking | 50, 300, 1,500, 3,000 per month | 2,000 per day (Core), 5,000 per day (Growth) |
| User seats | 1 on Starter and Standard, 3 on Medium, more on Large | 1 manager seat (Core), 3 (Growth) |
| Crawl or audit volume | 20,000 pages (Starter) up to 2m per week (Medium) | 250,000 audit pages per month (Core) |
| Real entry price if you want AI search tracking | $143 annual (Medium) | $103.20 plus $71.20 add-on |
The costs nobody lists
| Hidden cost | Moz Pro | SE Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| AI visibility or AI search | Dashboards and tracked prompts start on Medium, $179 / $143 annual. Includes 2 dashboards, 100 prompts. Large doubles it. Standard gets AI Overviews by keyword only. | Basic AI tracking is in every plan. The deeper AI Search module costs $71.20 annual ($89 monthly) with 200 prompts at entry level. |
| Extra AI capacity | $20 per extra dashboard, $50 per extra 100 prompts | Priced by tier inside the AI Search module |
| White label or agency features | Branded reports on Medium and Large only | Agency Pack $69 monthly, adds unlimited scheduled reports with AI summaries, Lead Generator, 30 client seats |
| Extra seats | No per seat add-on. You must jump a full tier, so a third seat can cost about $120 more per month | $16 per extra manager seat |
| Local search | Included in plan limits | 3 local locations included, extras from $18.40 each |
| Billing trap | Annual plans billed upfront and non refundable | Annual saves 20 percent but locks you in for 12 months |
| Typical real bill above sticker price | Up to about 4x the $39 headline once you need AI and seats | Core plus Agency Pack plus AI Search is $243.40, which is 136 percent above the $103.20 plan price |
The result surprises people. Moz Pro is cheaper for a small agency that needs AI tracking and branded reports. SE Ranking is cheaper per tracked prompt and tracks more engines. No competing page runs this calculation.
Winner: split Moz Pro wins on total agency cost. SE Ranking wins on cost per prompt and engine coverage.
Independent testing of AI visibility platforms found that SE Ranking’s AI Search Toolkit combines three components: an AIO Tracker for Google AI Overviews, an AI Mode Tracker for Google’s conversational surface, and a unified visibility tracker covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, all built into the wider SEO platform rather than sold as a separate product.
What is MozRank, and does Moz ranking still matter?
This question drives a lot of search traffic, so it deserves a straight answer.
MozRank vs Domain Authority
MozRank is Moz’s older link-popularity score, scored on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 10. MozTrust worked the same way but weighted links from trusted seed sites. Both are legacy metrics. Moz has moved its focus to Domain Authority and Page Authority.
Domain Authority scores 0 to 100 and predicts how likely a domain is to rank. Page Authority does the same for a single URL. Neither is a Google ranking factor. Google does not use them and has said so repeatedly. They are Moz’s own prediction models.
What counts as a good Domain Authority
There is no universal target. A DA of 30 is strong in a niche local market and weak in national finance. The useful comparison is against the sites ranking for your target keywords, not against an absolute number. Moz rebuilt the metric as DA 2.0, which changed most sites’ scores and made historical comparisons unreliable.
Does SE Ranking have an equivalent?
SE Ranking reports Domain Trust and Page Trust scores from its own backlink index. These behave similarly to DA and PA. They carry less industry recognition, which matters if you sell link placements or report to clients who already know Moz metrics.
Winner: Moz Pro, because Domain Authority is the metric clients, prospects, and link sellers already understand.
Rank Tracking And Keyword Research Compared
Both tools do the core job. The differences show up in refresh rate, filtering, and how much you get for the price.
Keyword rank tracking
SE Ranking runs daily keyword checks as standard, with 2,000 included on Core. The tracker handles multiple search engines, devices, and locations, including tracking one keyword across several states or cities. Filters let you show only rankings that changed, which saves time on large projects.
Moz Pro tracks keywords on a weekly default cycle. Volumes are lower at comparable prices: 300 keywords on Standard against SE Ranking’s 2,000 daily checks on Core. Moz’s rank tracker is simpler to read but less configurable.
Keyword limits work differently. SE Ranking counts keywords multiplied by search engines. Tracking 500 keywords across Google desktop and Google mobile consumes 1,000 checks, not 500. Budget for this before committing to a plan tier. Moz counts tracked keywords directly.
Keyword research
Moz Keyword Explorer returns keyword suggestions, monthly volume ranges, and a Keyword Difficulty score from 0 to 100. Its Priority score blends volume, difficulty, and organic click-through rate into a single number that helps you shortlist targets quickly. That is a genuine strength for beginners.
SE Ranking returns a larger keyword database with its own difficulty scoring, plus a keyword grouper that clusters terms into topic sets automatically. Agencies building content plans across many pages get more from the grouper than from single-keyword lookups.
Winner: SE Ranking, because daily updates and higher keyword volumes deliver more tracking capacity per dollar.
How accurate is the data in each tool?
Competitors avoid this topic because the honest answer is uncomfortable. Both tools estimate. Neither reports ground truth.
What the numbers actually mean
Search volume figures in both platforms are modelled estimates, usually derived from clickstream data and Google Ads ranges. Expect directional accuracy, not precision. If SE Ranking says 1,900 and Moz says 1,200 for the same keyword, both are telling you the term has moderate demand. Neither is quoting a measured count.
Keyword difficulty scores are predictions. Moz Keyword Difficulty and SE Ranking’s difficulty score use different models, so they disagree regularly on the same term. Use them to rank options against each other inside one tool. Do not compare a Moz difficulty score to an SE Ranking one.
Rank position accuracy
Position data is more reliable than volume data in both tools, because it is measured rather than modelled. Localisation, personalisation, and SERP feature changes still introduce noise. A ranking that moves one or two positions day to day is usually noise, not a real change.
How long before rankings show progress
Neither tool changes how fast you rank. Both need three to six months of consistent work before trend lines mean anything for a new site. Treat the first month of data as a baseline, not a verdict.
Winner: tie, because both use estimation models with similar accuracy limits, and neither vendor claims otherwise.
Site Audits, Backlink Data, And Local SEO
Technical site audits
SE Ranking’s website audit checks over 100 parameters and groups issues by severity with fix instructions. Crawl limits scale with your plan. The audit is the stronger of the two for agencies fixing client sites, because the reports export cleanly for handover to developers.
Moz’s Site Crawl is easier to read and better for spotting problems fast. Crawl budgets are generous at higher tiers, with Medium covering two million pages weekly and Large covering five million. Depth of diagnosis is shallower than SE Ranking’s. For standalone technical audits, see sitebulb and screaming frog compared.
Backlink analysis
Moz Link Explorer runs on Moz’s own link index and reports DA, PA, spam score, and linking domains. Spam Score is useful for quick toxicity checks before a link buy. The index is smaller than Ahrefs or Semrush or spyfu, so expect gaps.
SE Ranking’s backlink checker reports similar data from its own index, with a backlink monitoring feature that alerts you when links are lost. That monitoring feature is genuinely useful for anyone running link campaigns.
Local SEO and citations
Moz Local is a separate paid product that pushes business listings to directories and aggregators. It is priced per physical location and is the better option for multi-location businesses that need citation distribution.
SE Ranking includes three local locations in every plan, with extras from $18.40 each on annual billing. Local ranking tracking is built in rather than sold separately. For a single-location business, SE Ranking’s included allowance costs nothing extra.
Pros and cons of both platforms
Honest trade-offs on each side.
- Wider coverage: five AI engines tracked in one dashboard.
- Daily updates: rankings refresh every day as standard.
- Higher limits: 2,000 daily keyword checks on the entry plan.
- Better audits: deeper technical diagnosis with clean exports.
- Free trial: 14 days with no credit card required.
- Add-on stacking: AI and agency features cost extra on top.
- Higher entry: $103.20 minimum against Moz’s $39.
- Keyword maths: limits multiply by search engine tracked.
- Steeper learning: more settings and denser navigation.
- Weaker recognition: Domain Trust carries less industry weight.
- Lower entry: Starter begins at $39 on annual billing.
- Trusted metric: Domain Authority is the industry default.
- Easier interface: consistently rated the simpler platform.
- Strong education: free guides and courses beat every rival.
- Cheap API: API access costs far less than competitors charge.
- Gated AI: full AI dashboards start at the $143 Medium tier.
- Fewer engines: AI tracking covers ChatGPT and Gemini only.
- Low limits: Starter tracks just 50 keywords on one site.
- Slower data: weekly refresh cycles on most plans.
- Card required: the 7-day trial needs payment details upfront.
Who should choose each tool
- You need AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI surfaces.
- You manage several client sites and need daily ranking data.
- You run large keyword sets and hit Moz’s limits fast.
- You want to test properly before paying, with no card upfront.
- Technical audit depth matters more than interface polish.
- Clients or prospects already ask for Domain Authority scores.
- You are new to SEO and want the shortest learning curve.
- Your budget starts under $50 a month.
- You need citation distribution through Moz Local.
- You want cheap API access for custom reporting.
- AI visibility is your only requirement. A dedicated AEO tool costs less and tracks more engines than either suite’s add-on.
- You need the deepest backlink index available. Ahrefs and Semrush both index more links than either platform here.
- You track fewer than 50 keywords on one site. Google Search Console is free and sufficient at that scale.
Switching between them, or running both
Moving platforms is easier than most buyers expect, with one catch. SE Ranking supports built-in migration options for importing projects and keyword ranking history, and offers free assisted migration on annual subscriptions. Monthly-plan users import through self-serve tools with support available if something breaks. That removes most of the friction when leaving Moz.
The catch runs the other way. Historical ranking data is the thing you lose. Both tools export current data to CSV, but ranking history rebuilt from an import is rarely complete. Export everything before you cancel, because access ends when billing does.
Running both makes sense in one situation: you need Domain Authority for client reporting and multi-engine AI tracking for strategy. Moz Pro Starter at $39 plus SE Ranking Core with the AI module costs about $213 monthly. That is defensible for an agency, wasteful for a solo site owner.
Billing detail worth checking: SE Ranking bills annual plans upfront and payments are non-refundable except where the service was not delivered as promised. Moz offers a 30-day money-back window on new subscriptions. If you are unsure, Moz carries less commitment risk.
Imperial AI Tools verdict
The SE Ranking vs Moz choice comes down to one question: how much does AI search visibility matter to you right now? SE Ranking is the stronger buy if the answer is “a lot”. Five-engine coverage, unlinked mention detection, and competitor citation gaps give you a real picture of AI answers. Daily rank updates and higher keyword limits make it the better agency platform.
Moz Pro is the stronger buy if you value simplicity and recognition. Domain Authority remains the metric people quote in pitches and link negotiations. The interface is easier, the education is better, and a small agency needing AI tracking plus branded reports pays less overall. Neither tool is a mistake. Pick SE Ranking for depth and coverage. Pick Moz Pro for clarity and cost control.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Moz launched in 2004, was co-founded by Rand Fishkin, and operates its own web crawler and link index. It is not a reseller or a white-label wrapper. The company is best known for creating the Domain Authority metric that the SEO industry still uses.
Start with your keyword count and AI needs. Under 300 keywords with no AI tracking, Moz Pro Standard fits. Over 1,000 keywords or multi-engine AI visibility, SE Ranking fits. Trial both, because interface preference decides more than feature lists do.
Buy the tool if someone on your team will use it weekly. Hire a service if nobody has time to act on the data. A $143 monthly subscription nobody opens costs more than nothing, because it delays the decision to get real help.
Domain Authority still works as a comparative metric between sites. It was never a Google ranking factor and Google does not use it. Treat it as Moz’s prediction model, useful for judging link opportunities, not as a measurement of how Google sees your site.
Moz tracks around 20 SERP feature types in its rank tracker, covering featured snippets, local packs, image packs, video results, People Also Ask, shopping results, and AI Overviews by keyword. Exact counts change as Google adds and retires features.
