Moz Pro vs Surfer SEO
Both are SEO tools aimed at marketers, freelancers, agencies and site owners. They differ most on backlink data, rank tracking and site audits.
At a glance
| Moz Pro | Surfer SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 77/100 Higher | 52/100 |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Paid from | $49/mo monthly; for a single website | $59/mo monthly; $49/mo billed yearly |
| Positioning | full suite | content optimisation |
| Launched | — | — |
| Best for | Small businesses and marketers who want an established SEO suite with AI-search tracking at a mid-range price. | Content teams that want to write pages that rank and track how AI answers mention their brand. |
Where each one leads
| Dimension | Moz Pro | Surfer SEO | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | 4/5 | 4/5 | Tie |
| Value for money | 3/5 | 3/5 | Tie |
| Keyword research | 4/5 | 3/5 | Moz Pro |
| Free plan | 2/5 | 1/5 | Moz Pro |
| Rank tracking | 4/5 | 2/5 | Moz Pro |
| Site audits | 4/5 | 2/5 | Moz Pro |
| Breadth of features | 4/5 | 2/5 | Moz Pro |
| Backlink data | 4/5 | 1/5 | Moz Pro |
| AI-search tracking | 4/5 | 5/5 | Surfer SEO |
Scores are 1–5 per dimension. Moz Pro leads on 6 dimensions, Surfer SEO on 1. The overall figure weights these for SEO tools generally — see methodology.
Pricing
Plans are listed per tool rather than paired row by row — tiers rarely line up, and putting one vendor's second plan beside another's implies an equivalence that is not there.
| Tool | Plan | Per month | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moz Pro | Starter | $49 | monthly; for a single website |
| Standard | $99 | monthly; $79/mo billed yearly | |
| Medium | $179 | monthly; $143/mo billed yearly | |
| Large | $299 | monthly; $239/mo billed yearly | |
| Surfer SEO | Discovery | $59 | monthly; $49/mo billed yearly |
| Standard | $119 | monthly; $99/mo billed yearly | |
| Pro | $219 | monthly; $182/mo billed yearly | |
| Peace of Mind | $359 | monthly; $299/mo billed yearly |
Pricing checked 24 September 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page. Moz Pro: Billed in USD. Yearly billing saves 20%. Surfer SEO: Billed in USD. Yearly billing saves about 17%.
Verdict
Moz Pro
- +Standard and above track AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity.
- +Standard tracks 3 sites and 300 keywords and crawls 400,000 pages a month.
- +A $49 Starter plan for a single website, and a free trial on Medium.
- −Standard includes one user; a second needs Medium, at $179 a month.
- −AI content briefs are capped at 2 a month on Standard and 10 on Medium.
Surfer SEO
- +Tracks how AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews mention your brand, from the Standard plan.
- +Standard includes 360 documents with one-click content optimisation and a plagiarism checker.
- +Discovery, at $49 a month billed yearly, covers 120 documents and 10 tracked pages.
- −Its plans list no backlink analysis, so link research needs another tool.
- −Monthly billing costs about 20% more: Standard is $119 a month, or $99 billed yearly.
Common questions
Is Moz Pro cheaper than Surfer SEO?
Moz Pro starts at $49/mo (monthly; for a single website), and Surfer SEO starts at $59/mo (monthly; $49/mo billed yearly) — so Moz Pro is the cheaper entry point. Compare what each includes at that tier, and what it renews at, rather than the headline figure alone.
Which is better, Moz Pro or Surfer SEO?
On our weighted scoring across the use cases in this category, Moz Pro comes out ahead overall. The honest answer is that it depends on the use case — the tables above break the score down by dimension so you can weight it to your own priorities.
Other comparisons
Sources & verification
- moz.com — checked 24 September 2026No free Moz Pro plan; Medium has a free trial. Moz also offers separate free SEO tools.
- surferseo.com — checked 24 September 2026No free plan is listed on the pricing page.