SWITCHING FROM RANK MATH

Leave Rank Math.
Keep every title you wrote.

Prime SEO reads the titles, descriptions, keywords and schema settings Rank Math stored for every post (23 fields, plus your homepage titles and the redirect table) and copies them in one click, while Rank Math stays installed until you have compared the two. There is no credit balance to top up, no add-on subscription and no second plugin arriving with an update.

Install Free on WordPress.org Free version · no account · Rank Math stays untouched until you deactivate it
Import preview before anything changes
Rank Math data is read, never deleted
GPL, open code
yoursite.com/wp-admin › Prime SEO › Migration
Rank Math detected example site
  • 1,284 posts with SEO titles or descriptions
  • 312 focus keywords
  • 58 schema and robots settings
  • 41 redirects
Import from Rank Math
Preview first. Existing Prime SEO values are not overwritten unless you say so.
23 Rank Math fields imported per post
0 AI credits, add-ons or subscriptions
15 AI crawlers controlled from one screen
IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Why people look for a Rank Math alternative,
in their own words

Three quotes from one- and two-star reviews on WordPress.org, out of the 300 most recent ones we read on September 22, 2026. Links go to the original reviews.

“a few days after purchasing Rank Math SEO “PRO”, I was charged for a subscription to “Content AI Starter”, which I never subscribed to.”

Review on WordPress.org, June 2, 2026

“They just installed imagify with the most recent update.”

Review on WordPress.org, November 21, 2025

“I am a Rank Math Pro paid user, and the support experience has been extremely disappointing.”

Review on WordPress.org, January 5, 2026

Rank Math 1.0.278, free version

  • 1,346 files, 16 MB on disk
  • Content AI runs on a credit balance (Helper::get_content_ai_credits() in class-content-ai.php); reviews describe a separate paid subscription
  • AI Visibility module (since 1.0.273) monitors your brand in AI answers; it does not control crawlers
  • No AI crawler names anywhere in the free code: a GPTBot rule has to be typed into robots.txt by hand
  • Redirects and 404 monitor are free, the same as in Prime SEO
VS

Prime SEO 1.2.0, free version

  • 95 files, 2 MB on disk
  • Two admin notices in total: a review request after 7 days and a conflict warning on its own pages
  • Pro is a contextual button, never a banner or a popup; nothing is installed without a click
  • Redirects, 404 monitor, IndexNow and llms.txt are free
  • 15 AI crawlers: every switch writes a rule to robots.txt, and a log shows which ones came

File counts and sizes: the plugin folders from WordPress.org, measured on September 22, 2026 (Rank Math 1.0.278). The crawler finding: our file-by-file read of five free SEO plugins.

ONE-CLICK IMPORT

What moves over
from Rank Math

The Migration Tool reads Rank Math’s own data. Nothing in Rank Math is deleted, so you can compare both plugins before switching off the old one.

Rank Math data Fields Imported
SEO title, meta description, focus keyword 3 ✓ Yes
Canonical URL, robots and advanced robots 3 ✓ Yes
Facebook title, description, image and image ID; Twitter title, description, image, image ID, “use Facebook” flag 9 ✓ Yes
Rich snippet type, snippet name and description, primary category, breadcrumb title, pillar content 6 ✓ Yes
SEO score and Content AI score (kept for reference) 2 ✓ Yes
Homepage title and description (Rank Math variables converted) site settings ✓ Yes
Redirects from the rank_math_redirections table table ✓ Yes
Content AI drafts, keyword rank tracking, Analytics module data — ✕ Not imported

Field list from class-prime-seo-migration.php in Prime SEO 1.2.0: 23 rank_math_* post meta keys, the rank_math_options_general and titles options and the rank_math_redirections table.

BEFORE YOU DECIDE

Where Rank Math is still
ahead

A switch costs an afternoon. These are the reasons not to make it.

More modules in the free version

Rank Math free ships 22 modules, including Local SEO, Google Analytics integration, WooCommerce and Web Stories. Prime SEO covers the SEO core and the AI crawler side, nothing for local listings or rank tracking.

Install base

Rank Math reports 4 million active installs in the directory. Prime SEO is a 2026 plugin with a fraction of that, one developer and no premium support tier.

llms.txt exists in Rank Math too

Rank Math free has an llms module (includes/modules/llms). The difference is around it: Prime SEO adds llms-full.txt, per-bot robots rules for 15 crawlers and a log of which AI crawlers visited, all free.

FIVE STEPS

Switch in one sitting,
Rank Math active until the last step

  1. 1
    Install Prime SEO from Plugins → Add New and keep Rank Math active for now. Prime SEO shows a conflict warning on its own pages. While both plugins are active each one outputs its own meta tags, so do steps 2 to 5 in one sitting.
  2. 2
    Open Prime SEO → Migration. The page lists what it found: posts with Rank Math titles, focus keywords, canonicals, redirects. Nothing is written yet.
  3. 3
    Run the import. Post data, homepage titles and redirects are copied into Prime SEO’s own fields. Rank Math’s data stays in place.
  4. 4
    Spot-check three posts. Open the Prime SEO box on a post, a page and a product: title, description, Open Graph image. Then check yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.
  5. 5
    Deactivate Rank Math. Resubmit the sitemap in Search Console (/sitemap.xml instead of /sitemap_index.xml). Keep the Rank Math plugin folder for a week in case you want to compare, then delete it.

Rankings depend on the tags a crawler reads in the head of the page (title, description, canonical, robots directives), and every one of them is imported unchanged, so a crawler visiting the day after the switch finds the same head section it indexed the week before.

QUESTIONS

Switching from Rank Math: questions

Will my rankings drop?

Not from the switch itself. The tags Google reads (title, description, canonical, robots) are imported as they were. What can change rankings is deactivating Rank Math without importing first, which leaves posts with no meta description for a while. Import, verify, then deactivate.

Do I lose my Rank Math data?

No. The Migration Tool reads Rank Math’s own data and copies it. It deletes nothing. If you reactivate Rank Math, everything is where it was.

What happens to my Content AI subscription?

Nothing on our side: it is a Rank Math account product, cancelled in your Rank Math account. Prime SEO Pro’s AI features are part of the one $59 plan, with no credits to buy.

Does Prime SEO nag about Pro?

The free version has two admin notices: a review request after seven days of use and a conflict warning when another SEO plugin is active, shown only on Prime SEO’s own pages. Pro features appear as buttons where they apply, such as “Generate with AI” in the post editor. There are no banners, no popups and nothing installs itself.

Can I run both plugins at the same time?

For the import, yes. For a live site, no: two SEO plugins each output their own meta tags and sitemaps, and search engines get duplicates. Deactivate Rank Math once the import is verified.

Is the plugin really free?

The version on WordPress.org includes titles and descriptions, sitemaps, schema, redirects, 404 monitor, IndexNow, breadcrumbs, image SEO, llms.txt and the AI Bots Manager. Pro ($59 a year) adds AI-written titles and descriptions, a bulk generator, an AI content score and a video sitemap.

Import from Rank Math today.
Decide after you compare.

Install the free version, run the import, look at three posts. Rank Math stays active until you switch it off.

Install Free on WordPress.org Read the Migration Tool documentation →
Install Free — import from Rank Math