Replacing SpyFu, the three jobs it actually does and which rival published a price we could read on 29 October 2026

If you are looking for a SpyFu alternative, sort the decision by the job first, because SpyFu does three things and most of its rivals do one of them well and the other two as a by-product. The three jobs are reading a competitor's paid ad copy over time, finding the keywords a competitor has paid for, and pulling a quick domain summary for a pitch. On 29 October 2026, reading every page from Singapore, SpyFu's own pricing page answered HTTP 403 while its home page carried the sentence "Membership starts at just $33/month. Unlimited data and downloads." Of five rivals checked the same day, Semrush, SE Ranking and AccuRanker printed a figure in the page itself, Similarweb printed one only inside its own meta description, and iSpionage printed none at all because its pricing address now serves a TapClicks page.

Google Keyword Planner reports 10 searches a month in Singapore for this phrasing, read on 26 October 2026 against geo 2702. That is Google's lowest reported bucket, and it is the right size for the query: almost nobody shops for a SpyFu replacement until they already pay for one tool and have a specific complaint about it.

The three jobs, so you buy for the one you have

Write down which of these sentences is yours before you open a single pricing page. The answer changes the shortlist completely.

• I want to see the ads a competitor has run. You are buying an archive of ad copy and the dates it appeared, which is a historical dataset rather than a live reading. Depth of history is the spec that matters and the one almost no vendor states in a number.
• I want the keywords a competitor pays for. You are buying a paid keyword list with an estimate beside each line. The useful output is the overlap between their list and yours, not the estimated spend.
• I want one screen to put in front of a client or a manager. You are buying a report, and the suites do this better than the point tools because the export is already designed.

All three are reconstructions. Every tool in this category samples search results and infers what an advertiser appears to be bidding on, so the keyword discovery is strong and the position and spend columns are directional. Our page on what Google will and will not show you about a competitor's ad rank sets out which number to treat as a record and which to treat as an estimate, and the workflow for turning either into a plan is on our page about what competitor keyword data really is.

Where the price sat on each page, read on 29 October 2026

Every figure below names the page it came from and the day somebody looked. Nothing here is converted and nothing here is a promise that the price will be the same next month.

Page	What the server returned	Where the figure was	The figure as published
spyfu.com/pricing	HTTP 403, 5,844 bytes	Nowhere. The body is a Cloudflare notice reading "Sorry, you have been blocked"	None served
spyfu.com	HTTP 200, 255,145 bytes, 1,832 visible words	In a heading in the page body	"Membership starts at just $33/month. Unlimited data and downloads."
semrush.com/prices	Read on 29 October 2026	In the plan table	Free at 0, SEO at USD 139 a month, Starter at USD 199, Pro plus at USD 299, with the top tier shown as Custom behind a Request demo button. Annual payment brings SEO to USD 117.33 a month and Starter to USD 165.17
seranking.com/prices.html	HTTP 404, 401,812 bytes, 416 visible words	Nowhere. A styled not found page carrying the site's full navigation	None served
seranking.com/pricing.html	HTTP 200, 559,697 bytes	In the plan cards and the comparison table	Core at 129.00 a month or 103.20 paid annually, Growth at 279.00 or 223.20, annual marked "Save 20%", extra manager seats "from $16". The page prints a bare dollar sign with no currency code beside it
accuranker.com/pricing/	HTTP 200, 110,765 bytes	In the plan cards	EUR 224 a month for the Professional plan and EUR 764 for Expert, both shown with a 10 per cent annual discount stated above them
similarweb.com/corp/pricing/	HTTP 200, 808,473 bytes, 1,806 visible words	Only in the page's own meta description	"Web Intelligence plans from $125/mo." No figure appears in the text a reader sees
ispionage.com/pricing	HTTP 200, 140,383 bytes	Nowhere. The address serves a TapClicks page	None. The only dollar amount in the document is a referral offer in the navigation

SpyFu publishes its price, just not on the pricing page

This is worth setting out precisely, because the obvious conclusion from a 403 is the wrong one. The request to spyfu.com/pricing came back with HTTP 403 and 5,844 bytes of Cloudflare notice. The request to spyfu.com, made from the same machine minutes later with the same headers, came back with HTTP 200 and 255,145 bytes, and the price is in the body of that page as a heading: "Membership starts at just $33/month. Unlimited data and downloads."

So the block is attached to the path rather than to the visitor, and the price is published. A 403 records what that server did on 29 October 2026 and it is not evidence that the figure is wrong or that the vendor hides it. If you are collecting quotes, take the home page figure with the date you read it and confirm the plan structure at checkout, where the billing period and the seat count are stated.

The figure that is in the document and not on the page

Similarweb is the one result here that changes how you should read any pricing page. The served document is 808,473 bytes and carries 1,806 words a reader can see, and not one of them is a price. The only place the figure appears is the page's own meta description, which reads "Web Intelligence plans from $125/mo."

That matters in two directions. A buyer scanning the page finds no number and concludes the vendor will not say, which is not what the vendor wrote. And a machine reading the document finds USD 125 in the metadata with no plan attached to it, so the figure travels without the limits that set it. When you shortlist from this category, read the meta description as well as the page, and write down which of the two you took the number from.

A tool on most alternative lists that no longer has a price of its own

iSpionage appears on almost every published list of SpyFu alternatives. Its pricing address returned HTTP 200 and 140,383 bytes on 29 October 2026 and served a TapClicks page, with the product navigation naming TapData, TapAI and the SmartReports line. The only dollar figure in the whole document is a referral bounty in the menu, which is not a price for anything you would buy here.

The practical rule this gives you is older than this category: before you put a tool on a shortlist from somebody's listicle, open its pricing page yourself and check that the product still exists under its own name. Three of the eight addresses opened today did not answer the question the address promised. spyfu.com/pricing returned 403. seranking.com/prices.html returned 404 and did it at 401,812 bytes with the site's own menus rendering perfectly, which is why a status code and not a page size is the thing to record. ispionage.com/pricing returned 200 and served a different company's product.

Matching the tool to the job, on a criterion you can check

The criterion used here is narrow and deliberate: can you read a price and a limit in the vendor's own served page, and does the tool hold paid search history rather than organic only. Both are checkable in ten minutes, and neither is a judgement about quality.

• Ad copy history as the main job. Stay with SpyFu or trial Semrush's advertising tools. SpyFu is the cheapest published entry here at USD 33 a month on its home page figure, and it is built around this dataset rather than carrying it as a module.
• Paid keyword overlap as the main job. Semrush at USD 139 a month publishes its limits by projects, tracked keywords and seats, so you can size the plan before you pay. Our page on how the Semrush plans and limits fit together sets out which limit usually bites first.
• Reporting for clients as the main job. SE Ranking publishes both a monthly and an annual figure and prices extra manager seats separately from the plan, which is the structure an agency needs to forecast. Its Core plan at 129.00 a month covers ten projects and one manager seat as published on 29 October 2026, and you should write the currency into your own sheet yourself because the page does not print a code beside the sign.
• Market and traffic estimates as the main job. Similarweb is the right shape of product and the wrong shape of purchase for a small buyer, because the figure in its metadata starts at USD 125 a month and the page routes you to a demo rather than a checkout.
• Daily rank positions as the main job. That is a different product again. AccuRanker prints EUR 224 a month for its Professional plan, and the cheap end of that market starts far lower, which our page on rank tracking from USD 3 a month prices per keyword.

What a Singapore buyer pays on top of the number

Not one page read today published a Singapore dollar figure. Every figure that was published came in United States dollars except AccuRanker's, which came in euros, so the amount that lands on your card depends on your bank's conversion on the day you are billed, and the goods and services tax treatment depends on your own registration rather than on the vendor's address. Our page on what SEO tools really cost a Singapore buyer sets out the two tax routes and which one applies to a small business.

Two practical lines for the comparison sheet. Write the currency into your own sheet next to every figure, because a page about global pricing often prints a bare dollar sign. And write the date you read each number, because three of the seven pages here will have moved by the time you renew.

Questions buyers ask when they are replacing SpyFu

Does SpyFu publish a price at all

Yes. On 29 October 2026 its home page carried "Membership starts at just $33/month. Unlimited data and downloads." The pricing path answered HTTP 403 the same day, so the home page is the place to read the figure and the checkout is the place to confirm what the membership includes.

Which alternative holds the longest archive of a rival's ads

None of the five rivals read today states a history depth in the served page. Ask the question in the trial rather than in the sales call: pick one competitor you know advertised two years ago, search it, and count how far back the ad copy goes. That is a fifteen minute test and it answers the only spec that separates these products on this job.

Is a free tier enough for competitor keyword work

For one decision, often yes. Semrush publishes a free plan limited to a set number of reports a day, which covers a single look at a rival's top keywords before a meeting. For continuous work the free tiers run out quickly, and the honest sequence is to start free, hit a named ceiling, then buy the plan that raises that specific ceiling.

Why did a pricing page refuse my request when it loads in my browser

A content delivery network sits in front of most of these sites and applies its rules per path. The 403 here was attached to one address and the root of the same site served 255,145 bytes to the same request a minute later. Record the status code and the date, read the figure from a page that does serve, and never take a price from memory.

Do any of these bill in Singapore dollars

None of the seven pages read on 29 October 2026 published a Singapore dollar ladder. Six were in United States dollars and AccuRanker was in euros, so budget in the published currency and treat the conversion as a separate line in your own sheet.

Should I replace SpyFu or add something beside it

Count the logins you already pay for first. If a suite is already on the invoice, the advertising module inside it usually covers the keyword overlap job, and the thing worth keeping SpyFu for is the ad copy archive. At USD 33 a month that is a cheap second subscription next to a suite, and it is an expensive one next to nothing.

The competitor list none of these tools builds

Every product on this page reconstructs what a rival did inside an advertising auction. There is a second place your competitors are now named, and none of these tools reads it: the answer an assistant gives when somebody asks who to hire or what to buy in your category. That answer names a handful of businesses, it is assembled from pages somebody else wrote, and it is invisible to a tool built to sample search results. AI Knows Us reads those answers for a domain and records which pages each mention was built from, so the names in them can be checked the same way you would check an ad copy archive. The free scan is the quickest way to see whether your own name is in there yet.