Local SEO Pricing: Credits vs Opaque Packages
A pricing page that needs its own FAQ
Most rank-tracking pricing pages need a second page just to explain the first one: what a “credit” covers, what doesn’t count against it, which features sit behind a separate subscription, what happens when a report costs more than the scan that generated it. None of that complexity is dishonest, exactly — it’s just opaque enough that a buyer can’t answer “what will this actually cost me” without doing the vendor’s math for them.
What one credit buys, and nothing else
SeoMap’s rule fits in one sentence: 1 credit = 1 grid point, a single simulated Google Maps search at one GPS coordinate. That’s the whole model. A 5×5 scan is 25 credits. A 7×7 is 49. A 13×13 — 169 measured points, the map filling in live in under three minutes — is 169 credits. Nothing else on the platform costs extra: not the heatmap, not ARP, ATRP or SoLV, not competitor analysis, not the report export, not a public share link. The number on the scan configuration screen before hitting start is the number that gets charged, every time.
Why “layered” pricing is worth checking closely
Data-retrieval API and On-Demand API are separate products. Do not apply the On-Demand subscription price to ordinary report retrieval; confirm current plan eligibility.
Turning credits into scans a human actually plans around
Nobody budgets in grid points, so the plans translate directly: Starter (€29/month, €24/month billed yearly) includes 3,000 credits — about 17 large 13×13 scans a month, or 60 compact 7×7s, across 5 projects. Pro (€79/month, €66/month yearly) steps up to 12,000 credits, roughly 70 large scans, unlimited projects, and adds scan comparison with unlimited history. Agency (€199/month, €166/month yearly) covers 40,000 credits — about 235 large scans — across 10 users. Paying yearly on any tier is two months free, a flat 17% off; unused credits don’t roll over past the end of the month, which is the one tradeoff worth knowing going in.
The most transparent tier is the one with no credits at all
The Lifetime plan — €299 once, limited to 100 licenses — removes the markup entirely instead of adjusting it: bring your own DataForSEO API key and pay DataForSEO directly, at their cost, roughly €0.002 per grid point (a 13×13 scan runs about €0.34). SeoMap takes nothing on top of that per scan; the built-in daily budget cap is the only thing standing between a BYOK account and an unexpectedly large bill. It’s a genuinely different arrangement from the subscription tiers, and the most transparent one on offer by construction — there’s no markup left to disclose.
Why this matters more for agencies than anyone else
An agency quoting a client on monthly rank-tracking work needs its own cost per scan to be predictable, because that number becomes part of a retainer. A pricing model where the true cost per scan can shift depending on which report gets exported or which endpoint gets called is a harder number to build a quote around than one where 169 credits always means 169 credits. With 500 free credits on signup and no card required, the model is checkable before a single euro changes hands — run a scan, look at what it actually cost, and confirm the sentence at the top of this page is true.