Quick answer
Yes — for the part of Semrush covered on this page, Maptrail is a one-time-purchase alternative. It costs $19 once, while Semrush lists from $139.95/mo. Local website crawler and sitemap generator — XML, HTML and a full CSV SEO report, offline. It is not a 1:1 replacement for everything Semrush does — the honest limits are spelled out below.
The verdict
Switch to Maptrail if the slice of Semrush you actually pay for is the slice Maptrail covers — and a $19 one-time price beats from $139.95/mo for as long as you use it.
Stay with Semrush if this sounds like you — Semrush correlates crawl findings with its keyword and backlink databases and monitors issues on a schedule in the cloud. Maptrail crawls on demand from your machine — no cloud scheduling, no competitive data.
Head to head
| Maptrail | Semrush | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 once | from $139.95/mo |
| Where it runs | Your own machine | Vendor cloud (hosted service) |
| Renewal | None — the license never expires | Recurring — access ends when you stop paying |
| 5-year cost | $19 | ~$8,397 |
About Semrush: Semrush is an all-in-one SEO suite for keyword research, rank tracking, audits and competitive analysis. Pro plans list from $139.95/mo (about $1,679/yr).
Where Semrush still wins
Semrush correlates crawl findings with its keyword and backlink databases and monitors issues on a schedule in the cloud. Maptrail crawls on demand from your machine — no cloud scheduling, no competitive data.
Where Maptrail wins
Semrush's site audit is a crawler at heart. Maptrail runs that crawl locally on your desktop: breadth-first with depth and pattern controls, a standards-compliant sitemap.xml with automatic 50k chunking, and a full CSV SEO report — $19 once, unlimited re-crawls.
- Price, permanently. $19 once versus from $139.95/mo for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- Local breadth-first crawler. Enter a URL and crawl the whole site from your machine with a live progress table — status, depth, title, meta length, H1, word count.
- Depth, limit & pattern controls. Set max depth and page limit, plus include/exclude URL patterns (substrings or /regex/) to skip tag and sort pages.
The math
Semrush lists from $139.95/mo. Maptrail is $19, paid once:
- After 1 year: Maptrail has cost you $19 total — Semrush has cost ~$1,679.4.
- After 3 years: Maptrail is still $19 — the subscription is at ~$5,038.2.
- After 5 years: Maptrail is still $19 — the subscription is at ~$8,397.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Maptrail is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/sitemap-generator-mvp. The $19 buys the signed Windows installer, 1-click setup and updates; building from source is free.
Does it do everything Screaming Frog does?
No, and we'd rather say so. Screaming Frog also does log-file analysis, JS rendering and integrations. If you need all that, buy it. If you need clean sitemaps and a crawl report, Maptrail does that for $19 once.
Does my crawl data get uploaded?
Never. Maptrail makes network requests only to the site you tell it to crawl — no telemetry, no update pings, no account. History lives in a local SQLite file.
What platforms does it run on?
The packaged installer is for Windows. The MIT source runs anywhere Electron does if you build it yourself.
Try Maptrail — $19, one time
Or get Maptrail plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.