RankWhy vs SE Ranking
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SE Ranking: An SEO suite for rank tracking, audits and research, with AI-written articles and MCP access in every plan. 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 SE Ranking 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 If something here is out of date, tell us and it will be corrected with the date.
SE Ranking plans, as published
- Core: $129 a month, $103.20 billed yearly; 10 projects, 2,000 keywords tracked daily, 250k audit pages, 25 AI prompts daily, 25 articles, MCP access. (seranking.com, read 2026-11-05)
- Growth: $279 a month, $223.20 yearly; 30 projects, 5,000 keywords, 2M audit pages, 50 articles. Extra articles from $39.20. (seranking.com, read 2026-11-05)
- 14-day free trial, no card. (seranking.com, read 2026-11-05)
Row by row
| Question | RankWhy | SE Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| 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). | From $129 a month: tracking, audits, research, 25 articles, MCP. (seranking.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. | 25 included on Core, extras from $39.20 each. (seranking.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. | SE Ranking's own databases and trackers; sources not itemised per number. (seranking.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. | A keyword database with volume and difficulty; API credits by plan. (seranking.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. | Not stated on the pages we read (subscription page, 2026-11-05). |
| 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. | An editor; nothing is written to your site. (seranking.com) |
| Publishing | Drafts only: WordPress and Ghost drafts, a signed webhook to your own endpoint, an Atom feed. Nothing is published without you. | Not stated on the pages we read (subscription page, 2026-11-05). |
| Backlinks | None, on purpose: no exchange, no network, no purchased links. Referring-domain counts come from your own DataForSEO Backlinks data. | Checker and monitoring only; none sold. (seranking.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 audit up to 250k pages a month on Core. (seranking.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. | 25 AI prompts daily across 5 AI engines on Core; SE Visible from $71 a month. (seranking.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. | "MCP access is included in every SE Ranking subscription"; Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor listed. (seranking.com) |
| Who owns the content | You. RankWhy claims no rights in what it writes for you and does not train on it. | Not stated on the pages we read (subscription page, 2026-11-05). |
| 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. | Not stated on the pages we read (subscription page, 2026-11-05). |
| Trial and refunds | Nothing to refund: the beta is free and your DataForSEO spend is yours, shown per run. | 14 days free without a card; refund terms not on the page. (seranking.com) |
What SE Ranking does better
- Daily rank tracking of thousands of keywords, which RankWhy does not do.
- A full site audit at scale and a backlink checker with its own index.
- MCP in every plan with a pay-as-you-go API option.
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 SE Ranking
- Plans were restructured in 2026; older comparisons still quote the Essential and Pro tiers. (seranking.com, read 2026-11-05)
Sources
- https://seranking.com/subscription.html (read 2026-11-05)
- https://seranking.com/mcp.html (read 2026-11-05)
RankWhy's column comes from our documentation and pricing as of 2026-11-05.
Questions
Is RankWhy an SE Ranking alternative?
Not for rank tracking or site-wide audits. For "why do these pages rank and what is mine missing", with the evidence per claim and your own data, RankWhy is the smaller, cheaper tool; many teams would run both.