Semrush Competitive Intelligence & Traffic & Market (2026)

Where the core Semrush tools show you a competitor’s keywords, the competitive intelligence suite — now called the Traffic & Market Toolkit (you’ll still see it called “.Trends” in older guides) — shows you their whole traffic picture: every channel, not just search. For anyone doing market research or planning where to compete, this is the part that turns SEO data into business strategy.

Is “Competitive Intelligence” still what Semrush calls it?

Short answer: no, and that is why it can be hard to find in the interface. If you are looking for a menu item called Competitive Intelligence, you will not see one. The names have moved twice:

• “.Trends” — the original name, still what most older tutorials and YouTube walkthroughs call it.
• “Competitive Intelligence” / “the CI add-on” — the name it was sold under for years, and the one most people still type into Google.
• “Traffic & Market Toolkit” — what it is called today, and what you should look for in the left-hand navigation.

All three refer to the same set of four tools, described below. Nothing was removed in the renames; if a guide tells you to open “.Trends,” open Traffic & Market instead and the screens will match.

Is it included in my Semrush plan?

No — and this catches people out more than any other detail here. The Traffic & Market Toolkit is a paid add-on that sits on top of whatever base plan you already pay for, on every tier. There is no plan you can upgrade to that includes it, which means the question is never “which plan do I need” but “is this worth its own subscription on top of mine.” Pricing and that judgement are in the cost section below.

What’s in the competitive intelligence suite

The Traffic & Market Toolkit is a paid add-on that sits on top of whichever base plan you’re on, and adds a few genuinely different tools:

• Traffic Analytics — estimated total traffic for any domain, broken down by channel (direct, referral, search, social, paid). This is how you see that a rival gets 60% of its traffic from, say, referral partnerships you’d never spot in a keyword report.
• Market Explorer — a top-down view of an entire market: the main players, their share, and where the growth is. The fastest way to size up a niche before entering it.
• One2Target — audience data: demographics, behaviour and the other sites your market visits.
• EyeOn — monitors what competitors publish and promote, so you see their moves as they happen.

Explore the Traffic & Market Toolkit→

How to actually use it

Three practical plays I run with this data:

1. Find the channel you’re missing. Run Traffic Analytics on your three best competitors. If they all pull heavy referral or social traffic and you don’t, you’ve found a growth lever that has nothing to do with keywords.
2. Size a market before you commit. Before launching in a new niche, Market Explorer tells you whether it’s growing or saturated, and who you’d be fighting. It’s saved me from entering dead markets more than once.
3. Watch the leaders. Point EyeOn at the biggest player in your space and let their content and campaign calendar become your early-warning system.

Is it worth the add-on cost?

Honest answer: it’s an extra layer on top of your base plan — currently around $289/user/month — so only add it if competitive and market research is a real part of your work: agencies, consultants, and anyone planning market entry. That’s more than most people’s entire base subscription, which is exactly why it shouldn’t be an impulse add. If you just need to out-rank a few rivals on Google, the standard Organic Research tool already covers you, and you can skip this entirely. Add-on pricing moves, so confirm the current figure on the live pricing page before committing.

Worth knowing for context: Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush in April 2026, and the plan line-up was reorganised. Read at source in September 2026 it runs SEO $139, Starter $199, Pro+ $299 and Advanced $549, with AI-visibility features bundled in rather than sold separately. Traffic & Market is unaffected by that change: it stays a paid add-on on top of whichever tier you buy, and is not included in any of them. I break the plan structure down in Semrush Pro vs Guru.

For the keyword side of competitive research, pair this with Organic Research; to pick the right base plan, see Semrush Pro vs Guru; and if you’re new to the platform, start with how to use Semrush.

See Semrush plans and pricing→

Frequently asked questions

What is Semrush competitive intelligence?

It's a suite of tools — Traffic Analytics, Market Explorer, One2Target and EyeOn, sold as the Traffic & Market Toolkit add-on (formerly branded .Trends) — that estimates a competitor's total traffic by channel, sizes markets, profiles audiences and monitors competitor activity. It goes beyond keywords to the whole traffic and market picture.

What is Traffic Analytics in Semrush?

Traffic Analytics estimates any domain's total visits and breaks them down by channel — direct, referral, organic search, social and paid — so you can see where a competitor really gets its traffic, not just how it does on Google.

Is the Traffic & Market Toolkit (.Trends) add-on worth it?

At around $289 per user per month it is worth it only if competitive or market research is a real part of your work — agencies, consultants and anyone planning to enter a new market. It often costs more than the base plan it sits on, so it is not an impulse purchase. If you only need to out-rank rivals on organic search, the standard Organic Research tool is enough.

What happened to Semrush .Trends?

It was renamed. The competitive intelligence suite formerly branded ".Trends" is now the Traffic & Market Toolkit — the same tools (Traffic Analytics, Market Explorer, One2Target and EyeOn) sold as a paid add-on on top of your base plan. Older articles still use the .Trends name.

How accurate is competitor traffic data?

It is modelled from Semrush's data sources, so treat it as directional. The channel mix and relative comparisons between competitors are reliable enough to plan strategy around, even if the absolute visit counts are estimates.