Rankings & keywords
Daily positions with history, the SERP features you own, and bulk keyword management.
SEARCH & GEO VISIBILITY
Stop renting your SEO tools.
The self-hosted, open-source alternative to Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking. No subscription. You pay only for the data you pull.
$0/month to us — about $0.37 in data to map a 150-keyword site. See the exact costs
Clicks3.6K
Impressions137.9K
Avg position12.4
Sessions7.2K
Engagement61%
Conversions144
Renting costs $100–500 a month.
Owning costs the data.
Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking
Hosted subscriptions, billed every month for as long as you use them, with extra seats on top.
$100–500/mo
Better Search Lab
Free and open source. You pay DataForSEO for the data it pulls: about $0.37 to map a 150-keyword site, about $0.34 a week to keep it fresh.
$0/mo
Hosted-tool figures are their standard monthly plans. Every DataForSEO cost, itemized
It doesn't just show you data. It tells you what to do.
Every week, Better Search Lab scores your whole site and hands you a ranked shortlist, grounded in your real Search Console data — so you act on it instead of staring at charts.
Striking distance
Decay
Momentum
Competitor gaps
SERP features
Cannibalization
CTR gaps
See all opportunity types
One place for the whole picture.
Rankings, research, competitors, audits, and Google — read from one honest dashboard.
Research
Keyword research and a fast keyword-overview tool for sizing an idea before you commit.
Competitors
Up to five per site, suggested from real overlap: their keywords, their top pages, and your gaps.
Backlinks, audit, organic
Backlink snapshots with trends, a free on-page audit from the built-in crawler, and organic keyword lists.
Search Console & Analytics
Google Search Console and GA, connected once and shown next to everything else.
AI visibility
Weekly scans of Perplexity, ChatGPT and Gemini: are you named, are you cited, and who is instead.
Running in about five minutes.
Docker and curl are the only requirements. One command, then you're in.
curl -fsSL https://gitlab.com/betterbrainlab/better-search-lab/-/raw/main/install.sh | sh- It starts everything
Postgres, the app, and the background worker spin up on your own machine.
- Connect DataForSEO
First run profiles your site and suggests competitors. A $5 balance is plenty to start.
- Get your weekly shortlist
The worker builds rankings, research, and audits, then keeps the opportunity list fresh.
Rankings are half the story now.
Search is moving into AI answers. Better Search Lab scans Perplexity, ChatGPT and Gemini every week for the queries that matter to you — and tells you whether you're named, whether you're cited, and who's getting the mention when you're not.
How AI visibility works
Connects to what you already use.
DataForSEO is the only thing you need. Everything else is optional, and configured inside the app.
DataForSEO
The data backbone — the one integration you need
Google
Search Console & Analytics
AI assistant
Explanations & drafting
Eden AI
AI-visibility scans
Email
Resend or SMTP
Reddit
Conversations worth joining
Apify
Extra data sources
You pay DataForSEO directly. We show every cent.
No credit system, no markup — an honest in-app meter instead.
| What | Cost |
|---|---|
| Rank check | $0.002 / keyword |
| Keyword & competitor research | ~$0.012 / call |
| Backlinks refresh | ~$0.06 |
| First build of a 150-keyword site | ~$0.37 |
| Weekly refresh of that site | ~$0.34 |
The in-app Usage page breaks spend down by day and endpoint. See the exact costs
AGPL-licensed, and built to be read.
The whole thing is on GitLab under AGPL-3.0. There's also a Model Context Protocol server, so your coding agent can query your data read-only — one npx command, straight from the release download.
# read-only tools over your own data
npx -y https://gitlab.com/betterbrainlab/better-search-lab/-/releases/v1.0.0/downloads/better-search-lab-mcp.tgzCommon questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Better Search Lab is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. There are no seats, tiers, or credits. You pay only DataForSEO for the search data it fetches, on pay-as-you-go pricing, and the app shows exactly what you spend.
How is this different from Ahrefs, Semrush, or SE Ranking?
Those are hosted subscriptions billed per seat per month. Better Search Lab is software you run yourself: your data stays on your server, you pay only the underlying data cost, and you can read and modify the source. It also measures AI-answer visibility, which most classic tools don't.
Where does my data live?
On your own machine or server, in your own Postgres database. Better Search Lab is self-hosted; nothing is sent to us. The only outbound calls are to the data providers you connect.
Look first, or run it now.
Free, open source, and yours to keep.