Rank Math vs Yoast: the SEO plugin face-off, fact by fact

Two SEO plugins face to face, to choose according to your site. Illustration by Zéro Corvée.

Your site runs on WordPress and you need an SEO plugin. Two names come up everywhere. This Rank Math vs Yoast face-off compares them fact by fact, based on their official pages read on October 29 and 30, 2026. A plugin is only one piece of how to do SEO on WordPress: it handles your titles, sitemap and schema, but it won’t write your pages for you. This page has no affiliate link to Rank Math or Yoast. The SemChat button on this page is an affiliate link.

A note on prices: both publishers showed euros before VAT when their pages were read from France. US dollar prices are missing data (planned source: each pricing page viewed from the US).

Rank Math vs Yoast: the verdict for your site

	Leaning Yoast SEO	Leaning Rank Math
A beginner who writes a lot	readability checks as you type	Easy mode, free redirects
An online store	paid WooCommerce SEO plugin	WooCommerce integration listed
A local business	Local SEO inside Premium	free Local Business schema
Several sites of your own	one Premium plan per site	PRO covers your personal sites

Neither plugin is better for everyone, so the Rank Math vs Yoast SEO question comes down to what you do with your site.

For a beginner

Both cover the basics for free: titles, meta descriptions, a sitemap and schema. Pick Yoast if you write a lot and want guidance on readability while you type, with one keyphrase per post that keeps you on topic. Pick Rank Math if you want redirects, Search Console data inside WordPress and an Easy mode that hides the advanced settings, all without paying.

If your site is built on Webflow, neither applies: Rank Math describes itself as a WordPress plugin, and neither publisher mentions Webflow on the pages we read. Our Webflow SEO guide covers that case.

For an online store or a local business

For a WooCommerce store, Yoast sells a separate WooCommerce SEO plugin at €178.80 a year before VAT. Rank Math lists a WooCommerce integration in its pricing grid; which plan includes what for stores isn’t spelled out in the facts we collected.

For a local business, Rank Math’s free version includes Local Business schema with 193 business types, and PRO adds multiple locations. At Yoast, Local SEO is part of Premium. If you run several sites of your own, Rank Math PRO covers unlimited personal sites for €107.88 a year before VAT, while Yoast Premium is priced per site.

Rank Math and Yoast SEO in a few words

What Rank Math is

Rank Math SEO is a plugin you install on a WordPress site. Its home page calls it the “#1 SEO Plugin for WordPress”, a ranking the publisher gives itself, and claims “4 Million+” users. The official WordPress.org directory shows more than 4 million active installations and a 4.8 out of 5 rating (October 30, 2026).

The publisher is ONE.COM INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, part of the one.com group (terms and conditions, read October 29, 2026). Its footer lists sister brands such as WP Rocket and Imagify. The plugin needs WordPress 6.7 or later.

What Yoast SEO is

Yoast SEO comes from Yoast BV, a Dutch company founded in 2010 by Joost de Valk and now part of Newfold Digital (Yoast’s pages, read October 30, 2026). It claims to be “Trusted on 13 million sites”. WordPress.org shows more than 10 million active installations, with the same 4.8 out of 5 rating. Yoast needs WordPress 7.0 or later. Yoast also sells a separate Shopify app, but on WordPress it’s a plugin like Rank Math.

One trap: the plugin’s old address, yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo, now redirects to the Premium page. The free version has its own page at yoast.com/product/yoast-seo-wordpress.

Yoast SEO vs Rank Math: the features side by side

Sources: Rank Math fact sheet (October 29, 2026) and Yoast fact sheet (October 30, 2026), official pages and WordPress.org read October 30, 2026. Prices before VAT, as shown from France.

The Yoast vs Rank Math gap is widest on redirects, sites per license and rank tracking. The details behind the rows follow.

On-page SEO and content checks

Yoast analyzes SEO and readability separately while you write, with a readability score in more than 25 languages. On the Premium page, the analysis is sorted into problems, improvements and good results. The free version works on one keyphrase per post; Premium allows five, with synonyms and word forms.

Rank Math gives each post a score out of 100; its guide walks you through reaching “a 100 on 100”. Its pages disagree on how many tests run: “30+” in the pricing grid, “over 70” in a tooltip. Its paid plans list “Unlimited Keyword Optimization”; the number of focus keywords in the free version isn’t mentioned on the pages we read. Rank Math itself warns that “Some tests only work well if you’ve decided on a single keyword.” Keep in mind that a score is a checklist for one page, not a place in Google.

On setup, Rank Math opens a wizard with three modes: Easy, Advanced and Custom, the last one for PRO users. Its guide says you can switch modes at any time. A setup wizard isn’t mentioned on the Yoast pages we read.

Technical SEO: sitemap, schema, redirects

Both plugins build your XML sitemap on their own, and both put the index at the same address: your-site/sitemap_index.xml. Yoast’s help notes that a your-site/sitemap.xml file “is not generated by Yoast SEO.” Rank Math’s sitemap guide gives sitemap_index.xml as the address to submit in Search Console. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our WordPress sitemap guide.

Schema is the structured data that describes your page to Google. Rank Math’s free version lists 18 predefined schema types; its own pages also say “20+” and “16”, so the count depends on the page. Yoast’s free version includes schema without a published count.

Redirects send visitors from an old address to a new one. Rank Math includes a redirect manager and a 404 monitor for free; at Yoast, the redirect manager is a Premium feature. On performance, we have no measurement: load time of a page with each plugin is missing data (planned source: a dated PageSpeed Insights test on one test site).

AI writing help

Rank Math’s AI tools, including the RankBot chatbot and Content AI, sit in a separate subscription, Rank Math AI, from €6.99 a month before VAT billed annually. Free use is capped each month: RankBot twice, for example. Rank Math AI can also track how ChatGPT and Gemini mention your brand.

Yoast Premium writes titles and meta descriptions with AI and adds a Content Planner. Its AI+ bundle, at €358.80 a year before VAT, tracks your brand weekly in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. One thing to know: Yoast’s terms say it may use your AI input and output to market and improve its products.

Free versions and paid plans

Rank Math free and Pro: what changes

The free plugin already includes SEO analysis, Search Console data, 18 schema types, sitemaps, redirects, a 404 monitor, an llms.txt file and a free MCP server. MCP lets an AI assistant like Claude drive the plugin, but setup is technical: a desktop app, Node.js and a WordPress application password, one site at a time.

PRO costs €8.99 a month before VAT, billed €107.88 a year. It covers unlimited personal sites, not client sites, and adds tracking for 500 keywords from your Search Console. A Halloween offer drops it to €5.59 a month for the first year, until November 4, 2026. Business costs €27.99 a month billed annually. Rank Math only shows annual billing and refunds new purchases within 30 days.

Yoast SEO Premium: what it adds

The free plugin calls itself “Always free”: real-time SEO and readability analysis, automatic XML sitemaps, schema, canonical tags, noindex, an llms.txt file and imports from Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress. Search Console data comes through another plugin, Google’s Site Kit.

Premium costs €118.80 a year before VAT for one site. It adds Local SEO, Video SEO and News SEO, the redirect manager, up to five keyphrases with synonyms, AI titles and meta descriptions, internal linking suggestions, orphaned content detection and 24/7 support. Yoast also sells WooCommerce SEO (€178.80 a year) and AI+ (€358.80 a year). Its 30-day refund only covers the first purchase.

All in One SEO vs Yoast and Rank Math: the third option

AIOSEO, short for All in One SEO, is the third big plugin, published by Semper Plugins, LLC in the US (fact sheet, October 29, 2026). Its free Lite version covers titles, meta descriptions, basic sitemaps and schema, with no support. Basic costs €99 a year before tax for one site, €49.50 the first year. Search Console stats and rank tracking are reserved for the Elite plan, €599 a year after the first year.

A comparison published by a rival plugin

On Google in the US, AIOSEO’s page “Rank Math vs. Yoast: Tested and Compared for 2026”, published July 10, 2026, ranked third in the top five and was a source of the AI Overview (SERP checked October 29, 2026, DataForSEO). Read it for what it is: the opinion of a third publisher that competes with both.

Its verdict: Yoast for a beginner who values readability guidance, Rank Math for the richest free version or several sites. Then it pushes its own plugin: “AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin.” Its prices also differ from the official pages: it lists Yoast’s entry plan at “99 dollars a year”, while Yoast’s shop showed €118.80 before VAT on October 30, 2026. Check prices with the publisher.

SEOPress and other contenders

The field is wider than three. SEOPress has a free version and a PRO plan at €49 a year before tax for one site; The SEO Framework and Slim SEO also have free versions (fact sheets, October 30, 2026). The full roundup is in our guide to choosing a WordPress SEO plugin.

Switching plugins without losing your settings

You can change your mind later. Rank Math’s setup wizard imports data from Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, SEOPress and a few others, such as the Redirection plugin (setup guide, read October 30, 2026). Yoast’s free plugin lists migration from Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress. After a switch, open a few pages and check that titles and meta descriptions came across.

To install either one, WordPress’s own documentation gives the steps: go to Plugins, then Add New, search by name, click Install Now, then Activate.

Support and documentation

Rank Math answers through a ticket system, with a team available “round the clock” according to its pricing FAQ; whether free users get ticket support isn’t clearly stated. Yoast offers 24/7 support to Premium customers, and its terms say support is only for services you’ve paid for. Both publish help guides; the Rank Math setup, sitemap and score details on this page come from them.

Whichever plugin you pick: knowing what to fix

A plugin gives you settings and warning lights. It doesn’t tell you which problems to tackle first across your whole site. That’s the job of a WordPress SEO audit.

SemChat is a conversational SEO assistant: it tells you what to fix, and your plugin applies the fix. I tested it on October 29, 2026 on plugkit-avis.com, an Astro site, not WordPress. One sentence started a full audit: about 3 minutes, 8 KPIs, a diagnosis and 3 actions for the week, including a /fr/contact/ page correctly flagged as a 404. That one audit used up the month’s quota on the Free plan.

According to the app, its WordPress connector publishes posts and reports to your site. I didn’t connect it, so it’s untested. SemChat doesn’t change your plugin settings or your sitemap. The full test is in our SemChat review.

To settle your own Rank Math vs Yoast question, start from your site: one site and a wish to write better points to Yoast; several sites or free redirects point to Rank Math. And if you change your mind, each one imports the other’s settings.