Short answer: Yoast SEO for most sites. It is lighter where it counts, better at coaching your writing, and 17 times as common on the web’s biggest WordPress sites. Pick All in One SEO if you want a guided setup and one licence for 3 to 100 sites, and you don’t mind upgrade prompts.
Key takeaways
- Big sites run Yoast 17 times as often: 323 vs 19 in the top 10,000.
- All in One SEO adds 103 ms to each visitor page against 71 ms for Yoast (Accelera).
- From 3 sites up, All in One SEO is cheaper: $199 a year against €356.40.
One thing to know before reading other comparisons: two of the pages ranking on Google for this search come from the same people who make All in One SEO. One is AIOSEO’s own blog. The other is WPBeginner. WordPress.org lists All in One SEO’s author as Syed Balkhi, and WPBeginner names him as its founder. Their verdict may be right, but it isn’t neutral. This comparison uses public data only. This site runs neither plugin (we use Rank Math), and we have no affiliate deal with either.
Yoast vs All in One SEO at a glance
| Yoast SEO | All in One SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Active installs | 10+ million | 2+ million |
| On WordPress.org since | October 2010 | March 2007 |
| Rating | 4.8 (27,820 reviews) | 4.7 (5,215 reviews) |
| One-star reviews | 3.0% | 5.0% |
| Support threads resolved (last 2 months) | 30 of 33 | 28 of 28 |
| Installed size | 21 MB, 1,938 files | 25 MB, 1,286 files |
| Redirect manager | Premium | Pro plans |
| llms.txt for AI search | Free | Free |
| Remove all data on uninstall | No setting | Free, one toggle |
| Paid version | €118.80/year, 1 site | $99/year for 1 site, up to $599 for 100 |
Which one do big sites use?
On 29 September 2026 we scanned the homepages of the top 10,000 sites in the Tranco ranking and found 716 WordPress sites. 323 run Yoast. 19 run All in One SEO.
| Tranco rank | WordPress sites | Yoast | All in One SEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–1,000 | 49 | 23 | 0 |
| 1,001–2,500 | 108 | 58 | 2 |
| 2,501–5,000 | 171 | 69 | 2 |
| 5,001–10,000 | 388 | 173 | 15 |
None of the top 1,000 sites runs All in One SEO. Yoast’s users include Harvard, TechCrunch and the US State Department. All in One SEO’s include SmartRecruiters, Ecwid and WPBeginner itself. The gap is wider than install counts suggest: WordPress.org shows Yoast with five times the installs, but on big sites the ratio is 17 to 1. You can check any site with our plugin detector.
Free version: close, with different strengths
Both free versions cover titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, breadcrumbs, social tags, schema and an llms.txt file for AI search tools. Neither includes a redirect manager: that’s Premium on Yoast and a paid plan on All in One SEO. On either one, the free Redirection plugin fills that gap.
Yoast is better at writing guidance. Its readability checks cover sentence length, paragraph length, transition words and passive voice, with a red-orange-green light for each.
All in One SEO is better at setup. Its wizard asks about your site type and fills in the settings for you. Its TruSEO score gives each post a number out of 100. It also has a proper uninstall option that deletes all its data, which Yoast lacks.
Both free versions show prompts to upgrade to their paid plans.
Price: it depends on how many sites you run
| Sites | Yoast SEO Premium | All in One SEO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | €118.80/year | $99/year (Basic) |
| 3 | €356.40/year | $199/year (Plus) |
| 10 | €1,188/year | $399/year (Pro) |
| 100 | not practical | $599/year (Elite) |
For one site the two cost about the same. From three sites up, All in One SEO is clearly cheaper. Budget for the renewal price, not the first-year discount.
Speed: Yoast is faster for visitors
Accelera timed both plugins on a clean WordPress install (full test; published July 2024 with Yoast 23.1 and All in One SEO 4.6.7.1, updated September 2026):
| Measure | Yoast SEO | All in One SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Page seen by visitors | 71 ms | 103 ms |
| Admin dashboard | 95 ms | 138 ms |
| Post editor | 177 ms | 176 ms |
| CSS loaded in the editor | 48.8 KB, 14 files | 82.6 KB, 39 files |
| JavaScript loaded in the editor | 678 KB, 30 files | 658 KB, 108 files |
All in One SEO added about 45% more processing time to every page a visitor loads. In the editor the two were even. Both were among the heaviest SEO plugins in the test. If speed matters most, The SEO Framework or Slim SEO run several times faster.
Switching between them
Both directions work well, which isn’t true of every pair of SEO plugins.
- Yoast to All in One SEO: the importer brings over Yoast’s settings and search appearance, and each post’s title, description, focus keyphrases, canonical, robots settings, social fields, schema type and cornerstone flag, plus author data. Yoast Premium’s redirects are not included in the free plugin’s importer (checked in All in One SEO 5.0.2).
- All in One SEO to Yoast: Yoast imports All in One SEO’s general settings, content type and taxonomy defaults, archive settings and every post’s SEO data, then offers to clean up the old data (checked in Yoast 28.6).
Take a backup first, run the import, check a few pages’ titles and descriptions, then deactivate the old plugin. Never run both at once: every page would get two sets of title tags, canonicals and schema.
Verdict: which one should you use?
- One site, free plugin: Yoast SEO. Faster for visitors, better writing guidance, fewer prompts.
- A team of writers: Yoast SEO. The readability checks are what they’ll use every day.
- 3 to 100 sites on a paid plan: All in One SEO. One licence covers them for less than Yoast Premium per site.
- You want the setup done for you: All in One SEO’s wizard is the most complete.
- You want more free features than either: neither. Rank Math gives you redirects and a 404 monitor for free.
See all six options in our comparison of the best SEO plugins for WordPress.
What to do next
- One site: install Yoast SEO.
- 3 sites or more on a paid plan: compare the renewal price of All in One SEO, not the first-year offer.
- Need redirects on a free plan: add the Redirection plugin to either one.
- Switching: back up, import, check 5 pages, then deactivate the old plugin.
See what a competitor runs
Paste any address into our free plugin detector to see its SEO plugin, theme and every plugin that loads on the page.
FAQ
Is Yoast better than All in One SEO?
For a single site, usually yes: it adds less processing time to each page (71 ms vs 103 ms in Accelera’s test), its readability checks are more detailed, and big sites use it 17 times as often. All in One SEO is the better deal if you pay for several sites, since one Plus licence covers 3 sites for $199 a year.
Is All in One SEO free?
Yes. The free version on WordPress.org covers titles, descriptions, sitemaps, schema, breadcrumbs and llms.txt. Paid plans start at $99 a year for one site, with the first year at half price.
Who makes All in One SEO?
WordPress.org lists its author as Syed Balkhi, who also founded WPBeginner. Keep that in mind when you read WPBeginner’s comparisons of SEO plugins.
Can I use Yoast and All in One SEO together?
No. Two SEO plugins print duplicate title tags, canonical tags and schema on every page. Import your data into one, check a few pages, then deactivate the other.
Will switching from Yoast to All in One SEO hurt my rankings?
Not if you import your data. All in One SEO copies Yoast’s titles, descriptions, robots settings and canonicals, so pages keep the same tags. If you used Yoast Premium’s redirects, recreate them in the Redirection plugin before you switch.