While CognitiveSEO is an excellent tool for SERP analysis, rank tracking, and backlink analysis, most users are looking for some better CognitiveSEO alternatives.
If you’re also one of them, you’re here for the best.
In this detailed blog post, I have tried to make picking up an alternative to CognitiveSEO easier for you.
I have discussed all the things that CognitiveSEO is lacking and what solutions the other alternatives are providing.
I’ve also been completely transparent about the costs you would incur if you decide to proceed with any of these CognitiveSEO alternatives.
Now, let’s get right into it and have a look at the 7 best CognitiveSEO alternatives worth your money and time.
Table of Contents
Why Look for a CognitiveSEO Alternative?
First things first, why should you look for a CognitiveSEO alternative in the first place?
Well, CognitiveSEO has strengths like detailed website audit, penalty recovery, rank tracker, and content optimization.
The features are pretty good, but they still fall short in terms of AI and user experience.
Some users feel that it also lags in usability and integration with other critical tools.
If you’re paying $129.99 a month for SEO software like CognitiveSEO (which is a hefty amount), obviously, you want the best of it and don’t want to be left behind in the SEO race.
7 Best CognitiveSEO Alternatives & Competitors
Below, we have reviewed the top alternatives to CognitiveSEO, highlighting their features, pricing, and ideal use cases.
1. Zutrix
Zutrix isn’t just another typical expensive SEO tool — it’s a comprehensive, AI-powered platform designed for agencies, teams, and solo marketers who demand accuracy, speed, and actionable insights.
This tool uses a proprietary AI solution to track your keyword rankings with 100% accuracy in real time.
You can filter your keyword rankings by country, city, or language (best solution for a local business).
Zutrix recently launched its AI search visibility tracker, allowing you to track your brand mentions across all the major AI language models.
Apart from that, Zutrix offers a significantly improved and modern version of all CognitiveSEO features at a much more affordable cost.
Whether you’re on a budget or looking for a better solution, Zutrix is the best option as an alternative to CognitiveSEO.
Key Features
Real-time Rank Tracker: Zutrix uses an AI-powered proprietary technology to provide 100% accurate keyword rankings of your website across multiple countries, locations, devices, and search engines.
Keyword Research: You can use Zutrix’s keyword research tool to find unexplored keyword ideas that none of your competitors are targeting.
AI Search Visibility: Track your brand mentions across 8 leading AI models, including Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, and more.
Backlink Monitor: Monitor your website’s backlink profile 24/7 and get real-time alerts for any new and lost backlinks. You can also get a spam score for each backlink (Zutrix’s internal system analyzes each backlink through multiple metrics to decide this) and easily disavow the spam links right from this tool.
Website Audit: You can run a comprehensive technical audit to identify and fix all the issues of your website in a record-breaking time.
White-Label Reports: If you’re an agency or freelancer, you can generate white-label reports for your clients.
Pricing
Starter ($9/month):
- 1 project
- 250 keywords
- 10k backlink analysis
- 100 site audit credits
Pro ($28/month):
- 10 projects
- 1,000 keywords
- 25k backlink analysis
- 200 site audit credits
Agency ($54/month):
- unlimited projects
- 2,500 keywords
- 75k backlink analysis
- 500 site audit credits
The features may vary depending on the plan you choose.
Plus, the white-label option is only available if you choose the Agency plan.
If you’re still unsure, Zutrix does offer a 7-day trial of the software for just $7.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerhouse in the SEO space, known for its massive backlink database and comprehensive sets of SEO tools.
It’s one of the most popular SEO tools on the market that helps marketers, SEOs, and website owners grow their search traffic by giving deep insights into competitors, backlinks, keywords, and much more.
This tool has a beginner-friendly and beautiful user interface, making it easier for beginners to navigate through the software without any learning curve.
That makes it one of the best CognitiveSEO alternatives.
Key Features
Site Explorer: You can analyze any website or URL and see how they are performing in organic and paid search. You can check the backlink profile, organic keywords, and find the top pages of the website within a few seconds.
Keyword Explorer: Generate thousands of high-value keyword ideas and sort them based on various critical metrics like keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC, traffic potential, and much more.
Rank Tracker: Monitor your keyword rankings on Google across 190 countries. Just input your keywords or upload a keyword list, and Ahrefs will start tracking your keyword data and send you regular updates.
Brand Radar: Track your brand mentions and visibility across all the major AI models and control your AI search growth.
Website Audit: Run a detailed audit of your website to identify and fix 170+ possible technical and on-page SEO issues.
AI Content Helper: The Ahrefs AI helps to write SEO-optimized content that satisfies the search intent and fills content gaps.
Content Explorer: Discover the top-performing content in your niche and find thousands of link prospects to build quality backlinks for your website.
Report Builder: Generate custom white-label reports for your boss or clients with the most accurate data.
Pricing
Ahrefs offers three plans.
Lite ($129/month):
- 5 Projects
- 6 Months of historical data
- 750 tracked keywords
- 100k crawl credits
Standard ($249/month):
- 20 Projects
- 2 Years of historical data
- 2,000 tracked keywords
- 500k crawl credits
Advanced ($449/month):
- 50 Projects
- 5 Years of historical data
- 5,000 tracked keywords
- 1.5 million crawl credits
Enterprise ($1,499/month):
- API access
- Unlimited historical data
- SSO & enterprise-grade security
- Personalized higher limits & data exports
- Forecasting & trends
3. SEMRush
SEMRush is a top-tier CognitiveSEO competitor equipped with all the features and toolkits you would need to run your entire marketing campaign.
Unlike CognitiveSEO, SEMRush is not just SEO software. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform.
From SEO and content optimization to technical audit and paid ads monitoring, you can do everything from this one tool.
Just like Zutrix and Ahrefs, SEMRush also has a bigger and more accurate database than CognitiveSEO, making it a more reliable solution if you’re really serious about improving your SEO results.
Key Features
Keyword Research: Find thousands of easy-to-rank keyword ideas within a minute, along with crucial keyword metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of keywords.
Site Audit: SEMRush’s high-speed crawlers audit your entire website within a few minutes and spot all the technical issues your website might be having.
Rank Tracking: Track the daily position changes of your targeted keywords on Google. You can even track your local keyword rankings and Google Map rankings on SEMRush.
Link Building: Find unique link opportunities powered by the largest and fastest backlink database on the planet with the highest accuracy rate.
Paid Advertising: Monitor your PPC ads and find out paid keyword ideas to target in your next PPC campaign.
SEO Writing Assistant: Get an SEO score for your content and get real-time recommendations to fix it.
Pricing
SEMRush offers three plans:
- Pro: $129.95/month (freelancers, startups)
- Guru: $249.95/month (SMBs, growing agencies)
- Business: $499.95/month (large agencies, enterprises)
If you go by their annual plan, you can further save up to 17% on this pricing.
Plus, they offer a 7-day free trial for the premium plans.
4. Mangools
Mangools offers a suite of user-friendly SEO tools at a much affordable price, making it one of the perfect CognitiveSEO alternatives.
It has five different toolsets under its umbrella, and each of these tools serves a particular purpose:
- KWFinder: Helps you find keyword ideas.
- SERPChecker: Helps you analyze SERP results.
- SERPWatcher: Allows you to track keyword rankings.
- LinkMiner: Allows you to look at the backlink profile of any website.
- SiteProfiler: Shows you critical SEO metrics of any website.
It’s not only a feature-packed software but also has quite affordable pricing, making it a perfect solution for beginners or small businesses.
Key Features
Keyword Research: Find low SEO difficulty keywords to target in your content marketing campaigns with little to no extra effort.
SERP Checker: Analyze local SERP results for more than 65k locations from all around the globe.
Track Keywords: Easily track your keyword rankings 24/7 and monitor how your SEO campaigns are performing.
Backlink Analysis: Look at the backlink profile of any website and find powerful backlink opportunities within minutes. Plus, you can also evaluate the power of backlinks with the link strength metrics.
Website Profile Checker: Check the SEO authority and trustworthiness of any domain or URL.
Pricing
Mangools has three plans:
- Basic: $24.85/month (100 keyword lookups, 200 keyword suggestions per search, 100 SERP lookups, and 20 site lookups a day).
- Premium: $34.85/month (500 keyword lookups, unlimited keyword suggestions per search, 500 SERP lookups, and 70 site lookups a day).
- Agency: $83.85/month (1,200 keyword lookups, unlimited keyword suggestions per search, 1,200 SERP lookups, and 150 site lookups a day).
You can also create a free Mangools account without a credit card. The free account obviously comes with limited features and usage limits.
5. SE Ranking
The last CognitiveSEO alternative we have is SE Ranking.
It’s a versatile SEO software designed for small to mid-size agencies and in-house marketing teams.
This cloud-based software has one of the most exceptional and smooth user interfaces compared to most SEO tools in the market.
Founded in 2013, SE Ranking has grown into an affordable, easy-to-use solution that offers all the essential SEO tools, from keyword rank tracking and site audits to backlink monitoring and competitor analysis, making it a practical and budget-friendly alternative to CognitiveSEO.
Key Features
Rank Tracker: Get high-precision ranking data for your and your clients’ websites. You can track keyword rankings across multiple major search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube.
On-Page SEO Checker: Get recommendations on how to fix on-page SEO issues on your site.
Website Audit: Run a deep technical audit that scans your entire website for any major flaws or errors. It checks for issues like broken links, duplicate content, page speed, and more.
Competitor Analysis Tool: Discover what keywords your competitors are ranking for and get a detailed breakdown of their traffic and backlink sources.
Backlink Checker: Analyze any site’s backlink profile and get the latest data on referring domains, anchor texts, and link quality.
Local Marketing: Manage your local map rankings, schedule Google My Business posts, manage your Google listing and reviews, all from one single place.
Pricing
SE Ranking provides three plans:
- Essential: $65/month (1 Manager seat, 5 projects, and 500 keywords to track daily).
- Pro: $119/month (3 Manager seats, 30 projects, and 2,000 keywords to track daily).
- Business: $256/month (5 Manager seats, unlimited projects, and 5,000 keywords to track daily).
They have some additional features as well, which you can add to your monthly billing for extra payment.
FAQs
Is there a free alternative to CognitiveSEO?
Tools like Ubersuggest and Seobility can be a good free alternative to CognitiveSEO. You can also find free tools on Zutrix like SERP checker, keyword planner, and more.
Which CognitiveSEO alternative is best for beginners?
The best CognitiveSEO alternative for beginners is Zutrix and Mangools. Both of these tools have a beginner-friendly interface and are affordable as well.
Can I migrate my data from CognitiveSEO to another SEO tool?
Most SEO tools allow you to migrate data from CognitiveSEO. You just have to check with their support team. Zutrix has a dedicated team that will help you throughout the onboarding process and ensure your data gets migrated easily.
Which CognitiveSEO Alternative is Right for You?
The SEO landscape is dynamic, and your toolkit should evolve with your needs.
Whether you’re seeking deeper insights, better automation, or a more affordable solution, there’s a CognitiveSEO alternative that fits your workflow.
Figure out your priorities, test a few software from this list, and then make a decision.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly alternative to CognitiveSEO, you can try Zutrix.
Zutrix not only has the most affordable plans, but it’s packed with the latest features and equipped with a huge database.
