similarweb vs similarsites
Similarweb vs SimilarSites — features, pricing, and which to choose for your SEO workflow in 2026.
Quick Verdict
Don't let the similar names fool you — Similarweb and SimilarSites serve completely different needs in competitive intelligence. Similarweb is a comprehensive digital intelligence platform that estimates traffic, reveals audience insights, and tracks marketing channels across millions of websites. SimilarSites is a lightweight discovery tool that simply finds websites similar to any domain you enter.
The confusion between these tools is understandable given their names, but choosing between them comes down to depth versus simplicity. If you need detailed traffic analytics and competitive benchmarking, you're looking at Similarweb. If you just want to quickly discover competitor websites or find similar sites for link prospecting, SimilarSites does exactly that — and nothing more.
Feature Comparison
Similarweb delivers enterprise-grade competitive intelligence with traffic estimates, audience demographics, marketing channel breakdowns, and industry benchmarking. You can see a competitor's top traffic sources, their audience overlap with your site, their mobile app performance, and seasonal traffic patterns. The platform tracks paid search keywords, display advertising networks, and social media performance across desktop and mobile. SimilarSites operates on a completely different level — it's essentially a discovery engine that finds websites with similar content, audience, or purpose to any domain you input. There are no traffic metrics, no audience insights, and no marketing channel data. Instead, you get a clean list of related websites that you can sort by relevance or traffic estimates. It's perfect for building competitor lists, finding link prospects, or researching market landscapes when you don't need deep analytics. The data quality differs significantly too. Similarweb pulls from multiple sources including browser extensions, mobile apps, and partnerships to estimate traffic and engagement metrics. SimilarSites focuses purely on website similarity algorithms without attempting to provide detailed analytics.
Pricing Comparison
SimilarSites wins on budget with its completely free tier that gives you unlimited similar site searches. There's no premium version or paid upgrades — what you see is what you get, and it costs nothing. Similarweb starts at $149/month for their Starter plan, which includes limited website analysis and basic competitive intelligence features. Enterprise plans can reach several thousand dollars monthly depending on data access and user seats. They do offer a free version, but it's heavily limited with only 5 website results per month and basic metrics — essentially a teaser for their paid platform.
Best For
SimilarSites is the better choice when you need quick competitor discovery, building prospect lists for outreach, or exploring market landscapes without analytics overhead. It's perfect for content marketers, link builders, and SEOs who just want to find similar websites quickly and move on to their actual work. Similarweb is the better choice when you need comprehensive competitive intelligence for strategic decision-making. If you're analyzing market share, planning advertising spend, tracking competitor performance, or need detailed audience insights for business strategy, Similarweb provides the depth and accuracy you need.
The Verdict
Choose SimilarSites if you simply need to discover similar websites — it's free, fast, and does exactly what its name suggests without unnecessary complexity. Choose Similarweb if you need serious competitive intelligence with traffic estimates, audience data, and marketing channel insights. Don't expect SimilarSites to replace Similarweb's analytics capabilities, and don't pay for Similarweb if all you need is competitor discovery.