The short answer
If you run a small business and want a list you can finish this week, set up these:
- Google Search Console, to see the searches your site shows up for and whether Google can read your pages.
- Google Business Profile, if customers come from your local area. Google says it's free to create and manage.
- Ahrefs Free, for a site audit and a view of your own backlinks (links from other sites to yours).
- PageSpeed Insights, to check how your main pages load on a phone.
- Yoast SEO or Rank Math, if your site runs on WordPress. Pick one.
Everything else on this page is optional. Add a tool when you have a question it answers, and not before.
"Free" means three different things
Most roundups mix these together, and that's how you end up putting a card into something you thought was free. As of November 2026:
| Kind | Examples | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Free outright | Search Console, Business Profile, Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity | No paid version to be pushed toward, in most cases. You give up nothing but setup time |
| A limited plan of a paid product | Ahrefs Free, Semrush's free plan, Screaming Frog, Yoast, Rank Math | Permanent, but capped. The limit is usually set so a growing site will hit it |
| A trial | SE Ranking (14 days, no card), Ubersuggest (7 days), BrightLocal (14 days, no card) | Useful for one research job. Then it ends |
One to watch: Keywords Everywhere still turns up on free lists, but its pricing page starts at $84 a year. It may well be worth that. It just isn't free.
The tools, job by job
Limits below are from each vendor's own page in November 2026, and they do change, so check before you build a routine around one.
| The job | Tool | Where the free version stops | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| See which searches find you | Search Console | Sites you own only. You can look back 16 months | Everyone |
| The same for Bing | Bing Webmaster Tools | Bing's data only, but it adds backlinks, keyword research and an on-demand Site Scan | Anyone with 15 spare minutes |
| Crawl your site for problems | Screaming Frog | 500 URLs per crawl, and advanced features need the paid license (£199 a year). It's a desktop download | Someone a bit technical |
| Audit from a browser | Ahrefs Site Audit | 5,000 crawl credits a month per project, on sites you verify | Owners who don't want to install anything |
| Check page speed | PageSpeed Insights | One page at a time. It shows both a lab test and real visitor data where Google has it | Anyone, on your top few pages |
| Keyword ideas | Ahrefs' keyword generator, Moz's free account | Moz describes its free access as limited | Anyone planning a new page |
| Search volumes | Google Keyword Planner | Made for advertisers. You have to enter billing information in Google Ads to use its basic features | People who don't mind setting up an Ads account |
| Is interest growing or seasonal? | Google Trends | Shows relative interest on a 0 to 100 scale, not search counts | Seasonal businesses |
| Questions people ask | AnswerThePublic, AlsoAsked | A free daily limit on the first, and some free monthly searches without an account on the second | Anyone writing articles or FAQs |
| Your own backlinks | Search Console's Links report, Ahrefs Free | Google's is a sample with tables capped at 1,000 rows. Ahrefs shows 1,000 at once | Anyone doing link outreach |
| Look at any page you visit | Ahrefs' toolbar, Detailed's extension, MozBar | Browser add-ons that read one page at a time | Anyone checking a competitor's page |
| Watch real visitors | Microsoft Clarity | Microsoft says free forever, with no limit on traffic. Heatmaps and session recordings | Owners asking why visitors don't call |
| Count visits and leads | Google Analytics | Free of charge, though it takes some setup to count calls and form fills | Anyone who wants to connect traffic to revenue |
| WordPress page settings | Yoast SEO, Rank Math | Both have paid tiers. Yoast's bulk editor for titles and descriptions is in the free version | WordPress sites only |
| Check structured data | Rich Results Test, Schema Markup Validator | Tests one page or code snippet at a time | Whoever edits your site's code |
| Build a report | Data Studio, which you may know as Looker Studio | Google says the self-service tier stays at no cost | Anyone reporting to a partner or a client |
Two things in that table trip people up. The first is verification: Ahrefs' Site Explorer, Site Audit and Web Analytics only work on sites you've proved are yours, so you can't point them at a competitor. The second is scores. Domain Authority, for example, is Moz's own metric, and it isn't something Google publishes. It's fine for rough comparisons, but a higher number isn't a goal to chase.
Which ones to pick, by who you are
You run a local business and don't enjoy software. Business Profile and Search Console, and you can stop there. Say you own a made-up plumbing company in Spokane. Your calls depend far more on your profile and reviews than on any audit score, so that's where your hour goes.
You're on WordPress and you write your own pages. Add Yoast or Rank Math, plus the keyword generator. Don't run both plugins, since they do the same job. Our on-page SEO checklist tells you what to do with those title and description fields, and which popular rules Google says to ignore.
You've got a few hundred pages and someone technical on hand. Screaming Frog and Bing Webmaster Tools earn their place here, because a crawl of the whole site finds broken links and missing titles that you'd never spot by clicking around.
You're trying to work out what to write next. Search Console first, always. It shows searches you already appear for, which are usually easier wins than brand-new topics. Then use Trends and AlsoAsked to shape the page.
What free won't do
Free tools are generous with your own data and stingy with everyone else's. You can't get a full list of what a competitor ranks for, or every site that links to them. Free checkers give you a sample: Ahrefs calls its backlink checker a glimpse of its paid tool, and Semrush's free plan gives you 10 reports a day.
That's often enough. For a small business, competitor research is an occasional job, and a two-week trial can cover it. We've written up how to do that in free Ahrefs alternatives and free Semrush alternatives, so we won't repeat it here.
Rank tracking is thinner too. Search Console gives you your average position, but only for searches you already show up in, and it won't tell you where a rival stands.
The bigger limit is time. Every tool above produces a list of things to do, and none of them does the things. A free stack that nobody opens costs you nothing, and it earns you nothing as well.
When it's time to pay, and when it isn't
Stay free while your site is small, you're not losing work to one specific rival, and someone really does open the tools every month. That describes a lot of businesses, and there's no shame in staying there for years.
Pay when you can name the decision a tool will help you make. Our guide to SEO tools for small business goes through what to buy and in what order, and the full list of SEO tool alternatives compares the paid suites.
There's a third option if the problem is that nobody has the time. Sojig is our product, so weigh this accordingly. It runs a weekly site audit, drafts the fix for each issue, and publishes it when you approve. It starts at $99 a month after a 7-day trial, so it doesn't belong on a free list, and if your budget is zero, the tools above are the right answer. It also won't replace Search Console. You'd want that connected either way.