COMPARISON · 2026-09-22 · READ TIME 4 MIN
jev-seo vs Semrush vs Ahrefs vs OpenSEO
jev-seo is the free, MIT-licensed alternative to Semrush, Ahrefs, and OpenSEO for the jobs that matter to a developer or an agent: audits, GEO citation scoring, schema validation, AI crawler radar, and rank tracking, all local, all under 30MB RAM.
The honest matrix
| Capability | jev-seo | Semrush | Ahrefs | OpenSEO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, MIT | $130+/mo | $99+/mo | Free + paid tiers |
| License | Open source | Proprietary | Proprietary | Mixed |
| Runs locally | Yes | No | No | No |
| RAM footprint | Under 30MB | Browser heavy | Browser heavy | Browser heavy |
| Site audit | Yes, file-level | Yes, crawl | Yes, crawl | Yes |
| Schema validation | Yes, 100/100 | Partial | No | Partial |
| GEO citation score | Yes, 1 to 10 | No | No | No |
| AI crawler radar | Yes | No | No | No |
| Rank tracking | Yes, SQLite | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content briefs | Yes, from SERP | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent MCP server | Yes | No | No | No |
| Backlink index | No | Yes | Yes, best | Limited |
| Historical traffic | No | Yes | Yes | Limited |
Where jev-seo wins
- Price. Zero subscriptions, no paid API. The only optional key is a free TypeSafe Jev key for GEO scoring.
- GEO. None of the major dashboards score how likely a generative engine is to cite you. jev-seo does, from 1 to 10 with confidence, and reports the missing signals.
- Robots and sitemap for AI crawlers. A one-command check of GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot policy that no big dashboard exposes.
- Schema validation. Local, instant, 100/100 on this site's JSON-LD.
- Agents. The MCP server turns every command into a native tool for Claude Code, Cursor, and other agent hosts.
- Privacy and CI. Local file audits never leave your machine; the binary and its exit codes slot into pre-push gates.
Where the big tools still win
- Backlink indexes. Ahrefs owns the deepest link database on earth. That data cannot be scraped free, so nobody local matches it.
- Historical traffic graphs. Ten years of clickstream estimates live on their servers. jev-seo tracks your own positions forward from the day you install it.
- Rendered crawl. If you need JavaScript-rendered page analysis at scale, the hosted crawlers handle it for you.
That is the honest split: keep a paid tool only for the proprietary data you cannot reproduce, and run the judgment layer locally for free. For most single-site owners and agent workflows, the paid tool disappears from the budget entirely.
How the switch looks in practice
The step-by-step is on the jev for SEO guide. In summary: run jev-seo audit ., then jev-seo geo on your money page, then jev-seo rank --domain your.site --query "your term" weekly. One release binary, one local SQLite file, no dashboard to log into.
Frequently asked questions
Are the price figures current? Semrush and Ahrefs list from about $99 to $130 a month as of this writing; both raise prices on higher tiers. Verify on their pricing pages before switching.
Is the comparison biased? Yes, in that this is the product's own site. The matrix is verifiable: install jev-seo and run the commands referenced here against any page you control.
What is the one thing jev-seo cannot do that I will miss? Ahrefs' backlink database, if you run link-building campaigns. Everything else has a local substitute in this tool.
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