Frequently asked questions

An SEO platform built for AI agents. Keyword research, domain and backlink analysis, SERP and local results, rank tracking, site audits, Search Console and Analytics reporting, and AI visibility are all available as 54 MCP tools that Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex or your own agent can call. The same features are in a dashboard for when you'd rather look than ask.

Two groups. Technical founders who already spend the day in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT and have no SEO hire, and people building agents or products that need live search data without wrapping a raw data API. Why IndexZero goes through both.

If you need years of ranking or backlink history, if the size of a backlink index decides your work, if you run a large content team that wants editorial workflow, or if your company needs SSO, SOC 2 reports or a procurement process, another tool will fit better. IndexZero is also a tool, not an agency: it won't do the SEO for you. The full list is on Why IndexZero.

No. Everything the MCP tools do is also in the dashboard: keyword research, audits, rank tracking, backlinks, AI visibility and your Search Console data. The agent is the fastest way to use it, not the only way.

Those suites are built around a person reading dashboards and are priced per seat. IndexZero is built for an agent to run, priced on the data you use, with unlimited members on every plan and AI visibility included from Starter. They keep years of their own crawl history; IndexZero buys live data when you ask and has no archive. The cost calculator prices all three for your setup.

IndexZero is built and operated by Afterlume Labs. The about page covers what it runs on and how it makes money.

Sign up, create a project for your domain, and connect Google Search Console. From there, run a site audit or some keyword research, or connect an agent and ask it to. The getting started guide walks through each step.

No. A new workspace starts on the free plan with 2,000 credits a month, the full dashboard and the MCP server. There is no trial clock and no sales call.

A project pins a domain and a market (a country and a language). The domain is what gets audited and tracked; the market is used by every research tool when you don't name one, so a German site gets German volumes without asking each time. Free includes 1 active project, Starter 3, Pro 15 and Scale 100.

Yes. Set the project's market to the country and language you care about, or pass a different one on a single call. The one exception is ChatGPT data in AI visibility brand lookups, which covers the United States in English only.

Connect Search Console. It's free to read, it's measured rather than estimated, and it tells you which queries you already rank for. Most of the best early wins are pages sitting on page two for queries you already get impressions on, and your own data shows those without spending a credit.

Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, Hermes and OpenClaw have step-by-step guides, and any client that supports remote MCP servers over Streamable HTTP works. The endpoint is https://app.indexzero.site/mcp. See Connect an agent.

Run claude mcp add --transport http indexzero https://app.indexzero.site/mcp, approve the connection in the browser window that opens, and ask Claude to list your IndexZero projects to check it worked.

OAuth for anything interactive: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and most clients register themselves and open a browser for you to approve, so there is nothing to copy. Use an iz_ API key for scripts, CI and server-side agents that can't open a browser. Keys only reach the MCP endpoint, and you can revoke one from the app at any time.

Read and write. Besides research, an agent can create a project, start a site audit and poll it, build and run a rank tracker, save keywords, update what it knows about the project, and save a report you can reopen or share. The tool catalog lists all 54 tools with their arguments, and you can read it before signing up.

It's built not to. The server tells every connected agent to check the balance first, to estimate a rank check before running it, and to ask you before any single action expected to cost more than about 2,000 credits. Rank checks accept a maxCostCredits ceiling and refuse for free if the estimate is higher. When the balance reaches zero, paid calls stop with a clear error. The balance never goes negative.

Yes. Authenticate with an API key, call the MCP endpoint, and let projects, saved keywords, audits and tracker history persist between runs so your agent doesn't buy the same data twice. /llms.txt, /openapi.json and the MCP server page describe the whole surface.

Yes. The free skills pack has 10 agent skills for whole jobs, from audits to AI visibility, and SEO prompts for agents has copy-paste prompts for common tasks.

Live search data (keyword volumes, difficulty, SERPs, domain traffic, backlinks) comes from DataForSEO, bought when you ask for it. Search Console, Google Analytics and PostHog data comes from your own connected accounts and is measured rather than estimated.

They are third-party estimates, as they are in every SEO tool that reports them. Good for comparing keywords and competitors, not for forecasting to the click. Your Search Console data is the measured truth for your own site: connect it on the free plan and compare the two before you rely on either.

Live when you first ask, then cached. A result served from cache costs nothing, and anything you've already paid for (saved keywords, audit results, tracker history, AI visibility runs) is free to reopen.

Only from the point you start collecting them. IndexZero has no archive of past data, so rank history begins when you create a tracker. If you need years of history for a domain you've never tracked, a suite with its own long-running crawler is the better choice.

A robots-aware crawler seeded from your sitemap stays on your project's domain and checks every page against 27 technical and on-page issue types, with Lighthouse on a sample of up to 10 pages. The crawl is free; credits only pay for the Lighthouse sample, and turning it off makes the audit free. Page limits run from 50 on Free to 10,000 on Scale. Every check is explained in SEO issues.

The audit crawls your project's domain and is built for sites you run. For a competitor, use domain overview, top pages, ranked keywords and backlink research instead, which work on any domain.

Bot protection challenged the crawler, so the page is reported as blocked rather than broken. Allowlist the IndexZero-Audit user agent in your firewall (on Cloudflare, a custom rule that skips bot protection for that user agent) and run the audit again.

Trackers check Google positions for your keywords, nationally or for a city, on desktop and mobile. Free includes manual checks; Starter and up run them on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. The exact credit cost of a run is available before it runs, free.

Audit results export to CSV from the dashboard. An agent can also pull any result as structured data and save a write-up as a report, which you can reopen, print, or publish as a public link.

Whether AI assistants mention and cite your brand. A brand lookup shows how often you and up to nine competitors are mentioned by ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews, your share of voice, and which sources those answers cite. Those sources are the pages worth getting onto.

Brand lookups cover ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews. The Prompt Explorer runs one question across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and compares the answers and citations side by side.

Starter and up, from $29 a month. It isn't sold as a separate product. The AI visibility checker gives a limited free look without an account.

No. AI visibility runs when you or your agent ask, not on a schedule. Every run is saved and reopening one is free, and a prompt re-run within a week is served from cache at no cost.

An AI assistant built into the app, on Pro and Scale. It works on one project at a time with the same tools an external agent gets, can read pages on your site, and keeps notes on the project and the research it has already done so it doesn't buy the same data twice.

Use your own agent when the work ends in code: it can audit the site, make the fixes in your repo and re-crawl. Use SAM when you want the research and the conversation inside IndexZero, next to the dashboard, with the project's history already loaded.

The tools it calls cost what they cost anywhere else, and its own model usage is metered at the provider's price and shown under "agent" on the billing page. It asks before any action likely to cost more than about 2,000 credits, a single turn is capped at 24 tool calls, and it stops when the workspace is out of credits.

Free ($0): 2,000 credits a month, 1 project, audits up to 50 pages. Starter ($29 a month): 30,000 credits a month, 3 projects, audits up to 1,000 pages. Pro ($79 a month): 100,000 credits a month, 15 projects, audits up to 5,000 pages. Scale ($199 a month): 300,000 credits a month, 100 projects, audits up to 10,000 pages. Scheduled rank tracking and AI visibility start at Starter, and SAM at Pro. The pricing page has the rest.

Credits pay for live search data. 1,000 credits is about $1 of provider spend. A result served from cache costs nothing.

Keyword research, domain and backlink analysis, SERP and local lookups, rank checks, the Lighthouse sample in a site audit and AI visibility cost credits. The audit crawl itself is free. Reading your own Search Console and Analytics data, saved keywords and results you have already paid for are free.

New paid lookups stop until the allowance resets at the start of your next billing period, or until you add a top-up from $10. Everything already stored stays readable.

The monthly allowance resets each period and does not roll over. Top-up credits never expire, and they are only spent once the monthly allowance is used up.

Yes. Every plan includes the MCP server, including the free plan with 2,000 credits a month. Agent runs spend the same credits as the dashboard.

Yes. Cancelling from billing settings stops future renewals, and the plan stays active until the end of the period you have paid for. There is no annual contract and no sales call.

A paid call costs what the data provider charges plus a published 28% markup, rounded up to the nearest credit. The credits guide shows the formula.

Each tool's description says whether it spends credits, rank checks have a free exact estimate, and the billing page lists every charge with the feature that made it. Agents are told to ask before anything expected to cost more than about 2,000 credits.

Yes, from the billing page in the app, without talking to anyone. Upgrades, downgrades and top-up packs are all self-serve.

Fees are non-refundable except where the law says otherwise, because a spent credit has already bought data from a provider. If something went wrong on our side, email support@indexzero.site; we look at every case and can issue a goodwill refund or a credit adjustment.

Dodo Payments, as merchant of record, so your card statement and invoices come from them and your card details never reach IndexZero. For a question about an invoice, email support@indexzero.site with the invoice number.

Yes. Invite teammates from settings; an invitation link works for 7 days. Everyone shares the workspace's projects and credit balance.

No. Every plan includes unlimited members and connected agents. You pay for the data the workspace uses, not for logins.

A workspace has one owner, who created it and manages billing. Admins can invite and remove members and archive projects. Members can do the research, audits and tracking.

Yes, one project per site. Pro includes 15 projects and is built for agencies and multi-site operators; Scale includes 100. Archiving a project frees its slot.

No. We don't use workspace data to train models of our own or anyone else's, and we ask the AI providers we route through not to train on our traffic. Data from a connected Google account is never sent to a model provider for training.

Under Google's Limited Use requirements: we don't sell it, don't use it for advertising, and don't let people read it without your consent. Disconnecting Google from the integrations page deletes the stored tokens. The privacy policy has the details.

No, and we don't use it for advertising.

On Cloudflare's developer platform: Workers for the app and the MCP server, D1 for the database, and R2 and KV for storage and caching. The about page lists the other providers involved.

Not today. Sign-in is email and password or Google. If your company requires SSO, SOC 2 or a security questionnaire before buying, IndexZero isn't ready for that process yet.

Email support@indexzero.site from the address on the account. Verified requests are completed within 30 days. You can delete individual keywords, trackers, audits and API keys yourself at any time.

Email support@indexzero.site with "security" in the subject and enough detail to reproduce it. Test only against a workspace you control, and give us a reasonable window to fix it before disclosing.

Email support@indexzero.site. A person reads every message. Scale workspaces get priority support.

Your workspace name, the project domain, roughly when it happened, and what you expected instead. For an MCP problem, add the client you're using, whether you connected with OAuth or an API key, and the error it showed. The contact page lists more.

There's no sales team to book. Everything, including sign-up, upgrades and API keys, is self-serve, and the free plan is the demo. If you have a question first, email us.

Yes. The free tools need no account and spend no credits. The ones that call live data have a daily limit.