Rank Math vs Yoast SEO: almost the same price, a different unit

Rank Math and Yoast SEO are the two most installed SEO plugins for WordPress, and the comparison that actually matters is not features, since both check titles, meta descriptions, readability, schema and sitemaps. It is the billing unit. Yoast prices per site. Rank Math prices per person, with a plan that covers as many of your own sites as you want. At one site the two plugins cost almost the same. At three sites, one of them costs three times as much and the other does not.

Pricing, side by side

Annual billing, checked against each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026. Rank Math is currently running a "30% off AI Visibility" promotion on its pricing page; the figures above are the standard renewal prices both plugins bill at, not the promotional price, since a promotion is not what you pay long term. Rank Math shows prices by region; the euro and dollar figures use the same numeral.

The free versions are not equally free

Both plugins have a free tier with no site limit, which is unusual for this category compared to the SaaS tools the rest of this site covers, and both are worth using before paying anything.

Rank Math Free includes unlimited keyword optimization against one focus keyphrase, an SEO analyzer, schema markup generation for most content types, a redirect manager, XML sitemaps, and a free Content AI tier of one to five uses per feature each month, enough to try it.

Yoast Free checks one keyphrase, generates basic schema and sitemaps, but has no built-in redirect manager, so a broken link from a moved or deleted page needs a separate plugin or manual server rules. Its AI-drafted titles and descriptions are a Premium feature, not available for free.

For a solo blogger on a single site with no budget, both are adequate. Rank Math's free tier simply does more, which is why it shows up ahead of Yoast in best free SEO tools.

Content AI and MCP: where Rank Math has pulled ahead

Rank Math is ahead on AI breadth. Content AI is built into every install, free version included, with a free tier of one to five uses per feature each month; higher limits need one of its AI plans, from €5.99 a month billed annually as a launch price. Rank Math MCP is a free bridge, built into the plugin, that lets an AI assistant such as Claude Desktop or GitHub Copilot run SEO tasks on your site directly, from an audit to fixing a supported issue, through natural language rather than the WordPress dashboard. Yoast now has its own connection too: its Abilities for the WordPress Abilities API expose SEO scores and, since 29 September 2026, let an assistant update canonical, robots flags, cornerstone and schema type. The set of tasks is narrower. The full breakdown of what MCP needs a paid plan and what does not is in best SEO MCP servers.

Yoast's AI writing feature is narrower and Premium-only: bulk-drafting titles and meta descriptions for pages that are missing them, which you then approve. Its AI Brand Insights visibility tracker is sold separately in the $358.80-a-year AI+ plan. It is useful for clearing a backlog on an established site, but it is not a research or automation layer the way Rank Math's Content AI and MCP are.

What Yoast still does that Rank Math does not

• Bundled specialty plugins. Premium includes Yoast Local SEO, Video SEO and News SEO, each normally sold separately, at no extra cost on the one site the subscription covers.
• A Google Docs integration. One seat is included with Premium; extra seats are $5 a month each, letting writers check SEO signals inside a Google Doc before it ever reaches WordPress.
• Multiple keyphrases per page. Up to five, with synonym and word-form recognition across more than 20 languages, useful when one post genuinely serves several related searches.
• Longer track record. Yoast predates Rank Math by years and remains the plugin most WordPress users and agencies have already heard of, which matters when a client asks what you installed.

Switching from Yoast to Rank Math

The full procedure, with checks, is in Yoast to Rank Math migration, step by step. In short, Rank Math includes a built-in importer that reads Yoast's metadata, focus keyphrases, redirects and schema settings during setup, so the switch does not mean rewriting every post's title and description by hand. Back up the site and test the import on a staging copy first: a plugin switch that touches every page's metadata and redirects is exactly the kind of change worth verifying before it goes live on production.

Who should stay where they are

Stay on Yoast if you run one site, already use its Local, Video or News SEO add-ons, or your team works inside its Google Docs integration: switching would mean paying for those add-ons separately elsewhere, and there is no financial reason to move. Stay on Rank Math if you already run its free tier or Pro: importing into Yoast gains you the bundled add-ons but loses unlimited personal sites and Content AI, a downgrade for anyone who runs more than one property.

For most solo site owners and anyone who runs more than one WordPress site, unlimited personal sites for $107.88 a year is the number that settles this comparison. Get Rank Math Pro (affiliate link).

Neither plugin writes the content

Rank Math and Yoast both check and structure content you have already written: titles, metadata, schema, internal links, redirects. Neither writes the post itself. If the actual bottleneck on a site is that nobody has time to produce new pages, the best plugin on this page does not fix it.

GrowGanic is an autonomous SEO engine: add a domain and it researches the keywords, writes and scores the articles, publishes them to your site or a hosted blog, and tracks the rankings. On a paid plan it publishes every weekday. It is not a WordPress plugin and does not replace on-page technical checks, schema markup or redirects; it replaces the writer, which is a different job than either tool on this page does. It has no backlink index, and, by GrowGanic's own account, the hosted copy of the free article stays out of Google until the plan is paid (connecting your site or a subdomain first avoids that). Try the free tier (affiliate link), which gives you one article with no card.

The verdict

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Last reviewed 20 October 2026. Prices are re-checked monthly. Spotted one out of date? Tell me.