A Semrush Alternative for About $5 a Month: OpenSEO on the DataForSEO API

I set OpenSEO up on DataForSEO for 5 sites: a marketing knowledge base, a funding directory, a nonprofit education site, a speech-therapy SaaS landing page, and an executive speaking coach.

OpenSEO sends rank checks to the DataForSEO standard queue, which costs $0.0006 for the first page of 10 results. Each extra page in the same check costs 75% of that, so a top-30 check costs $0.0015.

Keyword research and competitor checks add a few cents each time you run them. Lighthouse checks in audits cost extra. OpenSEO's Cloudflare setup works on the Cloudflare free plan, so hosting can cost $0.

• A DataForSEO account. Sign up, then open API Access and click "Send by email". Copy the long "Base64" credentials: that value is your DATAFORSEO_API_KEY.
• A place to run OpenSEO: a free Cloudflare account (recommended), or any machine with Docker.
• Optional: an OpenRouter account for the AI features (see the next part).

It works on the Cloudflare free plan and adds a Cloudflare Access login page, so only your email can get in. You need Node 22.6 or newer, and R2 turned on in your Cloudflare account (R2 asks for a payment method even on its free tier).

1. 1Clone the OpenSEO repo and install it.
2. 2Log in to Cloudflare once. When it asks "Customize OAuth scopes?", answer yes and turn on access:write.
3. 3Copy the settings template and fill in DATAFORSEO_API_KEY and ACCESS_ALLOWED_EMAILS (your email).
4. 4Deploy. The command creates the database, storage and login gate, then prints your app URL.
5. 5Open the URL, log in with the code Cloudflare emails you, and add your first project.

git clone https://github.com/every-app/open-seo.git
cd open-seo
corepack enable
pnpm install

pnpm alchemy login
pnpm alchemy cloudflare bootstrap

cp deploy/.env.selfhost.example .env.selfhost
# edit .env.selfhost: DATAFORSEO_API_KEY=... and ACCESS_ALLOWED_EMAILS=you@example.test

pnpm deploy:selfhost --yes

To update later, run git pull, pnpm install and the deploy command again. If something fails, open /api/health on your app URL. It reports the configuration and database status.

git clone https://github.com/every-app/open-seo.git
cd open-seo
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env: DATAFORSEO_API_KEY=...
docker compose up -d
# open http://localhost:3001

The first start takes 1 to 2 minutes. Keep the container running if you want scheduled rank checks; it checks for due work every 5 minutes.

AI visibility tracking (how ChatGPT and other AI tools answer questions about your market) runs on your DataForSEO key. Setup research for a new project, suggested prompts to track and the in-app assistant all need a second key, from OpenRouter. Without OPENROUTER_API_KEY, those parts stay hidden or fail.

1. 1Create an account at OpenRouter.
2. 2Buy credits. OpenRouter charges a 5.5% fee on each purchase, with a $0.80 minimum, so a $10 top-up costs $10.80.
3. 3Create an API key and copy it.
4. 4Add the key to .env.selfhost (Cloudflare) or .env (Docker), and set the model to Claude Haiku 5.5. Then redeploy, or restart the container.

OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-...
OPENROUTER_MODEL=anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5

Haiku is half the price on input and less than half on output. OpenSEO runs Luna at its highest reasoning level, which also bills its reasoning as output tokens, so the real gap per call is larger than the prices show.

OpenSEO has an MCP server, so Claude and other AI agents can work with your SEO data. I use it this way, and it is how I ran the competitor research for one of my sites.

1. 1In Cloudflare Zero Trust, open Access controls, then Applications, and edit your OpenSEO application.
2. 2Under Additional settings, then OAuth, turn on Managed OAuth.
3. 3Allow localhost redirect URIs, so desktop and command-line agents such as Claude Code can log in.
4. 4Add the MCP server in your agent with the URL https://YOUR_WORKER_HOSTNAME/mcp.