Moz Local vs BrightLocal: which one fits which job
· Updated
The difference that decides Moz Local vs BrightLocal for most buyers is not a feature. It is how the price scales. Moz Local publishes a three-tier ladder in plain dollars, billed per physical location, so every client adds a subscription. BrightLocal publishes its three tiers by location band, so one through five locations share one price, and it will let you into a 14-day trial with no card first. Both do listings management and both do reviews. If you are a freelancer or a small agency putting a number into a client proposal this week, the arithmetic for your own location count is the whole comparison.
This page sets out what each one sells as of September 2026, read from their own pricing pages today, what each costs, who should stay where, and the one review job that sits outside both.
Quick verdict
- Choose Moz Local if you want to see the price, sign up without talking to anyone, and your work is listings distribution plus review monitoring on a known number of locations.
- Choose BrightLocal if rank tracking and citation work are the reason you are buying and you want white-labelled client reporting.
- Count your locations before anything else. Moz Local charges a subscription per physical location, so its friendly monthly figure multiplies by your client count. BrightLocal prices by locations managed in bands, so it rises too, just in steps rather than per client.
- Neither is a review alarm. Both monitor reviews inside a platform you log into. Getting told the day an unanswered negative review lands is a different job, and it is the one Review Radar does.
What each one costs, as of October 2026
| Moz Local | BrightLocal | |
|---|---|---|
| Price on the page | Published in full | Published by location band, up to 249 locations |
| Entry tier | Lite, $20 USD/mo, or $16/mo at $199 billed yearly | Track, $41 USD/mo, or $31/mo at $369 billed yearly (one location) |
| Middle tier | Preferred, $30 USD/mo, or $24/mo at $299 billed yearly | Manage, $54 USD/mo, or $40/mo at $485 billed yearly (one location) |
| Top tier | Elite, $40 USD/mo, or $33/mo at $399 billed yearly | Grow, $65 USD/mo, or $49/mo at $584 billed yearly (one location) |
| Above that | Enterprise, custom, for 50+ locations | Price on request at 250+ locations |
| Billing unit | One subscription per physical location | One price per band of locations: 2-5 is $62, $76 and $87 a month |
| Try before you buy | Sign up directly at the published price | 14-day trial, no credit card |
| Where reviews sit | Monitoring in Lite, responding in Preferred | Under Grow, the top tier |
Moz Local rows read from moz.com/products/local/pricing, BrightLocal rows from brightlocal.com/pricing, both in September 2026.
Moz Local publishes its price, and charges it per location
Moz Local’s pricing page carries a monthly and a yearly toggle and prints a figure on every tier. Lite is $20 USD a month, Preferred is $30, Elite is $40. Pay yearly and the same tiers are $199, $299 and $399, which the page presents as $16, $24 and $33 a month with savings of $41, $61 and $81 a year. Above Elite there is an Enterprise tier with no figure, described on the page as Ideal for users with 50 or more locations.
The number that matters is not on the tier card. It is in the FAQ, and it is this:
Each physical location you need to manage in Moz Local will require its own subscription.
So the honest way to read $20 a month is $20 per client location per month. A freelancer with six Google Business Profiles is looking at six Lite subscriptions, not one. Moz says the same thing again under a question about managing locations for clients, and points anyone past 50 locations at its team. That is a clean, legible model. It just is not a flat fee, and the tier card is where people misread it.
The tiers split on what you do with reviews. Lite includes Review Monitoring, along with a local map pack ranking grid, 90+ listing directories and data health analytics. Preferred adds review responding and review sentiment analysis, plus social posting to Google and Facebook, competitor analysis and agency permissions. Elite adds Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok posting, social ad boosting, social responding and a reporting suite. There are paid add-ons on top: Listings AI at $14 USD/mo, and Reviews AI at $10 USD/mo on Preferred. On Elite the Listings AI add-on is included in the package.
Read that against how you actually work. If you need to reply to reviews from inside the tool, your floor is Preferred at $30 per location per month, not Lite at $20.
BrightLocal prices by location band, and gives you a fortnight first
BrightLocal’s pricing page offers three tiers, Track, Manage and Grow, with a locations-managed slider from one to 250+ and a monthly or annual toggle. It publishes a price table by band: for one location, Track is $41 a month, Manage $54 and Grow $65; two to five locations is $62, $76 and $87; six to ten is $83, $109 and $131. Only 250+ locations reads Price on request. The bands are what make it different from Moz Local: four client locations on Moz Local Lite is four subscriptions, $80 a month, while four on BrightLocal Track is one $62 band.
The trial is the way round it, and BrightLocal’s own FAQ is unusually direct about the terms:
No credit card is required. We want you to explore the full power of BrightLocal without any pressure. You’ll have 14 days of full access, and we won’t charge you a penny unless you decide we’re the right fit for your business.
The same FAQ says that once the trial ends you can still log in and view existing data, though you cannot run new reports or refresh data until you activate a plan. So you can see the product in full before anyone sees your card, which is more than most of this category offers.
What you are buying is the suite. Track covers local visibility and citation accuracy monitoring. Grow is where reviews live, described on the page as monitoring and responding to customer reviews across multiple sites, collecting reviews by email, SMS and in-store campaigns, and publishing them on your website. Citation Builder is separate, sold pay-as-you-go. If reviews are the reason you are buying BrightLocal, you are buying the top tier of a local-SEO platform to get them.
Which one fits which job
You manage listings for a fixed set of client locations and want a number today. Moz Local. The price is published, the per-location rule is stated plainly, and you can do the arithmetic before you speak to anyone.
Rank tracking and citations are the actual work. BrightLocal. Moz Local has a ranking grid, but BrightLocal’s rank tracking, citation tracking and client reporting are what the platform is built around, and the trial lets you test that claim for a fortnight at no cost.
You want to reply to reviews inside one dashboard. Either, at a price. Moz Local puts review responding in Preferred and sells Reviews AI as a $10 add-on. BrightLocal puts it in Grow. Both are a platform seat.
You are buying for one client and one job. Neither, probably. A per-location platform subscription is priced for someone using most of the platform.
The job that sits outside both
Both products give you a dashboard with reviews in it. Dashboards are checked when somebody remembers. The failure that costs a local business money is a one-star Google review sitting for nine days with no owner reply on it, and nobody logging in to notice.
That is the only thing Review Radar does. It watches a business’s Google reviews and up to three of its competitors’, and it emails you when a negative review has no owner reply on it yet, with a draft reply ready to send.
Its price is published in full, from the pricing page today:
| Plan | Price | Tracked locations | Credits a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1, for a month | 100 credits granted once, at sign-up |
| Starter | $39/month | 2 | 200 |
| Pro | $99/month | 5 | 550 |
| Agency | $499/month | 30 | 3,000 |
One hundred credits track one business for a month, and that includes its three closest competitors, which is not a separate line. Drafted replies cost one credit each. Top-up packs are $5 for 25 credits and $20 for 100. No card is needed to create the free account.
Compare the unit before you compare the number. Moz Local’s $20 buys one location’s listings distribution and review monitoring. A credit balance buys one business and its three rivals watched, with an alert when something needs answering. Those are different purchases, and quoting the two figures side by side without saying so would be dishonest.
How to decide this week
- Count locations. Multiply Moz Local’s tier by that count. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is uncomfortable now rather than on the first invoice.
- Decide whether you reply inside the tool. That single answer moves Moz Local’s floor from $20 to $30 per location.
- Start BrightLocal’s 14-day trial and try to produce next month’s client report inside it. If you can, the bundle is priced for the work you do.
- Read both prices at your real location count, not a round number. Moz Local multiplies per location; BrightLocal steps up per band.
- Cover the alarm separately if neither covers it. You can watch one business free for a month while you decide, with no card.
If the broader comparison is what you are after, our BrightLocal alternative page covers the review-monitoring case on its own, and Yext vs BrightLocal covers the enterprise end of the same market.
Every claim about Moz Local above was read from its own pricing page in September 2026, and BrightLocal’s prices were re-read from its pricing page in October 2026. Both change what they sell and what it costs, and neither has asked us to describe them, so check the source page before you commit to anything. Moz Local and BrightLocal are trademarks of their owners, and nothing here implies affiliation or endorsement.