See what Yoast SEO offers WordPress users in 2026: free and Premium features, pricing, readability analysis, schema markup and how it compares to rivals.
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that adds an on-page SEO and readability checker directly to the post and page editor. As a writer types, the plugin scores how well the content targets a chosen keyphrase and flags readability issues, giving green, orange or red indicators that make optimization approachable for non-specialists.
The plugin was launched in 2010 by Dutch SEO consultant Joost de Valk and has grown into one of the most installed plugins in the WordPress ecosystem, used by bloggers, publishers, e-commerce stores and agencies managing client sites. Yoast the company is based in Wijchen, Netherlands.
Yoast SEO is distributed as a free plugin through the official WordPress.org plugin repository, with an optional Premium upgrade that unlocks automation such as redirect management, internal linking suggestions, and AI-assisted title and description writing.
The free version covers the fundamentals of on-page SEO: keyphrase and readability analysis, automatically generated XML sitemaps that update whenever content is added or removed, and built-in schema.org structured data for articles, organizations, breadcrumbs, FAQ blocks and how-to blocks so pages can qualify for Google rich results.
Premium adds a redirect manager for handling changed or removed URLs, internal linking suggestions surfaced while writing, AI-generated title and meta description suggestions, and the ability to optimize one page for up to five keyphrases and their synonyms rather than a single target term.
Premium licenses also bundle the Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO add-ons, one seat for the Google Docs integration, and access to 24/7 support from Yoast's team, which is useful for teams that rely on the plugin as their primary SEO workflow tool.
Yoast SEO's free plugin has no cost and includes SEO analysis, readability analysis, XML sitemaps and core schema markup, making it usable indefinitely for small sites and hobby blogs.
Yoast SEO Premium costs EUR 118.80 (about $129) per year, billed annually per website. Agencies or businesses that run multiple WordPress sites need a separate Premium subscription for each domain.
There is no usage-based or team pricing tier; the plugin is licensed per site rather than per user, which keeps pricing simple but means the cost scales with the number of websites rather than the number of editors.
Yes. The core Yoast SEO plugin is free and includes content analysis, readability analysis, XML sitemaps and basic schema markup. Premium is an optional paid upgrade.
Premium adds a redirect manager, internal linking suggestions, AI-generated titles and descriptions, optimization for up to five keyphrases per page, and 24/7 support, plus bundled Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO add-ons.
Yoast SEO Premium is EUR 118.80 (about $129) per year, billed per website.
Yes, both the free and Premium versions generate XML sitemaps automatically and keep them updated as content changes.
Yes. It automatically adds structured data for articles, organizations, breadcrumbs, and FAQ and how-to blocks, which can help pages qualify for rich results.
The free version optimizes for one keyphrase per page. Premium allows optimization for up to five keyphrases and their synonyms on a single page.
Yoast SEO is designed to work broadly across WordPress themes and popular page builders, since it hooks into the standard WordPress editor and content fields rather than a specific theme.
Yoast SEO is developed by Yoast, a company founded by Joost de Valk in 2010 and headquartered in Wijchen, Netherlands.