Every SEO tool we cover, by what it costs
Sixteen individual guides, grouped into three price bands: six tools that are free, five in the $19 to $50 band, and five paid all-in-ones. Each guide states what the tool is genuinely good at, what it costs as checked in August 2026, and the point at which paying for it stops being premature.
Last updated
- Tools covered
- 16
- Free of charge
- 6
- Cheapest paid
- $19.90/mo
- Prices checked
- August 2026
Which band do you need?
If you cannot yet name the specific question a paid tool would answer, you are in the free band and nothing on the paid list will change that. The comparison guide ladders all sixteen against each other; these pages go one tool deep.
Some links here are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend.
Most people buy an SEO tool before they have a question it can answer. The subscription then becomes the project.
Why this matters
Work in the other order: write down the decision you are stuck on, then find the cheapest tool that resolves it. Several of the entries here cost nothing.
Six tools that cost nothing. Between them they cover your own search data, your own traffic, a technical crawl, and enough keyword research to plan a site. Most readers need nothing else in year one.
Google Search Console
Your own queries, clicks and positions, straight from Google. The one tool nobody should skip.
Read the guideFreeGoogle Analytics 4
What happens after the click. Five reports matter; the rest is noise.
Read the guideFreeGoogle Keyword Planner
Real keyword data through an advertiser's lens, without running ads.
Read the guideFreeGoogle Trends
Shape, not size. Seasonality and direction, misread more often than any other tool.
Read the guideFreeBing Webmaster Tools
A free second data source with keyword numbers Google will not give you.
Read the guideFree to 500 URLsScreaming Frog
The technical crawl. Free tier covers a small site completely.
Read the guideThe first paid tier that earns its money. Buy one of these only once a specific question, usually about competitors, is what is actually blocking you.
Mangools
KWFinder plus four companions. The sensible first paid tool for most solo sites.
Read the guideFrom $29/moUbersuggest
Cheap and broad, shallower than it looks. The lifetime deal needs the maths done.
Read the guideFree / ~$108 a yearRank Math
WordPress on-page plugin. The free tier genuinely does the job.
Read the guideFree / paid PremiumYoast SEO
The conservative WordPress default. Premium now bundles Local, News and Video.
Read the guideFrom ~$49/moMorningscore
Gamified all-in-one with a GEO score. Suits people who need SEO as a to-do list.
Read the guideDeep data, real money. Every one of these is a good product; the question is never capability, it is whether your site is at the stage where the capability earns the bill back.
Ahrefs
The backlink index the industry benchmarks against. Watch the credit ceiling.
Read the guidePaid tiersSemrush
Keyword breadth and PPC data in one login. The add-ons quietly double the bill.
Read the guideCore / GrowthSE Ranking
The value pick against the big two, with an add-on trap to watch.
Read the guideEssential / ScaleSurfer SEO
Content optimisation scoring. A score is not a ranking.
Read the guide3 free/day, from $11/moAnswerThePublic
Question wheels. A companion to a keyword tool, not a replacement for one.
Read the guideNot sure which band you are in?
The comparison guide sorts all sixteen by budget and by the job you actually have, so you can rule out three quarters of the list before reading a single review. If your budget is nothing at all, start with the free stack: four of these tools cost nothing and cover most of the work.
Free tools are not trial versions of paid ones. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools report data no paid suite can buy.
Why this matters
Start with the tools that hold first-party data about your own site. Third-party suites model what those two measure directly.
Prices on this page run from $19.90 (mangools.com, read 2026-09-05) a month for the cheapest paid tool to $108 a year for a WordPress plugin license (rankmath.com, read 2026-09-05).
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