The question we get more than any other is some variant of "I'm using the free tier — when does it make sense to upgrade?" This is the post we wish we'd had to point at. Concrete numbers, concrete use cases, and the audit volumes that actually fit each tier instead of marketing tier-comparison fluff.
If you're trying to figure out whether $5/mo or $39/mo or $99/mo makes sense for you, this should give you the math.
The constraint that drives the answer
The free tier is 5 audits/day, 2 requests/minute. That's the line. Any workflow that requires more than 5 audits in a 24-hour window, or more than 2 audits within a minute, doesn't fit on free. It's not a vague suggestion — it's a hard rate-limit.
That single constraint is what defines the upgrade boundary. Here's what you can and can't do on each tier:
| Tier | Audits | RPM | Batch | History | Realistic use cases |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 5/day | 2 | ❌ | ❌ | Personal projects, one-off checks |
| Starter $5/mo | 200/mo | 10 | ✅ | 30 days | A single site, weekly re-audits, occasional spot checks |
| Basic $15/mo | 1,000/mo | 30 | ✅ | 90 days | 3-5 sites weekly, light agency, pre-deploy gates |
| Pro $39/mo | 5,000/mo | 60 | ✅ | 1 year | 10-20 sites weekly, full agency monitoring, ecommerce |
| Ultra $99/mo | 25,000/mo | 120 | ✅ | Unlimited | 30+ sites, enterprise catalog, white-label reseller |
When Starter ($5/mo) pays for itself
You should be on Starter the moment you have any paid use case, full stop. Here's the math:
- One billable consulting hour ≈ $100-200
- Starter = one billable hour ÷ 20-40
If you ever have to manually re-audit a single site twice in one day, you've already exceeded the free tier's 5/day limit (one audit + four category re-checks). Starter eliminates that friction for $5.
The headline feature unlocked at Starter that isn't available on free:
- Batch audit. Audit multiple URLs in one call. Foundational for any real workflow.
- 30 days of history. Month-over-month deltas on every audit.
- SXO/AEO/AIO scoring included on every audit response.
Break-even: literally one consulting deliverable. If you bill anyone for anything related to SEO, Starter pays for itself the first time you use it.
When Basic ($15/mo) pays for itself
Basic is the tier where the API stops being "a checker for me" and starts being "infrastructure for a process." The use cases that need Basic:
- Pre-deploy SEO gates. Audit each PR's preview vs production. A team shipping 10 PRs/week with 8-page batches uses ~320 audits/month — fits comfortably in Basic's 1,000.
- 3-5 client sites with weekly cadence. Audit each site's top 10 pages once a week = 200-650 audits/month.
- A small ecommerce site (200-500 products). Weekly catalog audit = 800-2,000 audits/month — Basic stretches to cover the small end.
Break-even, agency math: if you bill a client $250 for a quarterly SEO audit, Basic pays for the entire year on one client. With three clients, you've covered Basic five times over.
Break-even, dev team math: one prevented SEO regression. The pre-deploy SEO gate post has the case study — a font swap that knocked LCP 800ms, caught by the gate before merge. Recovering organic traffic from one regression that shipped costs weeks. Catching it costs $15/mo.
When Pro ($39/mo) pays for itself
Pro is the agency standard tier. The use cases that require Pro and don't fit comfortably on Basic:
- An agency with 10-20 clients. At weekly cadence and 10 pages each, that's 400-800 audits/month — Basic-adjacent but with no headroom. Pro at 5,000/mo gives you 5-10x headroom for spot checks, competitor comparisons, and quarterly deep audits.
- A mid-size ecommerce site (1,000-3,000 products). Weekly catalog audit = 4,000-12,000 audits/month — needs Pro at minimum.
- A development team shipping daily with multi-page gates. 100 PRs/month × 10 pages × 2 (pre/post compare) = 2,000 audits.
- Any workflow that benefits from 1-year history retention. Year-over-year comparisons, "did this break with the v2 launch?" forensics, annual SLA reports.
Break-even, agency math: $39/mo across 15 clients = $2.60/client/month. That's invisible against any retainer that includes SEO. If you can pass on $5/client/month as a "monitoring fee" line item, your clients are paying for Pro twice.
Break-even, ecommerce math: if your store does any meaningful organic search traffic, the value of catching a theme-update regression on the product template within a week of it shipping is enormous — probably 100x the monthly cost. Pro pays for itself the first quarter a regression doesn't ship undetected.
When Ultra ($99/mo) pays for itself
Ultra is for businesses where the API is the engine. Three patterns that need it:
- White-label reseller. Build a SaaS on top of the API and resell to your clients. Ultra at $99/mo with unlimited audits and unlimited history is the fixed cost of running a product that can MRR into the thousands.
- Large agency, 30+ clients. Weekly audits across 30 clients × 10 pages = 1,200 audits/week ≈ 5,200/month. Pro gets tight. Add quarterly deep audits and competitor comparisons and you want Ultra's 25,000-audit headroom.
- Enterprise catalog (5,000+ pages, daily audits). Daily audit of 5,000 products = 150,000 audits/month — too big even for Ultra, so you go to sampling strategies. But Ultra is the right starting tier and the largest stratified samples fit.
Break-even, reseller math: the unit economics post walks the numbers. One paying client at $99-149/mo covers Ultra. Two clients break even on hosting + Ultra combined. Three clients are profitable.
Break-even, enterprise math: if the alternative is paying for 4-5 seats of Screaming Frog or a competing SEO suite, Ultra is already cheaper and has API surface those tools don't.
The "I'm not sure" upgrade test
If you're staring at the pricing page and can't decide, run this test:
- Count your domains. Sites you audit at any cadence.
- Count audits per domain per month. (Weekly = 4, daily = 30, ad-hoc = 1-2.)
- Multiply. Add 30% for spot checks and re-runs.
| Result | Plan |
|---|---|
| Under 100 | Starter $5/mo |
| 100-800 | Basic $15/mo |
| 800-4,000 | Pro $39/mo |
| 4,000-20,000 | Ultra $99/mo |
| 20,000+ | Ultra plus a sampling strategy |
Round up. The next tier is almost always cheaper than the cost of being rate-limited at a key moment.
When not to upgrade
Three cases where staying on free is correct:
- You're learning the API. Build something small. Try the endpoints. Confirm it does what you need. That's exactly what free is for.
- You audit one site once a week and don't need history. Free covers that comfortably. Five-a-day is more than weekly.
- You're building a one-off integration that won't be running on Tuesday. Don't pay monthly for a one-time job; do the job on free and skip the subscription.
If you have to write "I'll just be careful with rate limits" into your script, you've outgrown free. Upgrade.
Downgrade math
You can always downgrade. The only durable thing you lose is history older than the new tier's retention window — and even that's filtered, not deleted on the spot, so an upgrade brings it back within the new window. Use that to ratchet up confidently: start at the tier you think you need, downgrade if it's overkill.
Getting started
If you're on free today and you've read this far, you almost certainly belong on Starter or Basic. The hardest part of upgrading is realizing the free tier isn't actually free of opportunity cost — every hour spent working around rate limits is worth more than $15 of your time. Pay the $5 or $15 and move on. Pick a tier.