Best Free SEO Tools in 2026: What Each Free Plan Allows and What the First Upgrade Costs
For a solo owner of a 5-page site who wants keyword research, a site audit, a rank check and a backlink check, Bing Webmaster Tools does all four at $0 with no usage cap printed (read 20 Oct 2026). The cheapest monthly-billed paid step here is $29 a month, at Ahrefs and Ubersuggest.
Free tools are enough for the first months of a small site, and what pushes you out is a cap, not the price of the first upgrade: a 10-keyword tracker is full once those 5 pages each target two keywords.
Dupple data: we read the pricing, product or help pages of 10 vendors between 4 and 20 Oct 2026 and compared 8; 6 of the 8 publish a paid price, and Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools have no paid plan. Seven of the 8 free plans print a numeric limit: 4 cap lookups per day or month, 5 cap the pages or URLs crawled, 3 cap tracked keywords at 10 or 25, and Search Console caps its tables at 1,000 rows.
Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 271 SEO tools as of October 19, 2026, 48% of them free, freemium or open source, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 108 that publish a price is $30.12 a month.
| Tool | Free plan: jobs covered and printed limits | First paid step | 12 months at that step | Hidden costs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bing Webmaster Tools | 4 of 4: Site Scan audit, keyword research, average position over up to 16 months, backlink insights; no usage limit printed | None listed, Microsoft calls it free | $0 | Data describes Bing searches, not Google's |
| Ahrefs Free | 4 of 4: Site Audit with 5,000 crawl credits a month per verified site, keywords you rank for and backlinks with 1,000 shown at once, plus a free Keyword Generator; no Keywords Explorer or Rank Tracker | Starter plan, renews monthly | $348 | Free account covers sites you verify, not competitors; Starter allows no add-ons |
| Semrush | 4 of 4: 10 reports a day across tools (pricing page); the article lists keyword research and backlinks at 10 queries a day, a Site Audit of 100 URLs per month and 10 tracked keywords | SEO plan, billed monthly | $1,668 | 7-day trial asks for card details; the pricing page opens on its annual toggle |
| Seobility | 4 of 4: 10 tracked keywords, 100-page audit per crawl, and a pool of 5 checks a day across the free Backlink Checker, Keyword Research Tool and Ranking Checker | Premium plan, billed monthly, VAT extra | $838.80 | Page opens in euros; VAT is added on top |
| Ubersuggest | 4 of 4: 3 searches or reports a day, 25 tracked keywords with weekly updates, 150-page audit a week, 100 backlinks per site | Individual plan, billed monthly | $348 | 7-day trial bills unless cancelled; add-ons cost $5 a month each |
| Google Search Console | 2 of 4: queries with average position, and a list of sites that link to you; tables stop at 1,000 rows | None, Google calls it free | $0 | Reports queries that already show your site and does not crawl for you |
| Moz | 2 of 4: Link Explorer at 10 queries a month, a free Keyword Explorer with no cap printed | Starter plan, billed monthly | $588 | Extra seats cost $49 a month each; Starter's limits are not on the pricing page |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | 1 of 4: site audit up to 500 URLs; no saved crawls, scheduling or JavaScript rendering | One-year licence, one user | $279 | The paid crawl is bounded by your computer's memory and storage; the licence renews yearly |
Each total is 12 months at the first paid step, billed monthly where the vendor sells monthly and as one yearly licence for Screaming Frog. All prices are US dollars, and Seobility's page opens in euros with a dollar selector, which is the view used.
How we chose and ordered these tools
I kept the eight tools whose own pages describe what the free version does. SpyFu (no free plan on its pricing page) and AnswerThePublic (no daily limit printed for registered users) were read and left out. This is a comparison of vendor pages, not a test of the products, and every price was read between 4 and 20 Oct 2026. Semrush and Ahrefs show euros to visitors in Europe, so their dollar prices come from archive.org snapshots of each vendor's own pricing page, dated 4 Oct (Semrush) and 15 Oct (Ahrefs) 2026.
A job counts as covered when the vendor's own pages name a free account feature or a free standalone tool for it: keyword research means volumes or ideas, a site audit a crawl or scan that flags technical issues, a rank check positions for keywords you target or already rank for, and a backlink check a list or count of linking sites.
Rows run from the free plan that covers the most jobs to the one that covers the fewest. Inside a group, a plan with no lookup or crawl limit comes first, then monthly limits, then daily limits, larger first.
Bing Webmaster Tools: all four jobs and no limit printed
Microsoft's guide to Bing Webmaster Tools, published in June 2025, calls the product free and lists a Site Scan audit, keyword research, a performance report of impressions, clicks and average position over up to 16 months, and backlink insights for your own site and for competitors. It prints no daily or monthly limit and lists no paid plan.
The catch: the numbers describe Bing searches, so treat them as a second opinion if most of your visitors arrive from Google.
Set it up on day one beside Google Search Console. Of the five plans that cover all four jobs, it is the one with no printed limit and no paid step.
Ahrefs Free: a real crawl and backlink data, plus a free keyword generator
Ahrefs Free, formerly Webmaster Tools, works on unlimited verified websites. Site Audit gets 5,000 crawl credits a month per project, and Site Explorer shows up to 1,000 backlinks and 1,000 keywords at once. Per Ahrefs' help article, credits are spent on internal HTML pages that return status 200, so at one credit a page a 5-page site could run 1,000 full crawls a month. Keywords Explorer and Rank Tracker are not in the free account, per Ahrefs' Starter plan post, but its free Keyword Generator returns keyword ideas.
On the pricing page, US dollar view (archived 15 Oct 2026, because the live page shows euros to European visitors), Starter costs $29 a month and must be renewed monthly. Per the Starter post's limits chart it tracks 50 keywords in Rank Tracker. Lite is $129, Standard $249 and Advanced $449 a month on the monthly toggle.
The catch: the free account covers sites you verify, so a competitor needs a paid plan. Verdict: Pick it for the audit and the link list, and pair it with Bing for a second keyword source.
Semrush: 10 reports a day across tools
Semrush's pricing page describes its free plan as 1 demo project with 10 reports per day across all vital tools. The vendor's free account article, dated 10 Dec 2025, lists 10 queries a day against several tools and says every new keyword research search counts toward the daily limit. It also lists a Site Audit of up to 100 URLs per month and Position Tracking for 10 keywords.
On the US dollar view of the pricing page (archived 4 Oct 2026, because the live page shows euros to European visitors), the first paid step is the SEO plan at $139 a month on monthly billing, or $117.33 a month billed annually, the toggle the page opens on. It covers 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords. The next two plans, Starter and Pro+, are $199 and $299 a month on the same monthly basis.
The catch: the 7-day trial asks for card details, so use the free account first. Verdict: Pick it for one login that covers every job, if 10 reports a day and 10 tracked keywords are enough.
Seobility: four jobs on 5 checks a day
Seobility's pricing page describes the free Basic account as 1 website project, 10 tracked keywords, 5 daily tool credits, a limited audit of 100 pages per crawl and 3 AI prompts, free for unlimited time. Its free standalone tools, including the Backlink Checker, Keyword Research Tool and Ranking Checker, work without registration, and the free Basic sign-up raises the allowance to 5 checks a day.
Premium is $69.90 a month on monthly billing in the dollar view, or $671.04 a year, plus VAT. It covers 3 projects, 25,000 pages per crawl, 300 ranking keywords and 50 tool requests a day. Professional is $109.90 and Agency $239.90 a month.
The catch: the page opens in euros at €59.90 and adds VAT, and Premium costs more than every other monthly-billed step here except Semrush. Verdict: Pick it for a rank tracker, an audit and a backlink checker in one login, if 5 checks a day and 10 keywords are enough.
Ubersuggest: three reports a day and 25 tracked keywords
Ubersuggest's free account allows 3 searches or reports a day, 1 project, rank tracking for 25 keywords with weekly desktop updates, a Site Audit of 150 pages a week and 100 backlinks per site, with no time limit.
On the pricing page, monthly plans run from US$29 to US$99 a month, and the plans are named Individual, Business and Enterprise / Agency. Individual is the entry plan and the page description says "from $29/month"; the other two plans are left unpriced because their individual prices were not readable. Each plan comes with a one-time 7-day trial. Individual lists 150 reports a day, 125 tracked keywords, a 1,000-page weekly audit and 2,000 backlinks. Yearly and lifetime tabs exist, with a lifetime promotion running, and are left unpriced.
The catch: at one report per keyword and 3 reports a day, researching 10 target keywords takes 4 days. Verdict: Pick it when you want to track 25 keywords for free and can spread research across several days.
Google Search Console: your real queries, but no research
Google calls Search Console a free service. Its performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, and it shows which sites link to yours. Tables display at most 1,000 rows, according to Google's data help page.
It lists no paid plan. Its indexing alerts report what Google found, not a crawl you run, so they do not count as an audit here. The catch is that it reports queries that already show your site, so a new page has no data and the tool cannot suggest keywords. Verdict: Verify your site here first, since it is Google's own count.
Moz: ten backlink lookups a month
Moz says a free Moz Community account gives limited access to MozBar, Keyword Explorer and Link Explorer. Its Link Explorer page prints 10 free queries a month. No cap is printed for the free keyword tool.
The entry plan is Starter at $49 a month for one website. Standard is $99 a month, or $79 a month billed yearly at $950 for the first year, Medium is $179 or $143, and Large is $299 or $239. A banner read "Last chance to save up to 40% - ends today!"; the prices here are the plan cards as displayed.
The catch: the pricing page lists no limits for Starter. Verdict: Pick it if Domain Authority is the metric your clients or link prospects ask for.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: a free crawl that stops at 500 URLs
Screaming Frog says its desktop crawler is free up to 500 URLs. The free version covers broken links, titles and meta data, robots directives, hreflang, exact duplicates and XML sitemaps, but has no saved crawls, scheduling, JavaScript rendering or Search Console integration.
The licence is $279 per user per year for 1 to 4 licences, then $265, $249 and $235 per licence at 5, 10 and 20 licences, and it must be renewed after one year. The catch is that it does one job, and the paid crawl's maximum depends on allocated memory and storage. Verdict: Pick it as a second opinion on site health, since 5 pages are 1 percent of the free cap.
What the free stack costs to outgrow
Among paid steps whose plan pages list all four jobs, the cheapest is $29 a month ($348 over 12 months), at Ahrefs Starter or Ubersuggest Individual on monthly billing, which is $1.12 under Toolradar's $30.12 median. Seobility's Premium lists all four too, at a higher price, Semrush's SEO card names three (basic keyword research and competitor analysis, Position Tracking, Site Audit), and Screaming Frog's cheaper licence does one.
The first wall is the tracker for keywords that do not rank yet, because Bing and Google report positions for queries that already show your site, not for new targets. Assume one new page a month and two target keywords per page: the 10-keyword plans at Semrush and Seobility overflow in month 1 (12 keywords), Ubersuggest's 25 in month 8 (26 keywords), and the 50 paid keywords at Ahrefs Starter in month 21 (52). The 100-page audits overflow in month 96 (101 pages). When you need more tracked keywords, our AI rank tracking tools ranking covers paid trackers, and the best AI SEO tools page covers suites that add AI features.
How to choose
- A new 5-page site: verify Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools first, then add Ahrefs Free for the crawl.
- You track 11 to 25 keywords: Ubersuggest's free account tracks 25, against 10 at Semrush and Seobility.
- You also want traffic counts: that is analytics, compared in our marketing analytics tools ranking.
- You want to know if AI assistants name your brand: that is a separate job, priced in our AEO and GEO tools ranking.
Common mistakes
- Buying a suite for its tracker. Semrush's SEO plan costs $1,668 over 12 months and tracks 500 keywords, while two keywords per page on a 5-page site is 10; Ubersuggest Individual is $1,320 less and tracks 125.
- Treating a trial as a free plan. Ubersuggest's 7-day trial bills unless cancelled, so a forgotten one costs the Individual plan's first month, and Semrush's trial needs card details.
- Reading the default toggle as the price. Semrush opens on $117.33 a month billed annually, while monthly billing is $139, or $21.67 more.
- Buying a licence under the free cap. Screaming Frog's free crawl covers 500 URLs, so the $279 licence buys features, not coverage, for 5 pages.
FAQ
What is the best free SEO tool in 2026?
For a 5-page site, Bing Webmaster Tools covers keyword research, a site audit, rank data and backlinks for free with no usage limit printed; pair it with Google Search Console. Neither tracks keywords that do not rank yet.
Is Ahrefs free?
Yes, for sites you verify. Ahrefs Free includes Site Audit with 5,000 crawl credits a month per project and Site Explorer with up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords shown at once. Keywords Explorer and Rank Tracker start with the Starter plan, which renews monthly.
Is Semrush free?
Yes. The free plan is 1 demo project with 10 reports a day across tools, and Semrush's own article lists a Site Audit of 100 URLs per month and 10 tracked keywords. The SEO plan costs $139 a month billed monthly.
Which free tool checks backlinks and keywords?
For backlinks, Bing covers your site and competitors, Ahrefs Free shows up to 1,000 at once, Seobility allows 5 checks a day, Ubersuggest 100 per site and Moz 10 queries a month. Six of the eight tools offer a free keyword research tool; Google Search Console and Screaming Frog do not.
What is the cheapest paid SEO tool after the free plan?
Among the monthly-billed plans here, Ahrefs Starter and Ubersuggest Individual are the cheapest at $348 over 12 months, followed by Moz Starter, Seobility Premium and Semrush's SEO plan. Screaming Frog's $279 yearly licence costs less but covers audits alone.
Bottom line
Start with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, add Ahrefs Free for the crawl, and use Semrush, Seobility or Ubersuggest for occasional keyword lookups. Upgrade when the 10 or 25 free tracked keywords run out, and price that step at Ahrefs Starter, which tracks 50, and Ubersuggest Individual, which tracks 125, first.
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