RankWhy vs RankYak
Last updated
RankYak: An SEO operator that researches keywords, writes one article a morning, publishes it, exchanges backlinks and audits your pages, for $99 a site a month. RankWhy answers "why do these pages rank, and what is mine missing?" with evidence per claim, on your own DataForSEO account, and writes from your facts. This page puts the two side by side. Every figure about RankYak names the page it was read from and the day (last checked 2026-11-05); where a page did not say, the row says so. If something here is out of date, tell us and it will be corrected with the date.
RankYak plans, as published
- RankYak Pro: $99 per site per month, or $82.50 a month billed yearly ($990); 30 articles a month, one per day on the days you choose. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
- Site Guard (audit of existing pages, cannibalization, fixes): another $99 per site per month. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
- Agencies: 5% off at 3 sites, 10% at 5, 15% at 10, 20% at 20; fair use 25 active sites per subscription. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
- 3-day trial with a card; the card is charged when the third day ends unless you cancel. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
Row by row
| Question | RankWhy | RankYak |
|---|---|---|
| Price and what it buys | Free during the beta, no card. Google data runs on your own DataForSEO account (a top-20 SERP is about $0.002 at list price, shown per run); AI steps use credits (300 on sign-up). | $99 per site per month for 30 articles; Site Guard $99 more. (rankyak.com) |
| Cost of 30 articles a month | About 30 SERP reads on your DataForSEO account (around $0.06 at list price) plus the writer's credits; no subscription. | $99 (about $3.30 an article), Google data included. (rankyak.com) |
| Where the Google data comes from | DataForSEO on your key, named on every number, with the fetch time; every paid SERP is kept as a snapshot you can re-read. | "Live search data for your country and language"; the vendor is not named; the privacy policy says only "keyword and search data providers". (rankyak.com) |
| Keyword research | Seed expansion on named channels (Labs suggestions, ideas, related, autocomplete with its prefix, People also ask, also-rank-for, competitor gap, Trends rising), each row with its origin; your Search Console import joined when you have one. | Volume, difficulty 0 to 100 and an "opportunity score" with no published formula; clusters by shared results; "emerging" keywords; goal research 10 a day. (rankyak.com) |
| Writing: facts and sources | The writer states only the facts you gave (Truth Ledger), the facts read from your own pages with the sentence quoted, and numbers three ranking domains agree on with quote and URL; everything else is a placeholder. Every outbound link is fetched and checked. | "Verified facts and cited sources" is claimed on the marketing pages; no help page, the methodology or the editorial policy describes a verification step. (rankyak.com) |
| What a refresh does to your page | Measures your page against the pages that rank (Outrank Diff) and writes a new draft beside it; nothing on your site is overwritten. | "Replaces the article's content with the updated version, so any manual edits you have made to that article are overwritten"; the previous version is kept as a revision. (rankyak.com) |
| Publishing | Drafts only: WordPress and Ghost drafts, a signed webhook to your own endpoint, an Atom feed. Nothing is published without you. | Live or as drafts, set per site; WordPress, WordPress.com, Shopify, Wix, Webflow, Duda, Ghost, Lovable, Replit, Next.js, Zapier, Make, API, RSS, webhooks (unsigned). (rankyak.com) |
| Backlinks | None, on purpose: no exchange, no network, no purchased links. Referring-domain counts come from your own DataForSEO Backlinks data. | An opt-in exchange: contextual links between network sites, "the same site links to you at most once a month"; nofollow status and link counts are not stated. (rankyak.com) |
| Audit of pages that already rank | Site Guard, free: from your Search Console import, pages earning fewer clicks than their position should (against your own click-through curve), title and description lengths, queries split between pages with a winner and a redirect list; fixes are suggestions you apply. | Site Guard add-on: title 25 to 65 and description 70 to 165 characters, CTR against what the position should earn over 30 days, nightly cannibalization sets with a winner and redirects, up to 1,000 pages. (rankyak.com) |
| AI answers | Asks Google itself (AI Overview from the SERP, AI Mode) on your key and names every cited page; counts shown with the sample size. | Articles are "built to surface in AI answers"; the Analytics page tracks Search Console; no AI Overview or AI Mode citation check is described. (rankyak.com) |
| AI agents | Remote MCP server with OAuth 2.1 and scopes (read, research, write), 36 task-shaped tools with a cost line, a Claude Code plugin, and the same tools in the account's copilot, which asks before anything that spends. | Yuno copilot in the app and a remote MCP server at rankyak.com/mcp with browser authorization; tools described by area, not named. (rankyak.com) |
| Who owns the content | You. RankWhy claims no rights in what it writes for you and does not train on it. | "RankYak and its licensors ... retain all rights, title, and interest in and to ... all Generated Content", licensed to you; generated content may be used "for the purpose of training and improving RankYak's AI models". (rankyak.com) |
| Your CMS login | Stored only if you turn on unattended drafts (AES-256-GCM), used to create drafts, deleted when you switch it off; otherwise used once for the request and dropped. | WordPress: the plugin sends an application password with edit rights to rankyak.com; credentials and OAuth tokens are "stored encrypted". (rankyak.com) |
| Trial and refunds | Nothing to refund: the beta is free and your DataForSEO spend is yours, shown per run. | 3-day trial with a card; "No refunds will be issued for unused portions of service periods." (rankyak.com) |
What RankYak does better
- A calendar that publishes one researched article every morning without you, in 40+ languages, to ten platforms.
- Search Console steers it: queries you earn impressions for feed research, the slipping page gets the next rewrite, cannibalization is found nightly.
- A business memory read from your site monthly, products and money pages, and a copilot that acts in the app.
- A backlink exchange, if you want links placed for you (we think you should not; see below).
Where RankWhy says no on purpose
Publishing live without you. RankWhy makes drafts (WordPress, Ghost, your webhook, a feed) and stops. A page goes live when a person has read it.
Backlinks. RankWhy builds, exchanges and buys no links. Google's spam policies list "excessive link exchanges" and "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" among link schemes (developers.google.com, read 2026-11-05). Referring-domain counts in RankWhy come from your own DataForSEO Backlinks data and are shown as numbers, never a score.
Composite scores. No content score, no authority score, no "opportunity" number without a formula; every figure keeps its source and date.
What to know before you buy RankYak
- The terms keep all rights in generated content with RankYak and allow training on it. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
- "We do not review, edit, or endorse the content generated by our Services before it is published." (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
- The exchange places links automatically; Google's spam policies list "excessive link exchanges" among link schemes. (developers.google.com, read 2026-11-05)
- No legal entity or address appears in the terms; the company is named only as Height Labs elsewhere on the site. (rankyak.com, read 2026-11-05)
Sources
- https://rankyak.com/pricing (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/fair-use (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/legal/privacy-policy (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/keyword-metrics (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/methodology (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/article-refreshes (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/webhooks (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/features/backlink-exchange (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/site-audit (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/features/article-generation (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/help/mcp (read 2026-11-05)
- https://rankyak.com/legal/terms-of-service (read 2026-11-05)
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam (read 2026-11-05)
RankWhy's column comes from our documentation and pricing as of 2026-11-05.
Questions
Is RankWhy a RankYak alternative?
For the research, the writing, the audit and the agent surface, yes, at your DataForSEO cost instead of $99 a site. For an autopilot that publishes live every morning and exchanges links, no: RankWhy makes drafts and builds no links, on purpose.
Which is cheaper?
RankYak is $99 a site a month for 30 articles with the data included. RankWhy is free in the beta; 30 agent runs cost about 30 top-20 SERP reads on your DataForSEO account (around $0.06 at list price) plus the writer's credits.