Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

Most WordPress SEO plugins do the same four things: page titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps and schema markup. What separates them is everything that happens after install, namely how much of your workflow they take over, how hard they upsell, and what the invoice looks like in year two. Every price on this page was re-checked in August 2026, renewals included. One plugin that used to sit on this list has since been retired outright.

Disclosure: one link on this page is an affiliate link. If you buy through it we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It has not changed the recommendation, since the plugin we tell most readers to use is the free one and free pays us nothing.

The WordPress SEO plugins compared

Read the renewal column before the price column. Two of these plugins advertise a first-year discount that roughly doubles when the card gets charged again.

Plugin	Free version	Entry paid plan	Renews at	Sites	Active installs
Rank Math	Yes	PRO, €7.99/mo billed yearly (€95.88, ex VAT)	€8.99/mo, or €107.88 a year	Unlimited personal	4 million+
Yoast SEO	Yes	Premium, $118.80/year (ex VAT)	Not advertised separately	1	10 million+
All in One SEO	Yes	Basic, €49.50 first year	€99.00 a year	1	2 million+
SEOPress	Yes	PRO, $49/year	$49/year, locked	1	300,000+
The SEO Framework	Yes	Pro, $7/mo billed yearly	Not advertised separately	2	200,000+
Squirrly SEO	Yes	PRO, $9.99/mo	$9.99/mo	5	30,000+
Ahrefs SEO plugin	Retired	Withdrawn 31 October 2025	n/a	n/a	Listing closed

Rank Math

Rank Math is the plugin we put on new client sites by default, and the reason has nothing to do with the feature list. It is where the paywall sits. Schema, the redirection manager, 404 monitoring, Search Console integration and more than one focus keyword per post are all in the free build, where Yoast reserves several of those for Premium. That is a real saving on a five-site portfolio, not a marketing difference.

The trade-off is noise. Rank Math ships with a lot switched on and it will tell you about Content AI more often than you would like. The modules screen is the fix: turn off what you are not using and the plugin gets quiet. Per the WordPress.org listing it is on over 4 million sites with a 4.8 rating from roughly 7,500 reviews, so it is no longer the risky challenger it was when this post was first written. If you want the long version, we have a full Rank Math review that goes through the modules one by one.

Key features

• Redirection manager and 404 log in the free version
• Schema generator with 24 types free, 840+ in PRO per the vendor comparison table
• Bulk editing of titles and descriptions from the posts list
• Search Console and Analytics 4 data inside wp-admin, with the deeper reporting reserved for PRO
• Keyword rank tracking for 500 keywords on PRO, which is fine for one site but not a replacement for a dedicated rank tracking tool

Pricing

• Free: $0, and it is the version most readers should run
• PRO: €7.99/mo billed annually (€95.88 ex VAT), renewing at €8.99/mo or €107.88 a year, unlimited personal sites
• Business: €24.99/mo billed annually, renewing at €27.99/mo, 100 client sites
• Agency: €54.99/mo billed annually, renewing at €64.99/mo, 500 client sites
• Bundle: Rank Math plus WP Rocket at €11.99/mo billed annually, renewing at €13.99/mo

Figures taken from the Rank Math pricing page in August 2026. The page served euros to us and prices exclude VAT.

Best for: anyone starting fresh, and freelancers who want one licence covering every site they own.

Skip it if: upsell prompts in the admin genuinely irritate you, or you need a plugin that a junior editor can be handed without a walkthrough.

Yoast SEO

Yoast is the default answer, and defaults are worth something. It is on more than 10 million sites, and every WordPress tutorial written in the last decade assumes you have it. If you hand a site to a client who will Google their way out of problems, Yoast has the biggest pile of answers waiting for them.

Where it costs you is the free tier. One focus keyword per post, no redirect manager, no internal linking suggestions. The content and readability analysis is still the best-explained of the bunch and it is genuinely useful if you are learning how to SEO optimise blog posts in WordPress, but treat the green light as a writing prompt rather than a target. Chasing a green bullet has produced more bad prose than any other feature in this category, particularly around the heading tag structure it keeps flagging.

Key features

• XML sitemaps and canonical handling that has been battle-tested on 10 million sites
• Readability and content analysis with plain-English explanations of every warning
• Google, Facebook and X preview panes
• Internal link counter per post, and link suggestions on Premium only
• Redirect manager on Premium, which fires automatically when you change a slug

Pricing

• Yoast SEO free: $0
• Yoast SEO Premium: $118.80 a year ex VAT, one site
• WooCommerce SEO bundle: $178.80 a year ex VAT, worth a look if you sell and are already auditing your WooCommerce plugin stack
• Yoast SEO AI+: $358.80 a year ex VAT

Taken from the Yoast shop in August 2026. Yoast does not publish a separate renewal figure, so assume you pay the same again. Note that Premium is priced per site, which is what makes it expensive for agencies rather than the headline number. The old $99 figure this post used to quote is three years out of date.

Best for: client sites where somebody non-technical will be editing posts, and anyone who values a decade of documentation over a bigger feature list.

Skip it if: you run more than two sites. Per-site pricing at $118.80 gets painful fast, and the free tier withholds redirects, which is the one thing you actually need at scale.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO)

AIOSEO is the third of the big three and the one whose pricing needs reading twice. Every plan on the page is shown at 50% off the first year. Basic is €49.50 now and €99.00 when it renews. Plus is €99.50 then €199.00. Pro is €199.50 then €399.00. Elite is €299.50 then €599.00. The earlier version of this article quoted the discounted figures as if they were the price, which is exactly the trap the pricing page is designed to set.

The product itself is solid, particularly the local SEO and WooCommerce modules, which are further along than what Rank Math offers out of the box. Its own homepage claims 3,000,000+ professionals while the WordPress.org listing reports 2 million+ active installs, so pick whichever number you find more convincing.

Key features

• Site-wide SEO audit with a scored checklist
• Search appearance previews for posts, taxonomies and custom post types
• Link Assistant, which surfaces orphaned posts and suggests internal links
• Local SEO and business schema, strong if you have physical locations
• Actively maintained: the WordPress.org listing records a last update of 28 August 2026, checked August 2026

Pricing

• Basic: €49.50 first year, €99.00 on renewal, 1 site
• Plus: €99.50 first year, €199.00 on renewal, 3 sites
• Pro: €199.50 first year, €399.00 on renewal, 10 sites
• Elite: €299.50 first year, €599.00 on renewal, 100 sites

Checked on the AIOSEO pricing page in August 2026, which quoted euros at the check date. There is no paid tier without a first-year discount, so budget for the renewal number from day one.

Best for: local businesses and stores that need location schema and product markup without assembling it themselves.

Skip it if: you are budgeting on the sticker price. Basic doubling to €99.00 in year two makes it worse value than SEOPress for a single site.

SEOPress

SEOPress is the quiet one, and it has the most honest pricing on this page. PRO starts at $49 a year for a single site, with 5-site and unlimited tiers above it, and the vendor states plainly that the price you pay at purchase is your renewal price for as long as auto-renew stays on. No first-year discount theatre. After three years that comes to $147, less than half what Yoast Premium costs over the same period.

Feature-wise it covers the ground: content analysis, 404 monitoring, a broken link checker, image sitemaps, schema and a white-label mode that hides SEOPress branding from clients entirely. The redirect handling is competent enough that you can skip a separate tool, though if you are migrating a large site it is still worth comparing against purpose-built WordPress redirect plugins. At 300,000+ installs it is smaller than the big three, but the WordPress.org listing records a last update of 29 July 2026, so it is actively maintained.

Key features

• Full white label, so client dashboards never mention SEOPress
• 404 monitoring and redirect management
• Content analysis that checks headings, images, titles and structure
• XML, HTML, image and video sitemaps
• No advertising or upsell notices inside the plugin, which is the whole pitch

Pricing

• Free: $0, and unusually complete
• PRO: from $49 a year for one site, ex VAT, renewing at the same price
• 5-site and unlimited licences: available, priced above the single-site tier. The vendor page did not show exact figures at the check date, so confirm at checkout rather than trusting a roundup

From the SEOPress pricing page, checked August 2026. The Insights and bundle prices this article previously listed could not be verified and have been removed rather than repeated.

Best for: freelancers who resell maintenance and want a plugin the client never sees, and anyone who hates renewal surprises.

Skip it if: you want the biggest community. When something breaks at 11pm, there are far more Yoast and Rank Math threads to search.

The SEO Framework

This is the anti-plugin. No ads, no upsell notices, no dashboard widget begging you to connect an account. It sets sane defaults automatically, writes your meta descriptions from your content, and gets out of the way. If your objection to SEO plugins is that they turn wp-admin into a billboard, The SEO Framework is the answer and the free version has no artificial limits.

Two caveats, and they matter. First, the WordPress.org listing records a last update of 10 December 2025, checked August 2026, which is a long gap in a category where Google keeps changing the rules. That same listing shows a 4.9 rating from 378 reviewers and 200,000+ active installs, so it is not abandoned, but it is not moving fast either. Second, a lot of what the competition bundles here lives in paid extensions instead. Because it stays out of your way, it also pairs well with an SEO optimised theme that already handles clean markup and breadcrumbs.

Key features

• Automatic meta descriptions and titles generated from your content
• Robots meta control for indexing and crawling
• Inline SEO indicators that flag issues as you write
• Extension manager for the paid add-ons, including local SEO and AMP
• Genuinely the lightest of the seven in the admin

Pricing

• Free: $0, unlimited sites, no feature gate
• Pro: $7/month billed yearly, extensions on 2 sites
• Business: $17/month billed yearly, 20 sites
• Agency: $27/month billed yearly, 200 sites

From the The SEO Framework pricing page in August 2026, in US dollars. That page offers a full refund of your last transaction within 30 days of purchase or renewal, and advertises no separate renewal price. The 2-site minimum on Pro exists so you can license a staging copy, which is a thoughtful touch nobody else bothers with.

Best for: developers, and anyone maintaining a site they want to think about as little as possible.

Skip it if: you want in-editor coaching. There is no content score telling you to add a subheading, by design.

Squirrly SEO

Squirrly took a different route: less a meta-tag manager, more a coach that assigns you weekly SEO tasks and grades your progress. The keyword research built into the editor is the part worth having, since it saves a tab-switch while drafting. It is not a substitute for real keyword research tools, but for a solo blogger it is enough to stop you optimising for a phrase nobody searches.

Two things to know before you commit. It is billed monthly rather than annually, so the mental maths differs from everything else here. And the WordPress.org listing now goes by GEO Plugin by Squirrly SEO, reflecting a pivot toward AI-search visibility, with 30,000+ active installs. That is a much smaller base than the big three, which matters when you are searching for a fix.

Key features

• Live writing assistant that scores a draft against a chosen keyword
• Keyword research and labelling inside the editor
• Per-page SEO audit rather than site-wide only
• Rich snippets and automation rules

Pricing

• Free: $0/month, 1 site
• PRO: $9.99/month, 5 sites
• Web Dev Kit: $51.20/month, 10 sites
• Business: $71.99/month, 7 sites

Read off the Squirrly SEO pricing page in August 2026 in US dollars. Yes, Business costs more than Web Dev Kit for fewer sites; the two plans bundle different tools. The $20.99 PRO price this post used to quote no longer exists, and it has moved down, not up.

Best for: solo bloggers who want to be told what to do next and will actually follow the tasks.

Skip it if: you are building for clients. A small install base and monthly billing are both friction you do not need on a handover.

Ahrefs SEO plugin: retired, do not install it

This section used to recommend the Ahrefs SEO plugin. It should not have survived this long. Ahrefs retired the plugin on 31 October 2025, and the WordPress.org listing was closed permanently in February 2026 at the author’s request. If it is still sitting in your plugins list, it is unmaintained code with an API connection that no longer has a future. Deactivate and delete it.

What to do instead depends on why you had it. If you wanted traffic, backlink and Site Audit data for a domain you own, Ahrefs Free covers that for verified domains at no cost, which is where Ahrefs now points former plugin users. If you wanted the paid research suite, Ahrefs sells Starter at $29/month and Lite at $129/month, with Standard at $249 and Advanced at $449, and annual billing saves up to 17%. That is a separate purchase from your WordPress SEO plugin, not an alternative to it. If it was purely position tracking you were after, a cheaper option is one of the rank tracking tools built for that single job.

Source: the Ahrefs plugin retirement notice and the ahrefs.com pricing page, both checked August 2026.

What most SEO plugin roundups get wrong

They quote the discount as the price. AIOSEO Basic is not a €49.50 plugin. It is a €99.00 plugin with a first-year coupon. Rank Math PRO is not €95.88 forever, it is €107.88 from year two. Once you look at three-year cost rather than sticker price, the ranking in this post changes: SEOPress and The SEO Framework move up, AIOSEO moves down.

They act like the plugin is the SEO. Every plugin here writes the same title tag. None of them writes your content, earns your links, or fixes a theme that ships render-blocking CSS on every page. If your pages are not ranking, the cause is far more likely to be thin content or a slow site than the wrong meta box. Fixing WordPress speed and getting your images properly optimised will move more numbers than switching from Yoast to Rank Math ever will.

They ignore the switching cost. Migrating means importing settings, checking that canonicals and redirects came across, deleting the old plugin so you do not emit two sets of meta tags, and spot-checking a sample of posts. Budget half a day for a small site. Roundups that tell you to switch never mention this, because they get paid on the click, not on your Saturday.

They do not tell you the currency they saw. Rank Math and AIOSEO both quoted euro pricing. Yoast, SEOPress, The SEO Framework and Squirrly showed dollars. Vendor pages geo-switch, so the figure you see may differ from the figure in any table on the internet, including this one.

Which one should you actually pick

• You are setting up your first site. Rank Math free. Run the setup wizard, connect Search Console, then leave it alone and go write. If you are still at the planning stage, our guide on how to start a blog covers the order to do things in.
• You already run Yoast and it works. Stay. Add Premium only if you are creating redirects by hand every week.
• You manage sites for clients. SEOPress PRO for the white label and the locked renewal price, or Rank Math Business if you want one licence across 100 sites.
• You have a local business or a shop. AIOSEO, with the renewal price budgeted from the start.
• You want the plugin to shut up. The SEO Framework, accepting the slower release cadence.
• You need someone to tell you what to write next. Squirrly, on the free tier first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our call

Install Rank Math free if you are starting a new site or your current setup annoys you. It is the most capable free tier here and you can stay on it indefinitely.

Buy SEOPress PRO at $49 if you want one paid licence whose price never moves, or if you hand sites to clients and would rather they never saw a plugin brand at all.

Stay on Yoast free if it is already installed, already configured and nothing is broken. Nobody has ever lost a ranking by not switching SEO plugins.

Choose AIOSEO instead only if local or product schema is central to your business, and only after you have written the renewal figure down somewhere you will see it in twelve months.

Do not install the Ahrefs SEO plugin. It no longer exists. That single correction is the most useful thing on this page, and it is the reason we re-check every price rather than reprinting last year’s.