All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is one of the big three SEO plugins for WordPress, sitting alongside Yoast and Rank Math. The free version covers the fundamentals well and looks a bit more “native Gutenberg” than Yoast. But the onboarding and editor experience are heavy on panels and upgrade nudges, which can overwhelm non-technical clients.
Overall score: 7.4/10
Overview
- Setup & Onboarding – 6/10
- Editor – 6/10
- Performance – 9/10
- Features – 8/10
- Docs & Support – 8/10
Pricing & Licensing
Setup & Onboarding – 6/10
The wizard is straightforward, but it’s noticeably sales-forward. In our September 2025 test, the flow encouraged installing a long list (we counted 13) of additional “Pro” or related suite plugins during onboarding. It also pushes the Google Search Console “integration”—which in practice refers to Search Statistics, a Pro feature that pulls GSC data into WordPress rather than basic site verification.
Bottom line: you can be configured quickly, but expect upsell prompts early and often.
Editor – 6/10
Visually, AIOSEO’s sidebar feels a bit cleaner and more at home in the block editor than Yoast’s. You get separate panels for:
- Headline Analyzer (clear and handy)
- General (titles/meta, social, schema basics)
- AI Writing Assistant (appears in Free, but requires a paid SEOBoost subscription to actually use)
However, you’ll also see the General settings duplicated at the bottom meta box and in the right sidebar, plus various Pro-only blocks/alerts sprinkled throughout. The result is a lot of panels. Power users will be fine, but clients can feel buried and second-guess what to click.
Performance – 9/10
Like Yoast, AIOSEO’s core features (titles/meta, sitemaps, schema) don’t add front-end bloat by default. Optional modules (breadcrumbs, social graph, etc.) are opt-in, so you only pay for what you enable. In typical caching stacks we haven’t observed measurable slowdowns from Free.
Features – 8/10
Feature parity with Yoast (Free). If you ignore layout and naming differences, the free cores are very similar: titles/meta, XML sitemaps, schema basics, social previews, and per-post content analysis. AIOSEO’s Headline Analyzer is a nice, clearer-than-average take on title scoring.
Where AIOSEO leans harder than Yoast is in-dashboard AI and analytics—but most of that is paid.
- AI Writing Assistant is marketed prominently but requires a separate SEOBoost subscription to function.
- Search Statistics (the “GSC integration”) is a Pro add-on that authenticates to Google and surfaces GSC performance data inside WordPress. Useful—but again, not part of Free.
If you stay on Free, you still have everything you need for fundamentals.
AIOSEO offers 5 Gutenberg blocks:
- Breadcrumbs
- HTML Sitemap
- Table of Contents
- FAQ
- Key Points
They look good and include the controls you’d expect, but some options sit behind a Pro paywall which feels abit confusing at times.
Docs & Support – 8/10
AIOSEO’s knowledge base is broad and task-oriented (setup, verification, sitemaps, Search Statistics, etc.), and it’s easy to find step-by-step guides for common jobs. The product pages and docs clearly note that Search Statistics connects to GSC and that the AI Writing Assistant needs an extra subscription, which helps set expectations.
Pricing & Licensing
It’s a free plugin; we don’t grade licensing for Free.
Final verdict
AIOSEO (Free) nails the fundamentals without slowing your site and looks a bit more native than Yoast, with a genuinely helpful Headline Analyzer—those are the wins—but onboarding is pushy (nudging you to install a stack of Pro add-ons and pitching a “GSC integration” that actually sits behind the Pro Search Statistics module), and the editor can feel cluttered with duplicated “General” settings plus extra Pro panels; if you can live with the upsells and tidy the UI for clients, it’s a polished, powerful choice, but if you want a minimalist set-and-forget helper, you may prefer something leaner.
Overall score: 7.2/10
Get AIOSEO here.
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