Yoast SEOvs
Rank Math
Rank Math: If a richer free tier and built-in rank tracking matter more than flat, predictable renewal pricing
Yoast SEO
The longest-established WordPress SEO plugin, free core with a flat-rate Premium tier
As of 1 September 2026, Yoast SEO is free to use. The plugin that defined the WordPress SEO category, still running on millions of sites on its free tier alone. Softwr lists it under SEO. Yoast SEO is made by Yoast BV, available on Web.
Overview
What Yoast SEO does
Yoast SEO provides on-page content and readability analysis, XML sitemaps, basic schema output, and Search Console integration free, with the free tier alone sufficient for a small blog or personal site indefinitely rather than functioning as a crippled trial. Premium adds redirect management, multi-keyphrase optimisation against up to five phrases per page, AI-assisted bulk metadata generation, internal linking suggestions, and three bundled plugins for local, video and news SEO that were previously sold separately. The pricing structure is the notable fact against Rank Math: Yoast charges the same flat 118.80 US dollars a year per site indefinitely, with no introductory discount that jumps at renewal. That is a deliberate and different commercial choice from Rank Math's annual-only, discounted-then-higher-renewal model, and it means Yoast's advertised price is the price a customer actually pays every year, not a first-year teaser. Buyers are WordPress site owners who value the plugin's long track record and want predictable annual pricing, and multi-site owners who buy per-site rather than per-account, meaning Premium cost scales linearly with the number of sites managed. The trade-off against Rank Math is that Yoast's free tier includes fewer schema types and no built-in rank tracking, so Rank Math remains the better zero-cost option for a buyer who has not decided which plugin to commit to.
What people use it for
- A WordPress site owner who wants a predictable flat annual price with no renewal surprise, unlike some competitor pricing patterns
- A multi-site publisher needing Local, Video and News SEO functionality bundled rather than bought as three separate add-ons
- A small blog that can run indefinitely on the free tier without hitting a feature wall that forces an upgrade
- A content team wanting AI-assisted bulk metadata generation to clear a backlog of missing titles and descriptions
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Yoast SEO.
- Premium is licensed per site, so an agency or publisher managing many WordPress installs pays linearly per site with no volume discount tier published, unlike Rank Math's site-count-bundled plans.
- The free tier's schema output is more basic than Rank Math's free tier, which ships more predefined schema types at no cost.
- There is no rank tracking feature at all, free or paid, so any team wanting to monitor rankings needs an entirely separate tool regardless of Yoast tier.
- Some previously free features have migrated behind Premium over successive releases, so long-time users have seen the free-to-paid boundary move against them.
- The AI-assisted content and metadata features are newer additions and reviewers note they are less mature than dedicated AI content tools such as Surfer SEO or Frase.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Yoast SEO
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Yoast SEOvsSurfer SEO
Surfer SEO: If content optimisation against ranking competitors matters more than on-page technical checks
- Yoast SEOvsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: If you need site-wide crawling rather than a per-page WordPress plugin
Pricing
What Yoast SEO costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- SEO and readability analysis
- XML sitemaps and basic schema output
- Google Search Console integration
Premium
$118.8 /yr
- Flat rate with no renewal price increase, per site
- Redirect manager and multi-keyphrase optimisation
- Local, Video and News SEO plugins included
- 24/7 expert support and SEO Academy access
Capabilities
Features
Readability and SEO analysis
Traffic-light scoring of content readability and keyphrase optimisation as you write
Redirect manager
Premium-only automatic redirect prompts when a page URL changes or is deleted
Multi-keyphrase optimisation
Content scored against up to five keyphrases per page on Premium
Bundled add-ons
Local SEO, Video SEO and News SEO plugins included with Premium at no extra charge
AI-assisted metadata
Bulk generation of missing titles and descriptions with AI drafting, approved in bulk
Google Docs add-on
One collaborative-writing seat included with Premium
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Does the price go up after the first year?
No. Yoast charges the same flat 118.80 US dollars a year per site every year, unlike some competitors that discount the first year and raise the renewal price.
Is the free version usable long-term, or is it a trial?
It is a genuinely usable free tier; many small sites run on it indefinitely without ever needing Premium.
Can one Premium licence cover multiple sites?
No. Premium is licensed per site; multiple sites each need their own licence.
Keep looking
Where to go from Yoast SEO
- Yoast SEO alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Yoast SEO pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Yoast SEO badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All SEO softwareThe full category
- Best SEO softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best SEO software for
Compare Yoast SEO with
- Rank Math
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Surfer SEO
- seoClarity
- Nightwatch
- Wincher
- Advanced Web Ranking
- Sitebulb
- Google Search Console
- Keyword Insights
- Linkody
- OnCrawl
- AnswerThePublic
- Botify
- Lumar
- Mangools
- Rank Math
- Nightwatch
Other SEO software
WordPress SEO plugin with a free tier that undercuts Yoast on schema and feature count
Free plan11 researched notesDesktop crawler for technical SEO audits and site analysis
Free, then £199/yr12 researched notesEnterprise SEO platform with unlimited users on every plan, priced on data volume instead of seats
Pricing on request11 researched notesSlovenia-built rank tracker with agency white-labelling and AI answer tracking bundled into every plan
11 researched notesDanish rank tracker aimed at agencies and small teams wanting a cheaper AccuRanker alternative
Pricing on request11 researched notesRank tracking with SEO forecasting and market share modelling built in
11 researched notesTechnical SEO audit tool that crawls sites and generates visual, prioritized hints
From $95/mo8 researched notesGoogle's free tool for monitoring how a site appears in Search
Open source11 researched notesAI keyword clustering tool that groups keywords by live SERP overlap
11 researched notesBacklink monitoring tool for teams that only want link alerts, not a full SEO suite
11 researched notesTechnical SEO crawler that joins crawl data with server log files
Pricing on request11 researched notesKeyword and content ideation tool that visualizes search questions and phrases
From $20/mo8 researched notesEnterprise technical SEO platform that also renders pages for search bots when engineering cannot
Pricing on request11 researched notesWebsite intelligence platform, formerly DeepCrawl, that can fail a build on SEO and accessibility regressions
Pricing on request11 researched notesWordPress SEO plugin with a free tier that undercuts Yoast on schema and feature count
Free plan11 researched notesSlovenia-built rank tracker with agency white-labelling and AI answer tracking bundled into every plan
11 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Yoast SEO, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Yoast SEO pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Yoast SEO
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Yoast SEO badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best SEO software alternatives
Backlink monitoring tool for teams that only want link alerts, not a full SEO suite
Per month by tracked domains and backlinks
Daily rank tracking built for speed and large keyword volumes
Per month by tracked keyword countA bundle of five simplified SEO tools including KWFinder and SERPWatcher
Per month by usage volumeGoogle's free tool for monitoring how a site appears in Search
Open source, no licence feeSlovenia-built rank tracker with agency white-labelling and AI answer tracking bundled into every plan
Per month by tracked keywords, sites and AI usage volumeAI keyword clustering tool that groups keywords by live SERP overlap
Per month by credit volume, with pay-as-you-go availableRank tracking with SEO forecasting and market share modelling built in
Per month by tracked keyword count