The short answer
Start with Google Search Console, Ahrefs' free account and Screaming Frog's free crawler. For a site with a few hundred pages, that covers most of what you'd open Semrush for each week.
What you won't get for free is a clear view of your competitors: every search they rank for, and every site that links to them. That's most of what you pay Semrush for, so the real question is how much you need it.
For scale, Semrush's plans are $139, $199 and $299 a month, or $117.33, $165.17 and $248.17 billed yearly, as of November 2026. If you mainly use the rank tracker and the audit, both have free stand-ins.
Which free tool does which job
Semrush is really a bundle of separate jobs, so it's easier to replace one job at a time. A few terms first: a backlink is a link from another site to yours, a site audit is a tool reading your pages and listing technical problems, and rank tracking means recording where you appear in search results for a given phrase.
| The job | Free tool | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| See which searches bring people to your site | Google Search Console | Your own site only |
| Find technical problems | Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs Free Site Audit | 500 URLs per crawl on Screaming Frog; 5,000 crawl credits a month per project on Ahrefs |
| See who links to you | Search Console's Links report, or Ahrefs Free Site Explorer | Google says its report isn't a full list; Ahrefs shows 1,000 backlinks and keywords at once |
| Find keyword ideas | Ahrefs' keyword generator, Moz's free tool or Google Keyword Planner | Keyword Planner needs a Google Ads account with a campaign created |
| Check Bing too | Bing Webmaster Tools | Bing data only, though it includes backlinks, keyword research and a site scan |
| Peek at a competitor | Moz's free tools, Ahrefs' backlink checker, SE Ranking's checker | Limited samples or a few checks a day |
Limits like these change, so treat the table as a snapshot from November 2026.
One detail worth knowing: Ahrefs' free account is for sites you verify as yours, and there's no card or time limit. For your own site, it's the closest thing to a free suite. We go through it in free Ahrefs alternatives.
Try Semrush's own free plan first
This one is easy to overlook, because it isn't an alternative. But Semrush's free plan gives you one demo project and 10 reports a day across its main tools, with no card.
Ten reports won't run an SEO program. It will answer a one-off question like "what does that competitor rank for?" If that's all you needed, you're done, and you've kept the same data you were about to give up.
A free routine that holds up
Free tools only help if you open them. Here's an hour a month, using a made-up business. Say you run a three-person bookkeeping firm in Tucson with a 40-page site.
- Search Console, 20 minutes. Look at which searches got you seen but rarely clicked. If "bookkeeper for contractors" shows up a lot and your page barely mentions contractors, you've found this month's edit.
- Screaming Frog, 15 minutes. Run the crawl and fix broken links and missing page titles. At 40 pages, you'll never hit the 500-URL limit.
- Keyword ideas, 15 minutes. Look up two or three services clients actually ask you about, and note the phrases you have no page for.
- Links, 10 minutes. See who links to you in Search Console. Anyone you do business with who doesn't link yet is an easy email to send.
That's a real routine, and it costs nothing. It's also the first thing to go in a busy month, which is the honest weakness of every free stack.
Where free stops working
You've outgrown free tools when one of these is true:
- You lose business to specific competitors and need to see exactly what they rank for.
- You want to track more than a handful of searches, and checking by hand has become a chore.
- Your site has thousands of pages, so the crawl limits get in the way.
- You're doing link building seriously, and you need competitors' full backlink lists.
When that happens, you don't have to jump to $139. As of November 2026, these all cost less:
| Tool | Price a month | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Starter | $29 | Light use: Ahrefs describes it as credit-based and made for beginners |
| Ubersuggest | $29 to $99 | A beginner on one site: the lowest plan has 1 project, 125 tracked keywords and a 1,000-page audit |
| SpyFu Basic | $39 | Competitor keywords and ads, with 10+ years of history |
| Moz Pro Starter | $49 | One person managing one website |
| Serpstat Individual | $50, billed yearly ($600) | 5 projects and a broad toolset on a budget |
| SE Ranking Core | $103.20 billed yearly, $129 monthly | Closest to Semrush's scope: 10 projects, 2,000 keywords tracked daily |
If you want to compare suites at full price, see our page on Semrush alternatives, or the wider list of SEO tool alternatives.
When a cheaper data tool is the wrong fix
Some people leaving Semrush don't have a price problem. They have a pile of audit reports nobody acted on. Moving that pile to a cheaper tool saves money, but your site stays the same.
If that sounds familiar, the thing to look for is a tool that does the work. Sojig is one, and it's our product, so weigh this accordingly. It finds issues, drafts the fix for each one and publishes it when you approve, along with article drafts and outreach emails. It starts at $99 a month after a 7-day trial, so it isn't free and it isn't the cheapest option here.
It's also the wrong choice if you want research. Sojig has no backlink database, and a specialist who needs that data should keep a suite. And if your budget is zero, the free routine above is the better place to start.