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. The cost reality hits after setup.…