Recomma vs Semrush (2026): an SEO suite with AI tracking, or a tracker that proves fixes

Semrush sells AI search tracking as part of the largest SEO suite in the market: a $99 AI Visibility Toolkit, Semrush One bundles that put it beside keyword and rank tracking, and Enterprise AIO for large brands. Recomma does one job — it measures how often AI answers name your brand, attaches a sample size and an error bar to every figure, prices the questions by keyword demand, and re-measures each fix fourteen days after it ships. If you already live in Semrush, its toolkit is the shorter path; if you need to prove which changes moved the number, Recomma is built for that.

At a glance

Semrush's figures are from its SEO + AI Search pricing, AI Visibility pricing and toolkit knowledge base, in US dollars. Recomma's are from the plan table the product enforces.

Three ways to buy Semrush's AI tracking

The AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 a month for one project: 25 tracked prompts, one domain in Brand Performance, 300 AI analysis queries a day, 1,000 prompt research queries a day, AI checks in Site Audit for up to 100 pages and ten CSV exports a day. Another 50 prompts cost $60 a month, and another Brand Performance domain or location $99. Every teammate needs a licence of their own, and the toolkit itself has no free trial (toolkit knowledge base). The AI pricing page shows the same $99 as "per domain, billed annually" (AI pricing).

Semrush One bundles the SEO and AI Visibility toolkits. Starter is $199 a month ($165.17 billed yearly) with 50 prompts tracked daily; Pro+ is $299 ($248.17) with 100; Advanced is $549 ($455.67) with 200, and adds API data integration (pricing). The knowledge base puts the SEO side at 5, 15 and 40 websites and 500, 1,500 and 5,000 daily keywords (What is Semrush One). The $139 SEO plan below it monitors custom prompts too, but does not say how many.

Enterprise AIO is priced on request. It lists unlimited prompt tracking across nine engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek — with analysis by brand, product line and market, ROI attribution and forecasting (Enterprise pricing).

Recomma sells three self-serve plans and an Enterprise tier quoted by a person. Starter is $30 a month for 50 prompts, sampled weekly; Growth is $299 for 300 prompts, daily, across three projects; Scale is $999 for 500 prompts with no limit on projects or engines. Prompts pool across the workspace, and members are unlimited. The full table is on the pricing page.

What 100 daily prompts cost

List prices compare badly when the bundles differ, so here is one case: a hundred prompts, tracked daily, for one brand and one user.

For AI tracking alone at this size, the Semrush toolkit is cheaper. Where the numbers turn is past it: 300 prompts is Recomma's Growth at $299, while the largest Semrush One plan stops at 200 for $549. And a second colleague on the toolkit is a second licence. If you would pay for Semrush's SEO tools anyway, Pro+ gives you the 100 prompts and the suite for the same $299.

Engines, and how answers are collected

Semrush's engine list depends on the report. Its data documentation names Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini and ChatGPT Search for prompt tracking, and adds Perplexity for Brand Performance (where the data comes from). The toolkit page and the features overview name only ChatGPT and AI Mode for prompt tracking (AI features), so check inside the product before you buy for a specific engine.

On collection, the two agree. Semrush says its prompt responses are "captured from real requests and not via any APIs of LLMs", and that it reads ChatGPT in search mode. Recomma captures ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and Google AI Mode from the interface a reader sees, for the same reason, and asks Perplexity through its own API: in our interface-vs-API study only 8% of the pages ChatGPT's interface cited appeared in the API answer to the same question.

Where they differ is what is said about the count. Semrush calls its metrics "reliable directional signals" and does not publish how many answers sit behind a figure. Recomma prints the number of answers and a 95% Wilson interval on every figure, and dims a reading too thin to mean anything. Why the error bar explains the choice, and what sampling can see its limits.

What happens after the number

Semrush's strength is the market view. Visibility Overview scores any brand worldwide or by region; Competitor Research finds prompts where rivals are cited and you are not; Prompt Research gives topic volume, difficulty and intent across 42 countries; Brand Performance reports share of voice, sentiment and the narratives AI tells about you, with recommendations. The AI Search Health widget in Site Audit flags what blocks AI crawlers (toolkit).

Recomma's additions are about acting on a gap and proving it:

• Each tracked question is priced with keyword data — monthly searches, the share of clicks a top result takes, and what advertisers bid — so you can see what the market behind a gap is worth.
• A gap becomes an action. When it closes, the reading is frozen, and fourteen days later the same prompts are asked again on fresh answers. The verdict is kept whether or not anything moved.
• The site is audited against fifteen markup rules AI crawlers trip on, with each failing page's markup as it is and as it should be. The checklist lists all fifteen.
• Visits that assistants send to the site are reported beside the answers that sent them.

API, MCP and exports

Semrush's MCP server is on Semrush One Starter and Pro+ and the SEO Classic plans, with 50,000 API units; Advanced needs a units package. It is read-only, signs in with OAuth or an API key, and its documentation lists keyword, search, competitor, traffic and backlink data without mentioning the AI Visibility Toolkit (Semrush MCP). Toolkit CSV exports are capped at 1,000 rows, ten a day per user.

Recomma's read-only REST API comes with Scale; CSV export comes with every plan. Its MCP server, also on every plan, reads and writes: an assistant can list gaps, read site findings, propose prompts and close an action. Every write previews first and needs a separate scope. Fixing what AI search gets wrong, from Claude Code walks through it.

Where Semrush is the better choice

• One suite. Keyword research, rank tracking, site audit and AI visibility in one login and one bill, with data that carries over between toolkits.
• Market research. A database of over 317 million prompts and responses, with topic volume and intent, and visibility scores for any brand without setting up a project.
• Engines and markets at the top. Nine engines on Enterprise AIO, and prompt tracking in more than 220 countries and territories.
• A free plan and a seven-day trial of Semrush One. Recomma has no free plan.
• Track record. Semrush is a long-established company with public reviews; Recomma is new and has none yet.

Where Recomma is the better choice

• Price at the bottom. $30 a month for 50 prompts, daily — against $99 for 25 daily.
• Prompts at scale. 300 prompts on Growth at $299, pooled across projects, with unlimited members; Semrush's self-serve plans stop at 200.
• Numbers you can defend. A sample size and confidence interval on every figure, where Semrush offers directional signals.
• Proof that a fix worked. Actions re-measured fourteen days after they close, against a frozen baseline.
• What the gaps are worth. Every prompt shows the priced demand behind it, so a gap comes with a market size, not only a count.
• An assistant that can act. An MCP server that reads AI visibility data and writes, behind a preview and a separate scope.

Choose Semrush if… choose Recomma if…

Choose Semrush if you already pay for it or want SEO and AI tracking in one place; you need market-wide prompt research; your buyers use Copilot or Claude and you can buy Enterprise AIO; or you want daily tracking on the smallest plan.

Choose Recomma if ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and Google AI Mode and Perplexity cover your buyers; you report figures to someone who will ask whether a movement is real; you need more than 200 prompts or several colleagues without paying per seat; or you want each fix measured, with the verdict kept.

For the other suite in the category, see Recomma vs Ahrefs; for dedicated trackers, Recomma vs Peec AI and Recomma vs Otterly.AI; and for the whole field, the best AI visibility tools.

How we compared

Semrush's plans, prices, engines and limits were read from its public pricing pages and knowledge base on 14 October 2026, in US dollars. Where its own pages disagree — which engines prompt tracking covers, whether the toolkit's $99 is monthly or billed yearly — we say so rather than pick one. Where Semrush does not publish something, such as sample sizes or the AI Visibility data in its MCP server, the table says "Not published" or describes what the page lists. Third-party review scores were left out. Recomma's figures are drawn from the plan table its API enforces, so they change here when they change in the product.