Moz Keyword Explorer vs Semrush Keyword Magic Tool: which keyword module is worth paying for?

Moz Keyword Explorer and the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool solve the same problem in opposite ways. Moz returns a small number of keywords with a lot of judgement attached to each one, including Difficulty, Organic CTR, Priority and the minimum Domain Authority currently holding a first page slot. Semrush returns an enormous number of keywords with less judgement per row and expects you to filter. Moz Pro Standard costs $99 a month and allows 150 keyword queries in that month. Semrush Pro costs $139.95 and allows 3,000 reports a day. If you research in long sessions, that gap decides the question before any feature does.

This article compares the two modules against each other. If you have already picked a side and you are looking for something cheaper to do the same job, the replacement options are broken out separately: the Moz Keyword Explorer alternative covers the 150 query ceiling and the saved list caps, and the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool alternative covers the export limits and the seed keyword throttle.

The two modules side by side

	Moz Keyword Explorer	Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
Entry plan with the module	Moz Pro Standard, $99 a month	Semrush Pro, $139.95 a month
How usage is metered	150 keyword queries per month	3,000 reports per day, 100 seed keywords per hour
Results per report	Suggestions per query, saved into lists	10,000 on Pro, 30,000 on Guru, 50,000 on Business
Saved list ceiling on the entry plan	5 lists of 100 keywords, so 500 total	Keyword Manager lists, exportable within plan limits
Database size claimed	1.25 billion keyword suggestions, 170 Google search engines	Over 27.3 billion keywords in the knowledge base
Authority metric	Domain Authority, plus minimum DA on the SERP	Authority Score
Paid search data	No	Yes, including advertiser and ad copy data
Free access without a subscription	Preview limited to 3 searches a day	10 results in the interface and 0 in export

The metering difference is the whole comparison

Almost every published comparison of these two tools argues about database size. That is the least useful difference, because both indexes are far larger than any one site will exhaust. The difference that actually changes your working day is how each vendor counts your usage, and the two chose opposite units.

Moz counts keyword queries per month. Standard gets 150 of them, which is roughly 5 a day if you spread them evenly, and nobody researches evenly. A real session looks like one seed term, a dozen related ideas, eight competitor terms and a few sanity checks. That is thirty queries in half an hour, or a fifth of the month. Medium at $179 raises the same counter to 5,000 and Large at $299 to 15,000.

Semrush counts reports per day and seed keywords per hour. Pro allows 3,000 reports daily and 100 seeds hourly. You will not hit 3,000 reports in a day. You can absolutely hit 100 seed keywords in an hour if you are working through a competitor list, and when you do, the tool makes you wait rather than charging you. One vendor rations the month, the other paces the hour. Rationing the month is what makes people cancel, because the tool stops working at exactly the moment the project is going well.

Here is the arithmetic nobody puts in the comparison tables. Semrush Pro costs 41 percent more than Moz Pro Standard, and on daily throughput it is not close. It is the difference between 5 lookups a day and a ceiling you will not reach. If the only thing you need is keyword research volume, the cheaper plan is the more expensive one.

What Moz gives you that Semrush does not

Moz would be a poor choice if it were only smaller. It is not. Two things it does are genuinely hard to replicate.

The first is minimum Domain Authority on the SERP. Moz shows you the weakest site currently holding a first page position for the keyword. That single number answers a question every other tool makes you infer: is a site like mine even eligible here? A difficulty score of 42 means nothing without knowing whether the floor on that SERP is a DA 20 blog or a DA 78 publisher. Moz tells you outright.

The second is Priority, which folds Volume, Difficulty and Organic CTR into one 0 to 100 sort order. Organic CTR is the ingredient people forget. A keyword with 8,000 searches a month where ads, a featured snippet and an AI answer take most of the clicks can be worth less than a keyword with 900 searches and a clean organic result set. Priority catches that, and a raw volume column does not.

Moz also reports volume as a range rather than a single figure. That looks like a weakness in a screenshot and is closer to a strength in practice, because it stops people treating a modelled estimate as a measurement. How much any of these numbers should be trusted is worth understanding before you pick a side, and we covered it in how accurate keyword search volume is.

What Semrush gives you that Moz does not

Scale and paid search. The Semrush knowledge base puts the Keyword Magic Tool database at over 27.3 billion keywords, which is roughly twenty times the 1.25 billion suggestions Moz advertises. For most sites that gap is theoretical. It stops being theoretical the moment you work in a language other than English, a small country, or a niche with genuinely long tail queries, because that is where a smaller index simply returns nothing.

The other real difference is paid search data. Semrush carries advertiser counts, ad copy and cost per click alongside organic figures. Moz does not. If you are deciding whether to chase a keyword organically or just buy it, only one of these tools shows you both halves of that decision. Worth flagging one inconsistency, in fairness to both vendors: Semrush marketing pages quote 28 billion keywords across 142 regional databases while the knowledge base says 27.3 billion. Both are Semrush sources and they do not agree.

Which one should you pay for?

Pick Moz if you report to clients who already know Domain Authority, if minimum DA on the SERP is how you judge winnability, and if your research is occasional rather than continuous. Standard at $99 is genuinely fine for someone who researches one site in short bursts. Just go in knowing 150 is the number.

Pick Semrush if you research daily, work across multiple sites or clients, need volume in markets outside the United States, or want paid and organic data in the same view. Pro at $139.95 is the cheapest honest entry into continuous keyword work between these two.

Pick neither if your actual bottleneck is what happens after the export. This is the case more often than tool comparisons admit. Both modules end at the same place: a list of keywords with numbers attached. Grouping them by intent, deciding which page owns which group and putting those groups in a publishing order is still manual in both, and it is the step that takes the afternoon. That is the job our keyword clustering tool does, and pulling volume for a list you already have is the search volume checker.

One practical note before you commit to either. SEO software is a recurring line item that grows quietly, especially once a second seat, an API add on or a higher tier gets approved mid quarter, and the annual figure is usually larger than anyone on the team guesses. If nobody is watching that spend, running the software budget through a tool that categorizes recurring subscriptions automatically makes the renewal conversation a lot shorter than a rummage through twelve months of card statements.

Is Moz Keyword Explorer free?

There is a free preview on moz.com that works without an account, limited to 3 searches per day as stated directly under the search button. It returns top suggestions, monthly volume, organic CTR and difficulty for one term. Lists, exports and the full metric set need a Moz Pro subscription starting at $99 a month.

Is the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool free?

Only as a preview. Without an SEO Toolkit subscription the Keyword Magic Tool returns 10 results in the interface and 0 in export, with 10 reports a day and 10 seed keywords an hour. You can look at it, and you cannot take anything out of it. Full access starts with Semrush Pro at $139.95 a month.

Is Moz Keyword Difficulty the same as Semrush Keyword Difficulty?

No, and comparing the two numbers directly will mislead you. Both are 0 to 100 scores, but they are built from different inputs and calibrated against different link indexes, so the same keyword routinely scores several points apart. Use one tool consistently and compare keywords within it. A score is a ranking, not a measurement.

Which has more accurate search volume, Moz or Semrush?

Neither can be accurate in the strict sense, because only Google holds the real figures and every third party models them from Google Keyword Planner plus clickstream data. Semrush usually reports a single number and Moz reports a range. The range is the more honest presentation of the same uncertainty. Treat both as directional and never compare a figure from one tool against a figure from the other.

The short version

Moz Keyword Explorer is the better judgement tool and the worse workhorse. Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is the better workhorse and gives you less opinion per row. At $99 against $139.95 the price gap is small enough that throughput should decide it, and on throughput the comparison is 150 lookups a month against a ceiling you will not reach. If you research occasionally and value minimum DA, take Moz. If you research continuously, take Semrush and expect to do the clustering yourself. Full plan by plan figures for each are on our Moz Pro pricing and Semrush pricing breakdowns.