A small business can do most of its SEO groundwork without paying anything. Google and Bing give site owners their own search data for free, and the big paid suites (Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking) all offer a free plan or free checkers to pull you in. Each free option has a limit, though: reports a day, URLs per crawl, or sites you must prove you own. Below are the tools worth using, grouped by the job they do, with the exact limit each vendor publishes and what the first paid step costs. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pages, in US dollars.
What's free and the limit
| Tool | Job | What's free | The limit | First paid step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Your Google search data | The whole tool | Performance data goes back 16 months | None: there is no paid version |
| Google Keyword Planner | Keyword ideas and search volumes | Keyword ideas, monthly search estimates, bid estimates | Needs a Google Ads account with billing set up | None for the tool; you pay only for ads you run |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Bing data, keywords, backlinks, site audit | The whole tool | Site Scan pages: a monthly quota Bing sets per site; 5 stored scans | None: there is no paid version |
| PageSpeed Insights | Page speed and Core Web Vitals | The whole tool | One URL per test | None: no account or plan needed |
| Ahrefs Free | Your own site's backlinks, keywords and audit | Site Explorer and Site Audit for sites you verify | 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once; 5,000 crawl credits a month per project | Starter: $29 a month |
| Semrush free account | Competitor and keyword lookups | All the main research tools | 10 reports a day; 1 website; 10 tracked keywords | SEO: $139 a month ($117.33 billed annually) |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Technical crawl of your site | The desktop crawler | 500 URLs; no saved crawls or scheduling | $279 a license a year |
| AnswerThePublic | Questions people search | Search visualizations | 1 search without an account; 3 a day with a free account | Starter: $20 a month, or $10 a month billed yearly |
| Moz free tools | Keyword, link and authority checks | Keyword Explorer, link checker, Domain Authority checker, MozBar | Not stated on Moz's free tools page | Entry plan: $49 a month |
| SE Ranking free tools | Rank, traffic and keyword checks | 30+ single-purpose checkers | "Free daily checks"; the number isn't published | Core: $129 a month ($103.20 billed annually) |
The first four are free for good: Google and Microsoft don't sell a paid version. The rest are free tiers of paid products, and their limits are set to make you want the paid plan.
What the first paid step costs for a year
Show the numbers
| Value | |
|---|---|
| AnswerThePublic Starter | $120 |
| Screaming Frog license | $279 |
| Ahrefs Starter | $348 |
| Moz entry plan | $588 |
| SE Ranking Core | $1,238 |
| Ahrefs Lite | $1,290 |
| Semrush SEO | $1,408 |
The chart shows what a year costs once you outgrow each free tier. The gap is wide: AnswerThePublic's yearly Starter plan and a Screaming Frog license each cost less than $300 a year, while the entry plans of the full suites, SE Ranking Core, Ahrefs Lite and Semrush SEO, all cost more than $1,200. Ahrefs Starter looks cheap at $348 a year, but Ahrefs says it is designed for light usage, with 200 credits a month and no add-ons.
Google Search Console: start here
Google says plainly that Search Console "is a free service offered by Google". Verify your site and it shows the searches you appear for on Google, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for each query and page. Since the 2018 redesign, the Performance report holds 16 months of data, enough to compare this month with the same month last year. It also reports which pages are indexed and why others are not.
What to watch: it covers only your own verified sites and only Google. It tells you nothing about competitors, and it shows search data, not what visitors do on your site afterwards. For that, Google Analytics is the companion tool; if you also send email or social traffic, tag those links with our UTM builder so the visits show up under the right campaign.
Choose it if you have a website. Every other tool here is optional; this one isn't.
Google Keyword Planner: free, with a Google Ads account
Google calls Keyword Planner "a free resource" for building keyword lists. It suggests keyword ideas, gives estimates of monthly searches and shows suggested bid estimates for each keyword, a rough sign of how much advertisers value a search.
What to watch: it lives inside Google Ads. Google's help page says you must complete your account setup by entering your billing information to use it, and its product page says to complete setup and create a campaign. Using the planner costs nothing, but any campaign you create can spend money once it runs, so keep it paused if you only want the research.
Choose it if you want search volumes from Google itself, for example to choose between two names for the same service.
Bing Webmaster Tools: the free extras
Microsoft describes Bing Webmaster Tools as free. It does for Bing what Search Console does for Google, and adds three things Search Console doesn't:
- Keyword research, with trending keywords, related searches and long-tail ideas.
- Backlinks for your own site and for competitors: referring domains and anchor text.
- Site Scan, an on-demand audit that crawls your site and flags technical SEO issues. Bing's help page says each site's quota is "calculated automatically" and shows what is left "for this month"; it doesn't take requests to raise it. You can store up to 5 scans at a time.
What to watch: its search reports cover Bing only, not Google, so check your Google numbers in Search Console. Setup takes a minute if you already use Search Console, because Bing can import your verified sites from it, and you can sign in with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account.
Choose it if you want a free site audit and a look at competitors' backlinks without signing up for a paid suite.
PageSpeed Insights: page speed and Core Web Vitals
PageSpeed Insights is Google's page test. Paste a URL and it runs Lighthouse to score Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO, and shows real-user data from the Chrome User Experience Report over the previous 28 days, for both mobile and desktop. The real-user part covers the Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP and CLS. Google's thresholds for "good" are an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less.
What to watch: it tests one page at a time. Run your home page and your busiest service page rather than every URL.
Choose it if your site feels slow on a phone, or a web designer is quoting to "speed it up" and you want a before-and-after number.
Ahrefs Free: backlinks and an audit for your own site
Ahrefs Free, once called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, gives "free-forever, limited access" to Ahrefs' core tools for sites you verify you own, and you can verify an unlimited number of sites. The limits:
- Site Explorer: up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once.
- Site Audit: 5,000 crawl credits a month per project.
- Web Analytics: up to 1 million events per project.
Ahrefs also lists free single-purpose tools that work on any site, including a Backlink Checker, Keyword Generator, SERP Checker, Keyword Rank Checker and Website Authority Checker. Their pages don't publish a usage limit.
What to watch: Site Explorer and Site Audit work only on sites you verify. To research competitors in depth, you need a paid plan.
First paid step: Starter at $29 a month, which Ahrefs says renews monthly only and can't take extra users or credits. The working plan is Lite at $129 a month or $1,290 a year. Our Ahrefs pricing guide covers the credit limits on Lite and how the plans compare.
Choose it if you want to know who links to your site and what is broken on it, and you can verify ownership.
Semrush: 10 free reports a day
Semrush's free plan needs no credit card and allows 10 reports a day across its main tools. Its FAQ adds that a free user can monitor one website and track 10 keywords in Position Tracking. Ten lookups is enough to check a competitor's top keywords or the volume of a handful of phrases, not to plan a site. Semrush also runs a separate free SEO checker that allows one check a day.
What to watch: the 10 reports are shared across all the main tools, so a keyword lookup and a competitor check both use up the day's allowance.
First paid step: the SEO plan at $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed annually, with 3,000 searches a day and 500 keywords tracked daily. Semrush's SEO toolkit plans come with a 7-day free trial. Our Semrush pricing guide covers the plans, extra users and the refund rules.
Choose it if you want competitor keyword data a few times a week.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: a free crawl up to 500 URLs
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a desktop program that crawls your site the way a search engine does. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs and finds broken links, errors and redirects, checks page titles and meta descriptions, reviews robots directives, finds exact duplicate pages and generates XML sitemaps. Most small-business sites are well under 500 URLs.
What to watch: the free version can't save and reopen crawls, schedule them, render JavaScript or connect to Google Analytics, Search Console or PageSpeed Insights; those, and an unlimited crawl, need a license.
First paid step: $279 a license a year, with one license per user. Five or more licenses cost less each.
Choose it if you want a full list of every page, title and broken link on your site to work through.
AnswerThePublic: questions people ask
AnswerThePublic turns a topic into a map of the questions and phrases people search around it, which makes it a quick source of FAQ and blog ideas. Without an account you get 1 search; a free account unlocks 3 searches a day.
What to watch: search volume and cost-per-click data are listed as features of the paid plans, and three searches a day is enough to collect question ideas for a page or two, not to research a whole site.
First paid step: Starter at $20 a month, or $10 a month billed yearly ($120 a year), with 100 searches a month, search volume and cost-per-click data.
Choose it if you write your own blog posts or FAQ pages and want to answer what customers actually ask.
Moz and SE Ranking free tools
Moz lists free versions of its keyword research tool, backlink checker, Domain Authority checker, competitive research tool and Brand Authority checker, plus the MozBar browser extension and a local listings checker. Its free tools page doesn't state how many searches each allows. If you outgrow them, Moz's entry plan for a single website is $49 a month; Moz Pro Standard is $99 a month, or $79 a month paid yearly.
SE Ranking offers more than 30 single-purpose free tools, including a Google rank checker, website traffic checker and keyword research tool, with "free daily checks" and no account required; it doesn't publish the daily number. Its paid Core plan is $129 a month or $103.20 a month billed annually, and the 14-day trial needs no credit card.
What to watch: neither vendor publishes how many free checks you get, so you may run out partway through a task.
Choose them if you want a one-off rank, traffic or Domain Authority check without setting up a full tool.
Ubersuggest is left out of the table: its pricing page doesn't publish the free account's daily limit. It offers a 7-day free trial on monthly subscriptions.
How to choose
- Set up the free-for-good tools first. Google Search Console, then Bing Webmaster Tools (import from Search Console), then one PageSpeed Insights test of your main pages. That covers your own rankings, a site audit and speed for nothing.
- Pick one tool for keyword research. If you have a Google Ads account, Keyword Planner. If not, Semrush's 10 reports a day for competitors and volumes, or AnswerThePublic's 3 daily searches for question ideas.
- Pick one tool for links and audits. Ahrefs Free if you can verify your site; Screaming Frog if you want a page-by-page list.
- Pay only when a limit costs you time. If you hit the daily cap several times a week, compare the first paid steps in the chart: under $300 a year for a single job, over $1,200 for a full suite. Our Semrush and Ahrefs pricing guides compare the suites side by side.