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A free alternative to Semrush for site checks

Semrush is an all-in-one suite: keyword and backlink data, rank tracking, and its own site audit. Shipwork is a free checker that runs from outside your network and covers the AI-era signals Semrush was not built around.

One crawl of a bounded sample of public pages, from outside your network. Nothing is stored.

What Semrush does well

Semrush bundles licensed keyword and backlink data, rank tracking, competitor research and a site audit in one subscription. For an agency managing many clients with a data budget, that breadth is the point.

Where an all-in-one suite is thin

A suite optimises for breadth across many clients, so the checks that need a request from outside your network, or that did not exist when it was built, tend to be shallow or absent: AI crawler access, llms.txt, rendered-versus-raw comparison, Merchant Center fields. Its audit also runs from Semrush infrastructure, not from the vantage point of the crawler you actually care about.

What Shipwork does instead

  • Free and account-free, so you can check a store before deciding to buy anything.
  • AI crawler access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity), llms.txt and rendered-versus-raw.
  • Merchant Center product data, the fields a public catalogue hides.
  • A daily watch that emails you the day a check changes.

Which should you use?

Use Semrush for keyword and backlink data and multi-client reporting. Use Shipwork for the free outside-network checks and the AI-era signals, and to watch a single store closely.

Questions

Is Shipwork a replacement for Semrush?
No. It is a free, focused outside-network checker, not a data suite. Use Semrush for data and multi-client work.
Does it do rank tracking or backlinks?
No. Those need licensed data. It does the technical and AI-era checks a data suite does not.
Is it free?
The checks are free and need no account. The daily watch is the paid part.