Why IndexZero

You run a small software company or your own product. You know organic search matters, you spend most of the day in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT, and there's no SEO hire. The big suites start at $129 a month for one user (Ahrefs Lite, list price checked 2026-09-15) and expect you to learn them.

• Your agent runs the loop. It audits the site, groups the fixes, makes them in your codebase, and re-crawls to check.
• It starts from your own Search Console data, which costs nothing to read, before it spends credits on estimates.
• You pay for the data you use, in credits, not for seats. The free plan includes the MCP server and 2,000 credits a month. Starter is $29 a month with AI visibility included.
• Expensive runs are priced first. A rank check's exact cost is available before it runs, and the agent is told to ask you before any action expected to cost more than about 2,000 credits.

Start with SEO with AI agents, which walks through connecting an agent and the first jobs to give it.

You're building an agent, a product or an internal workflow that needs live search data, and you'd rather not wrap a raw data API, manage its keys and quotas, and build storage around it.

• 54 typed tools over MCP, with the JSON Schema for every argument in a public tool catalog you can read before signing up.
• OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration for interactive clients, and iz_ API keys for headless ones. Keys reach the MCP endpoint only.
• State that persists between runs: projects, saved keywords, audit results, tracker history, project context and saved reports, so your agent doesn't buy the same data twice.
• Costs your code can plan around. Tool descriptions say which calls spend credits, rank checks have a free exact estimate and a maxCostCredits ceiling, and an out-of-credits or plan error comes back as a clear error with a hint.

The MCP server page has the details, and /llms.txt is written for your agent to read.

• The agent is the main user. The tools write as well as read: create a project, start a crawl, build and run a rank tracker, save keywords, save a report.
• Credits, not seats. Every plan includes unlimited members and agents. A paid call costs the provider's price plus a published 28% markup, and reading your own Search Console, Analytics and PostHog data is free.
• AI visibility is included from Starter, next to keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and backlinks, rather than sold as a separate product.
• One balance for the dashboard, the MCP server and SAM, the assistant inside the app.
• 10 agent skills for whole workflows, from audits to AI visibility, in the free skills pack.

IndexZero is a new product, and some jobs are better done elsewhere. It's cheaper for you to know that now.

• You need years of ranking or backlink history. Ahrefs and Semrush have run their own crawlers and databases for years. IndexZero buys live data when you ask for it and has no archive to look back through.
• Link research is the core of your work, and the size of the backlink index decides the result.
• You need the organic results page for any query on demand, or you want to crawl sites you don't own. IndexZero has no tool for the first, and its site audit is built for your own site.
• You run a large content team and want briefs, editorial workflow and content grading. Tools built around content production fit that better.
• You want AI visibility re-checked automatically across a large fixed set of prompts. IndexZero runs AI visibility lookups and prompts when you ask, not on a schedule.
• Your company needs SSO, SOC 2 reports or a procurement process. None of those exist here.
• You want someone to do the SEO for you. IndexZero is a tool, not an agency.

If most of what you use a suite for is keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and AI visibility, compare the cost for your setup with the SEO tool cost calculator.

Live search data comes from DataForSEO. Keyword volumes, difficulty, domain traffic and backlink counts are third-party estimates, which is true of every SEO platform that reports them. Your Search Console data is measured. Connect it on the free plan and compare the two for your own site before you decide anything.