SE Ranking's Core plan is $129/month (around £102) for daily rank tracking, a deep technical site audit, and AI-search visibility tracking, but no AI content generation. Illumae is £40/month per domain and pairs the same core SEO fundamentals with AI article generation and direct publishing built in.
SE Ranking is a full-featured SEO suite: daily rank tracking across 250+ search engine/location combinations, a deep technical site audit covering crawlability and structured data, backlink analysis, keyword research, and — as of 2026 — a dedicated AI Search Toolkit tracking whether your site is cited in Google's AI Overviews and other AI engines. What it doesn't include is AI article generation; it's a research, tracking, and audit platform, not a content-writing tool.
Illumae covers the same core SEO fundamentals at a lower entry price, and adds a full AI content pipeline — drafting, fact-checking, and direct publishing — that SE Ranking doesn't offer natively. This isn't a claim that Illumae's rank-tracking scale or AI-visibility monitoring matches SE Ranking's — what follows is an honest breakdown of where each genuinely fits.
How Illumae and SE Ranking stack up across the full SEO workflow.
| Feature | IllumaeBest all-round | SE RankingCompared |
|---|---|---|
| AI article generation | ||
| Automated publishing to your CMS | ||
| Keyword research | ||
| Technical site audit | Deep, up to 250k pages | |
| Rank tracking | Daily, 250+ location combos | |
| Backlink checker | ||
| AI Overviews / AI-engine visibility tracking | ||
| Google Search Console integration | ||
| Schema markup generator | ||
| Content calendar & autopilot | ||
| Content decay tracking | ||
| Per-domain subscription | ||
| Starting price | £40/mo per domain | ~£102/mo ($129) Core plan |
Comparison based on publicly available SE Ranking pricing and feature information as of 2026. SE Ranking pricing is billed in USD; GBP figures are approximate.
SE Ranking's Core plan is $129/month (roughly £102) billed monthly, covering 10 projects, 2,000 daily-tracked keywords, and a 250k-page site audit — a genuinely deep toolset, but with no content generation included. A separate AI writing tool typically adds another £20-40/month on top.
Illumae is £40/month per domain and includes unlimited AI article generation, keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking together. For a single domain, Illumae is meaningfully cheaper than SE Ranking's Core plan even before accounting for a separate writing tool SE Ranking would still need.
SE Ranking's rank tracking scale (250+ location/engine combinations, daily updates on thousands of keywords) and its dedicated AI Overviews/AI-engine visibility tracking are more advanced than anything Illumae currently offers — if tracking whether your brand is cited inside Google's AI Overviews or ChatGPT specifically is a priority, SE Ranking has a real, purpose-built feature for that.
If the goal is a single subscription that also researches, drafts, fact-checks, and publishes content — not a research and tracking suite you still need a separate writing tool alongside — Illumae's combined pipeline does more of that work natively, at a lower starting price per domain.
You can add your existing tracked keywords directly into Illumae's Keyword Research tool, and connect Google Search Console in a couple of clicks to bring in your real performance data immediately. Most users are fully set up within 15-20 minutes.
Not article generation — SE Ranking's AI features in 2026 are focused on AI-search visibility tracking (whether your site is cited in Google's AI Overviews and other AI engines), not drafting content. Users wanting AI-written articles typically pair SE Ranking with a separate writing tool, which Illumae includes natively instead.
For scale and depth, yes — SE Ranking's audit can cover up to 250,000 pages with detailed crawlability, indexability, and structured-data checks. Illumae's site audit is a simpler, less configurable check aimed at catching common issues rather than deep technical forensics on very large sites.
No — Illumae doesn't currently track whether your site is cited in Google's AI Overviews or other AI engines. This is a dedicated feature SE Ranking offers that Illumae doesn't have an equivalent for.
Yes. Illumae is priced per domain at £40/month each, with no per-seat charges — an agency managing 3 client sites pays £120/month total, each domain getting its own full toolset.
Yes. Illumae offers a free plan that includes 3 AI article generations, keyword research tools, a content calendar, and a basic dashboard. No credit card is required to sign up.
Get instant access to the best all-round SEO tool for growing businesses.