I saw OpenSEO trending and did what every developer does.

I starred it before reading the pricing.

Then I read the pricing.

The appeal is real

The pitch is clean: open source, self-hostable, pay-as-you-go. No Semrush subscription. No bloat. Fork it and add your own features. For developers tired of paying $200/month for tools that do 10x more than they need, it lands perfectly.

1.7k stars. 196 forks. Active releases. The community is real.

I get it. I would have starred it too.

Then I opened the pricing section

"OpenSEO itself remains free. It works by using DataForSEO's APIs, which is a paid third-party service."

So it's free the same way a printer is free.

Here's what DataForSEO actually costs:

Minimum top-up: $50

Backlinks API: $100/month commitment

100 keyword research requests: $3.50–$7.00

100 domain overviews: $4.01

Rank tracking at scale: climbs fast depending on keywords and devices

The stars came from developers who love the idea.…