Freelancers, indie developers, and small teams who want a pay-as-you-go SEO suite without a $100/month Semrush or Ahrefs subscription. You bring your own DataForSEO API key and pay only for the data you use. Docker Compose gets you running in minutes locally; Cloudflare Workers deploy lets you share one instance across a team. The built-in MCP server connects your AI coding agent to your SEO data directly.
OpenSEO
OpenSEO is an open source alternative to Semrush and Ahrefs. Open source Semrush alternative: keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, backlinks, AI visibility. Docker or Cloudflare deploy, BYO DataForSEO key. MIT. MIT licensed, 11.3k GitHub stars, hosted version available, self-host with Docker, and last released 2026-08-09.
Open source Semrush alternative: keyword research, rank tracking, site audits, backlinks, AI visibility. Docker or Cloudflare deploy, BYO DataForSEO key. MIT.
How to start todayIn the product

Should you switch?
You want an all-in-one hosted SEO suite with no setup. OpenSEO requires a DataForSEO API key regardless of deployment mode: you pay DataForSEO directly per API call. Local Docker mode has no auth by default. The hosted tier on openseo.so adds 28% to DataForSEO request costs.
Local Docker mode runs with auth disabled and should only be exposed behind your own auth-protected reverse proxy or private network. DataForSEO API credits are charged per request and cost estimates vary with usage. Anonymous telemetry is enabled by default on self-hosted installs; disable with OPENSEO_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 in your .env file.
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Community proof
Some quotes here endorse the approach rather than report first-hand use, or report a problem. We label those.
"Right now open-seo seems to be tied to a single account/user (me), so I can't have anyone else log in and use the instance under their own identity, they'd have to use my credentials directly, which isn't ideal for testing, handoff, or letting a teammate poke around independently."
"Apps looking super interesting. Would love to see map result keywords being tracked for a specific business added to the roadmap too. I've built a tool to this on my own but having it part of a self-hosted tool would be fantastic."
Maintenance health
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cp .env.example .env && docker compose up -dGitHub
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