AI SEO tools: 10 tools compared on what they actually take off your plate

Almost every SEO tool now has AI on board. So which AI SEO tool you choose mostly depends on who does the work after the advice. With most tools, that is still you. A smaller group writes the text for you. And a few also put the improvement on your site themselves.

We sorted ten tools plus our own GreatCompany into those three groups. Prices come from the tools’ own pricing pages and are from October 2026, excluding tax. For GreatCompany we also say where another tool fits better.

The three groups in short

Group	What the AI does	What you do
1. Writing on request	Makes a title, description or text when you ask	Choose the page, check, publish
2. Measuring and advising	Reads your numbers and says what needs improving	Carry out the advice
3. Applying it itself	Chooses, writes and puts it on your site	Set what is allowed, read along

The further down you go, the less time it costs you. And the more important it becomes that you can undo what the tool did. What the term itself means is in AI SEO.

Group 1: writing on request

ChatGPT

The best known. You paste a page in and ask for five titles, a description or a list of FAQs. The free version is already good enough for this.

The limitation: ChatGPT does not know your site. It does not know which pages you have, what your numbers are or what you changed last month. You have to supply everything and publish it yourself. For single tasks that is fine. As a system for forty pages you will not keep it up. How ChatGPT compares to the other assistants is in SEO with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Prompts that work are in ChatGPT for SEO.

Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast’s AI lives inside WordPress. You are on a page, click the button and get a suggestion for the title and description. With the bulk editor you do that for many pages in a row. Premium costs $118.80 a year per site.

Yoast keeps every change waiting for your approval. That is safe. It also means nothing happens if you do not log in.

Rank Math PRO

PRO costs $7.99 a month billed annually and may be used on all your own sites. The most striking feature is AI Link Genius: you enter keywords with a target page, and Rank Math puts the links in your posts. The writing assistant, Content AI, is a separate subscription from $71.88 a year.

SEOPress PRO and AIOSEO

SEOPress PRO ($49 a year for one site) works with your own AI key and can fill empty titles and descriptions when you publish. AIOSEO gives you AI credits with every paid plan, from $49.50 in the first year.

All four plugins are compared in detail in the best WordPress SEO plugins. If you only want to know what the AI in them does, read AI plugins for WordPress SEO.

Who is group 1 for? For people who want to do the work themselves, faster. You do need a fixed moment every week.

Group 2: measuring and advising

Semrush

The SEO toolkit costs $139 a month. You get keyword research, a site audit, rank tracking and competitor insight. Semrush also measures how you score in AI search results, and its AI helps read all that data.

Semrush is built for marketers. A business owner without SEO knowledge gets lost in the number of screens.

Ahrefs

From $29 a month for Starter, $129 for Lite. Ahrefs is strongest on links: who links to you and who to your competitor. Ahrefs also has its own environment for building AI agents that work with its data. That is powerful and needs someone who knows what they are building.

SE Ranking

$129 a month for Core. Strong in daily rank tracking. Measuring in AI answers is a separate add-on.

Who is group 2 for? For businesses with their own marketer or an agency that also carries out the advice. A dashboard nobody looks at delivers nothing. More on these suites, and the free alternatives, is in the best SEO tools for small business.

Group 3: applying it itself

This is the newest group, and the biggest differences are here.

SEO.AI

SEO.AI writes articles and publishes them as new posts on your site. For WordPress that runs through their own plugin. It costs $149 a month for one site in one language, with a seven-day trial.

SEO.AI focuses on new content. According to their own description, the plugin does not improve your existing pages: it supports regular posts. The comparison is on SEO.AI alternative.

WP SEO AI

A WordPress plugin with a team behind it. They research, write, publish and optimize within your site, and also run Google Ads if you want. Pricing is on request, with a setup fee and a minimum twelve-month contract.

That is really an agency with a plugin. If you want to outsource everything and do not mind an annual contract, it is a serious option. More GEO and SEO tools are compared in best GEO tools.

GreatCompany

GreatCompany does two things. It measures every day whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name your business, and it scans your site for what needs improving.

On Pro ($49 a month, any website) you see per page what needs improving. You ask your SEO assistant in the chat for the new title or text. You or your web developer put it on the site.

On Automatic ($99 a month, for WordPress) GreatCompany applies up to five improvements itself every Monday: titles, meta descriptions, internal links and alt text. You choose per item whether it runs automatically or comes to you for approval first. Every change can be undone with one click.

Where GreatCompany fits less well: if you are looking for deep keyword research or competitors’ backlink data. Semrush and Ahrefs are built for that.

Who is group 3 for? For people who have no time and do not want to pay an agency. How such a tool works on its own, and which questions to ask beforehand, is in AI SEO agent.

All tools side by side

Tool	Group	Price (October 2026)	Applies changes itself
ChatGPT	1	Free, paid around $20 a month	No
Yoast SEO Premium	1	$118.80 a year per site	No, waits for approval
Rank Math PRO	1	$7.99 a month	Internal links only
SEOPress PRO	1	$49 a year	Only empty fields when publishing
AIOSEO	1	From $49.50 first year	No
Semrush	2	$139 a month	No
Ahrefs	2	From $29 a month	No
SE Ranking	2	$129 a month	No
SEO.AI	3	$149 a month	Yes, new articles
WP SEO AI	3	On request, annual contract	Yes, with a team
GreatCompany	2 and 3	$49 or $99 a month	Yes, on WordPress

Check the prices yourself on the pricing pages of Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress and AIOSEO. For the other tools, see their own pricing page.

GreatCompany is listed as the eleventh. A comparison without our own product would not be honest, and neither would pretending we do not belong in it.

What to look for when choosing an AI SEO tool

Does the tool know your own site? An AI that does not see your pages and your numbers gives advice that is true for every business. That is too general to act on.

What happens if you do nothing? This is the most honest test. Say you do not log in for three weeks. Is your site better or not?

Can you go back? As soon as a tool writes on your site, you want to be able to undo every change.

What do you pay in year two? Many plugins discount the first year. Look at the renewal price. How a fixed monthly fee compares to an agency is in SEO subscription.

Can you actually use it? The texts AI writes are usually fine. But a screen full of jargon is the reason many business owners drop out after a month.

Our advice per situation

You have one site and time on Monday morning. Free Yoast or Rank Math, plus ChatGPT. Follow the rhythm in DIY SEO.

You have a marketer on staff. Semrush or Ahrefs, depending on whether you do more with content or with links.

You have a WordPress site and no time. A group 3 tool that improves existing pages. That is what we built GreatCompany Automatic for.

You have no WordPress and no time. GreatCompany Pro or a freelancer for a few hours a month. What that costs is in SEO pricing.

You want to hand off everything, including ads. An agency, or a service like WP SEO AI.

More on what you can and cannot leave to software is in automating SEO with AI.

First know what needs fixing on your site

Choosing a tool is easier once you know what your problem is. Join the waitlist and when we open in the US, your free report shows which errors on your site cost you clicks, and whether ChatGPT names you or your competitor. Then you know which group to look in.