Semrush and SpyFu are both competitor analysis tools, but they start from opposite ends. Semrush is a suite that covers SEO, Google Ads, content and visibility in AI assistants' answers, and since 28 April 2026 it has belonged to Adobe (Adobe press release). SpyFu started in 2005 as GoogSpy, built to show which keywords competitors buy on Google Ads (Wikipedia). SpyFu's entry plan costs $39 a month, Semrush's $139.
On 10 October 2026 we read the first page of Google UK for "semrush vs spyfu". Under an AI Overview there were eight organic results: a four-year-old Reddit thread, two SpyFu pages (its blog comparison and its homepage), DemandSage, Style Factory, Exploding Topics, Click Intelligence and a 2023 piece by Robbie Richards, plus a carousel of three videos, two of them from SpyFu's own YouTube channel. Click Intelligence is the only UK agency in the list, and its page quotes no prices. None of them asks how many years of British data each tool actually holds.
That's the question that changes the comparison. SpyFu sells its history as its main strength, "18+ years" of data. For the UK the claim broadly holds: SpyFu added British data in June 2008, while Semrush's UK history starts in January 2012. On Google UK the longer archive is SpyFu's, and SpyFu is also the cheaper tool for tracking lots of keywords and for rebuilding the Google Ads campaigns competitors are running today. Semrush keeps the lead on organic SEO, technical audits, backlinks and AI visibility.
Semrush vs SpyFu: the numbers side by side
These are the figures the two vendors publish on their own pages, checked on 10 October 2026. They're marketing numbers that can't be verified from outside. Where a vendor doesn't publish a figure we say so, rather than filling the gap with third-party estimates.
| Semrush | SpyFu | |
|---|---|---|
| Started as | an SEO suite, in 2008 | a Google Ads archive (GoogSpy, 2005) |
| Ownership | Adobe, since 28 April 2026 | company based in Scottsdale, Arizona |
| Keywords in the database | 28.8 billion across 142 geographic databases | 13.1 billion "with advanced metrics" |
| Keywords in the UK | 1.3 billion (April 2022 figure) | not published |
| Countries covered | 142 geographic databases | 32 in the help centre, 38 on the homepage |
| UK data available since | January 2012 | June 2008 |
| Google Ads ads | over 1 billion, history from 2012 | "20x" the paid keywords of competitors |
| Domains analysed | 808 million | 152 million websites |
| Backlinks | 43 trillion | not stated on the pages we checked |
| Entry price | $139 (SEO plan) | $39 (Basic) |
| Tracked keywords on the base plan | 500, updated daily | 5,000, updated weekly |
For a UK site the row that matters most is the sixth. The others measure the world; that one measures your market. US reviews skip it because for them it isn't an issue, and for the UK it turns out to favour SpyFu. Our comparison of Ahrefs and SpyFu reached the same point by a different route.
UK competitors' history: SpyFu since 2008, Semrush since 2012
History is the argument SpyFu leads with. The homepage talks about "18+ years" of data, and Style Factory, a London-based reviewer, credits SpyFu with 20 years of Google Ads history against 14 for Semrush. For the US that's the full story. For the UK the dates are only slightly different.
On 24 June 2008 Search Engine Watch reported that SpyFu had extended its service to the UK, covering organic and paid competitors, keywords, cost per click and rankings. Its creator, Michael J. Roberts, said: "We found that UK data was the most-requested feature in the SpyFu.com forums." Other markets came much later: Ireland and Italy were added on 1 June 2022, according to SpyFu's release notes, and Ad History, the ad archive, was extended to every supported country on 7 May 2025, with "8x more keywords" than before.
Semrush puts the UK among its nine core databases, along with the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Brazil. For these nine, according to the Semrush knowledge base, monthly history goes back to January 2012, including paid keyword history in Advertising Research.
| Semrush | SpyFu | |
|---|---|---|
| UK data since | January 2012 | June 2008 |
| UK history available in October 2026 | about 14 years and 9 months | about 18 years and 4 months |
| UK ad history | since 2012, in Advertising Research | on UK data collected since 2008; a bug that returned US data in UK Ad History was fixed in March 2022 |
| History on the base plan | not included (SEO plan) | 6 months (Basic) |
| Cheapest plan with full history | Guru $249.95 or Pro+ $299 | Professional $79 (or Pro + AI $119), "10+ years" on the price list |
Price makes the gap wider still. On Semrush, history isn't included in the $139 SEO plan: you need at least Guru ($249.95) on the classic price list or Pro+ ($299) in Semrush One. On SpyFu, Professional at $79 is enough. If you need to look back over a UK competitor's history, SpyFu costs less and, on paper, goes back four years further. Two caveats. SpyFu's price list only promises "10+ years" on Professional, so check that the 2008-2011 data is actually there before you rely on it. And the release notes record UK bugs: in October 2021 "UK keywords were return[ing] US Estimated Clicks", in March 2022 UK Ad History returned US data.
If you also work outside the UK, the picture can flip. An example from our own projects, in Italy. For the Macropix case we used Semrush to compare organic positions in 2020 with those in 2025: on "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor) the site moved from position 88 to 2, and in July 2026 it had a 25.55% share of voice on the LED wall cluster, against 18.08% for Amazon. It's all in our case study on SEO for manufacturers. With SpyFu, which has had Italian data only since June 2022, the 2020 starting point wouldn't have existed.
What Semrush and SpyFu cost in pounds
Both publish their prices in US dollars. The sterling figures below use the Bank of England daily spot rate for 8 October 2026, £1 = $1.3226. Prices exclude VAT: Semrush adds UK VAT at 20% (Semrush VAT FAQ), while SpyFu's pricing page says nothing about tax. A UK blog, Lucky Webs, reported on 2 October 2026 that Semrush now shows UK visitors separate list prices in pounds (£113 a month for the SEO plan); we couldn't check that from Semrush's own pages, so look at the currency at checkout.
SpyFu currently has two price lists online, with different plan names and prices. The pricing page shows Basic and Professional; the purchase page shows Basic, Pro + AI and Team/Agency. Style Factory's comparison quotes the second. Before paying, check which one you're offered at checkout.
| SpyFu plan | Monthly | In pounds | Annual (per month) | Tracked keywords | History | Price list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39 | £29.49 | $33 | 5,000 a week | 6 months | pricing |
| Professional | $79 | £59.73 | $58 | 15,000 a week | 10+ years | pricing |
| Basic | $39 | £29.49 | $29 | 5,000 a week | not included | purchase page |
| Pro + AI | $119 ($59 the first month) | £89.97 | $89 | 15,000 a week | 10+ years | purchase page |
| Team/Agency (5 users) | $249 | £188.27 | $187 | 50,000 a week | 10+ years | purchase page |
| Semrush plan | Monthly | In pounds | Annual (per month) | Tracked keywords | AI prompts per day | History from 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | $139 | £105.10 | $117.33 | 500 | - | no |
| Starter (Semrush One) | $199 | £150.46 | $165.17 | 500 | 50 | no |
| Pro+ (Semrush One) | $299 | £226.07 | $248.17 | 1,500 | 100 | yes |
| Advanced (Semrush One) | $549 | £415.09 | $455.67 | 5,000 | 200 | yes |
| Guru (classic price list) | $249.95 | £188.98 | - | 1,500 | - | yes |
At entry level the gap is 3.6 times, $139 against $39. Over a year, on annual billing, Semrush's SEO plan costs $1,407.96 (about £1,065) and SpyFu Basic $396 (about £299), or $348 on the second price list. Extra users are priced differently too: on SpyFu $15 a month on Basic and $30 on Professional, on Semrush from $45 a month, rising with the plan tier (Semrush knowledge base). The full Semrush sum, with toolkits sold separately and the refund rules, is in our guide to Semrush pricing.
Rank tracking: ten times the keywords, but once a week
SpyFu's base plan tracks 5,000 keywords, Semrush's 500. Divided by price, a tracked keyword costs $0.0078 a month on SpyFu and $0.278 on Semrush: 36 times as much. That's the number US comparisons put up front.
One piece is missing: frequency. Semrush updates Position Tracking every day, "generally within 24-48 hours" (Semrush knowledge base). SpyFu's price list says "weekly tracked keyword rankings", so one check a week. Count the checks in a month and the gap shrinks a lot.
| Plan | Monthly price | Keywords | Frequency | Checks per month | Cost per 1,000 checks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush SEO | $139 | 500 | daily | 15,000 | $9.27 |
| SpyFu Basic | $39 | 5,000 | weekly | about 21,700 | $1.80 |
Per check, SpyFu is about 5 times cheaper, not 36. If you're tracking thousands of long-tail keywords for an online shop, where a week's delay doesn't change any decision, the saving is real. If you need to spot a drop the same day, after a migration or a Google update, you need daily data. There's also a detail SpyFu's price list doesn't clear up: whether the rank tracker can work on Google UK at city level, say for Manchester or Leeds. Check it during the refund window. How many keywords are worth tracking is covered in our guide to rank tracking.
Competitors' Google Ads: where SpyFu stays ahead
SpyFu was built for this job. For each domain it shows the keywords bought, the ad copy over time and an estimate of spend. The homepage claims "20x" more paid keywords and ads than its competitors; the Semrush comparison on SpyFu's blog, written by Sidra Condron in January 2025 and updated in February 2026, says "10x". Same vendor, two multipliers. The domains used as examples (HubSpot, Angi, Best Buy, grain.com, brothersplumbing.com) are led by American brands, and the post doesn't say where the smaller ones are based.
Semrush answers with Advertising Research: over 1 billion Google ads archived and history from 2012. On US competitors, according to SpyFu, it sees fewer paid keywords. On UK competitors its archive is also about four years shorter than SpyFu's.
Spend estimates are estimates, on both tools. SpyFu's help centre, dated June 2026, says costs, volumes and clicks are "estimates that come from other sources", starting with Google's keyword tools, and that "when we're wrong, we're consistently wrong in an industry". The vendor's advice is to compare its estimate with the real spend of an account you know and scale the others accordingly. How far volumes can diverge shows in a test by Exploding Topics on the query "best SEO software", US market: 320-480 searches according to SpyFu, 1,300 according to Semrush, 4,100 according to Ahrefs. In the UK the same query gets 210 searches a month in Google Ads data (DataForSEO, 10 October 2026). For what a click really costs, start from our pieces on cost per click and Google Ads statistics.
To see a UK competitor's ads there's also a free tool, Google's Ads Transparency Center, launched on 29 March 2023. According to Google's announcement, signed by Alejandro Borgia, it shows a verified advertiser's ads, where they ran, the last date they appeared and the format. You can filter by the United Kingdom, and "google ads transparency center" already gets about 1,000 searches a month in the UK. It doesn't tell you which keywords trigger the ads or what they cost, and that's where SpyFu and Semrush earn their fee. Before you open a campaign, though, it's the first place to look, as we explain in our piece on when Google Ads makes sense.
Organic SEO, audits and AI answers: Semrush's ground
Outside advertising the two tools aren't in the same league. Semrush declares 43 trillion backlinks, 808 million domains and a crawler that reads about 10 billion pages a day. It has a technical site audit and, on the Semrush One plans, tracking of how a brand shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answers: 50 prompts a day on Starter, 100 on Pro+. SpyFu declares 152 million websites and has no technical audit: getspike.ai writes that "SpyFu does not offer a site audit tool".
For organic work on Google UK the size of the British database matters too. In April 2022 Semrush announced that its UK keyword database would grow by 45%, "from 894 million to 1.3 billion keywords" (Semrush news). SpyFu publishes no figures by country. If the job is link building, an SEO audit or measuring visibility in AI answers, SpyFu on its own isn't enough.
Why the US comparisons don't agree on the numbers
Reading the top ten results on Google US for "semrush vs spyfu", we found very different values for the same data. We've lined them up with the source of each.
| Data point | Value quoted | Who says so |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords in SpyFu's database | 13.1 billion | SpyFu homepage, Style Factory (July 2026) |
| about 9 billion | getspike.ai (June 2026) | |
| 73 billion | Exploding Topics (June 2025) | |
| Countries covered by SpyFu | 38 | SpyFu homepage |
| 32 | SpyFu help centre (March 2026) | |
| 2, the United States and the UK | 99signals (January 2026) | |
| SpyFu's lead on paid keywords | 20x | SpyFu homepage |
| 10x | SpyFu blog | |
| SpyFu's mid-tier plan | $79 (Professional) | spyfu.com/pricing |
| $119 (Pro + AI) | SpyFu purchase page, Style Factory | |
| $78 | 99signals | |
| SpyFu's entry price | $39 ($33 billed annually) | spyfu.com/pricing |
| $33 ($16 billed annually) | SEO.com (September 2026) | |
| Semrush's entry price | $139 | semrush.com |
| $129.95 | SEO.com (September 2026) | |
| Keywords in Semrush's database | 28.8 billion | Semrush knowledge base |
| 27.8 billion | PipeRocket (July 2026) | |
| over 26 billion | getspike.ai | |
| over 20 billion | SpyFu blog |
Some of the differences come down to dates: databases grow and price lists change. Others come from articles copying other articles. For a UK reader the row that can cost money is the mid-tier plan: $78, $79 or $119 depending on whom you read, and the cheapest of the three doesn't exist on either of SpyFu's own pages. Our rule is to check the vendor's page and its date before trusting any review.
How often Semrush and SpyFu are searched in the UK
Some context we gathered ourselves from Google Ads search volumes for the UK market.
| Search | Monthly searches in the UK | Lowest and highest month |
|---|---|---|
| semrush | 27,100 | 22,200 - 40,500 |
| ahrefs | 18,100 | 12,100 - 22,200 |
| se ranking | 4,400 | 3,600 - 12,100 |
| spyfu | 1,600 | 1,000 - 1,900 |
| semrush vs spyfu | 70 | 10 - 590 (a one-off peak in September 2025) |
Semrush is searched about 17 times as often as SpyFu in the UK. The count by 6sense, which tracks installed technologies worldwide, points the same way: 37,850 customers and an 8.40% share of the SEO and SEM category for Semrush, 1,107 customers and 0.25% for SpyFu, about 34 times fewer. These are global figures; 6sense lists the United Kingdom among Semrush's top three countries but gives no UK numbers.
In the UK SpyFu is a niche tool, used mainly by people who run paid search, which means fewer independent tutorials and fewer colleagues who already know it. If you're looking for a tool with a declared UK database and a large user base, the options are in our pieces on Semrush alternatives and the best SEO tools.
Which to choose, case by case
- Consultant or agency working on organic search in the UK: Semrush. Declared UK database, history from 2012, technical audit and backlinks.
- If you run Google Ads and want to know what competitors are doing now: SpyFu Basic or Professional, with the Ads Transparency Center alongside.
- If you need to rebuild what UK competitors were doing before 2012: SpyFu Professional, once you've checked the older data is really there.
- Online shop with thousands of keywords to check every week: SpyFu, after checking the rank tracker covers the market and location you need.
- If you need to measure how your brand appears in AI answers: Semrush One, or a dedicated tool.
- SME that only checks its own site: neither. Google Search Console gives you real clicks and positions at no cost, more accurate than any estimate.
In projects where SEO and paid campaigns go together, like those in our Google Ads service, the combination we use most often is a complete organic tool plus a free source for ads. The reason is in our piece on how SEO and Google Ads work together: the keywords that convert in a campaign show which organic pages are worth writing.
How to test them on the UK market before paying
SpyFu offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans, according to its price list. Semrush offers a seven-day trial you can use only once (Semrush billing FAQ); the rules on the free plan and refunds are in our pricing guide. The test we recommend takes an afternoon:
- Pick ten UK keywords from your sector whose real position and clicks you know from Search Console.
- Look up your domain and two direct competitors on both tools, with the United Kingdom selected.
- Count how many of the ten keywords each tool knows and how far off it is on position.
- Open a competitor's history at 2010: on Semrush you shouldn't find Google UK data, on SpyFu Professional you should.
- Compare the ads SpyFu attributes to a competitor with the ones shown in the Ads Transparency Center for the United Kingdom.
A tool that can't see half your keywords on Google UK isn't the right tool for your market, whatever number it puts on its homepage. If you'd rather someone set this up for you, it's one of the first steps in our SEO service; results measured this way are collected in our Visilay projects.
Frequently asked questions about Semrush and SpyFu
It depends on the job. Semrush is more complete on organic SEO, technical audits, backlinks and AI visibility, and its UK data goes back to January 2012. SpyFu costs less, tracks ten times the keywords on its base plan and is stronger on competitors' Google Ads campaigns; its UK data goes back further, to June 2008.
Yes. SpyFu added UK data in June 2008, according to Search Engine Watch, and the United Kingdom is on the list of 32 countries in its help centre. The full archive needs the Professional plan or higher: Basic includes only 6 months of history.
SpyFu Basic costs $39 a month, about £29.50, while Semrush's SEO plan costs $139, about £105, at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 and before VAT. SpyFu has two price lists online: the mid-tier plan costs $79 (Professional) or $119 (Pro + AI) depending on the page.
Yes, for understanding what competitors are doing now: it was built to rebuild keywords, ads and estimated budgets, and it claims more paid keywords. In the UK it also has the longer ad archive, with data from 2008 against 2012 for Semrush's Advertising Research.
Semrush updates Position Tracking every day, generally within 24-48 hours. SpyFu updates tracked keywords once a week. That's why, per check, SpyFu costs about 5 times less, not 36 times as the keyword count alone suggests.
One last observation. When people choose a tool they look at the size of the database, almost never at the date the vendor started collecting data in their country. Yet that's what decides what you'll be able to see. Every time a US vendor adds a country, that country's history starts from zero: SpyFu added Poland and Turkey in August 2025, Chile and Venezuela in October 2025, Czechia and Finland in March 2026. The UK is the exception, the market SpyFu users asked for first. If your competitors are also in Ireland, Spain or the Netherlands, SpyFu's history there starts in 2022, whatever the homepage says.
