5 teams that moved to DataForSEO
5 teams moved to DataForSEO. Most left Semrush (2) or Ahrefs (2). The typical team cut 89% of its bill. Each team's old bill, running cost and net saving.
Every story on this tag is a home-built or self-hosted SEO tool fed by DataForSEO's API, and it is the API bill, not hosting, that the two disclosed running costs describe.
Three of the five stories belong to one agency. Tony Cooper replaced Ahrefs, Semrush and BrightLocal in 2025 with a single client platform built with Claude Code over about four weeks, citing overlap and no API access at Ahrefs, little use of Semrush's features, and BrightLocal's location cap. The bills were about $266, $254 and $60 a month. Its DataForSEO cost, about $51 a month, is recorded on the Semrush story, so that one shows an 80% cut and the other two count their full bills. Read as one move, roughly $580 a month of subscriptions became about $51 of API spend plus hosting that isn't stated.
Victoria Olsina is the second Semrush exit. She left a $298 a month plan in August 2026 over brand mentions its prompt tracker missed, and runs her own AI-search tracker that she says costs single-digit dollars a month in API calls. That is the smallest running cost on the page relative to the bill it replaced.
Animesh Anand cancelled an Ahrefs plan of about $30 a month and self-hosts the open-source OpenSEO tool on DataForSEO data, without saying what it costs. The page adds up to about $850 a month saved. Three of the five stories give no running cost, so treat that as an upper bound.
Written from these stories, updated Nov 2026. Numbers as each team reported them. How this ledger works
- Website
- dataforseo.com
What they left for DataForSEO
Left Semrush2 teams · median $248/mo saved · cut 80%–98% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria OlsinaOwn AI search tracker on DataForSEO · DataForSEO Victoria Olsina cancelled Semrush after it went back to charging the full monthly price while a brand-mention bug stayed unfixed, and built her own AI-search visibility tracker on the DataForSEO API, run on a schedule by an automation workflow. | Aug 2026 | $298/mo | $1–$9/mo | $289–$297/mo | 98% |
| Cooper AgencyOwn rank tracker built with Claude Code + DataForSEO · DataForSEO Tony Cooper dropped SEMrush, citing use of only a sliver of its features, and built a custom ranking tracker on the DataForSEO API as part of an in-house SEO platform made with Claude Code. | Aug 2025 | $254/mo | $51/mo | $203/mo | 80% |
Left Ahrefs2 teams · median $148/mo saved
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooper AgencyOwn SEO platform built with Claude Code + DataForSEO Tony Cooper cancelled Ahrefs because it overlapped with the agency's other SEO tools and lacked API access, and replaced the set with a single client platform built in Claude Code over about four weeks. | Aug 2025 | $266/mo | not disclosed | $266/mo | — |
| Animesh AnandSelf-hosted OpenSEO with DataForSEO Animesh Anand cancelled an Ahrefs plan and now self-hosts the open-source OpenSEO tool, backed by DataForSEO data, and wrote up the setup. | Jul 2026 | $30/mo | not disclosed | $30/mo | — |
Left BrightLocal1 team · $60/mo saved
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooper AgencyOwn SEO platform built with Claude Code + DataForSEO Tony Cooper cancelled BrightLocal after repeatedly hitting its location cap and folded local rank tracking into the agency's own SEO platform built with Claude Code. | Aug 2025 | $60/mo | not disclosed | $60/mo | — |