Free Semrush alternatives: what each free tool replaces

There is no single free Semrush alternative, because Semrush is several tools sold as one. The good news is that most of those tools have a free equivalent, and for your own website the free versions are often better, because they come from Google and Bing rather than from estimates.

This page is only about tools you can use for nothing, with the limits each one sets. If you are ready to pay for a cheaper replacement, the paid Semrush alternatives page covers those.

Limits below were read from each vendor's own pages on 4 October 2026.

Start with Semrush's own free plan

Semrush's pricing page lists a $0 plan with no card: one project and 10 reports a day across its main tools. Semrush's guide to the free account breaks that down as 10 queries a day each for Domain Overview, keyword research, competitor research and backlinks, a site audit of 100 pages, and 10 tracked keywords. Its separate traffic checker works once a day without an account.

Best at: a quick look at a competitor's top keywords and backlinks, a few times a day.

Limits: 10 reports go quickly, and full report rows and history are paid features.

The free Semrush alternatives, job by job

Your own site: better than Semrush, and free

Google Search Console

Search Console reports the queries your site appears for in Google, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, and keeps 16 months of that data. Semrush estimates these numbers; Search Console has the real ones.

Replaces: Position Tracking and Organic Research, for your own domain.

Limits: your verified sites only. It tells you nothing about competitors.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing's free console adds two things Google's lacks. A keyword research tool shows search volumes from Bing's own data. And its backlinks tool lets you compare your link profile with up to two other sites, including the domains linking to them but not to you.

Replaces: part of Semrush's backlink gap and keyword research, with real search engine data.

Limits: Bing volumes are smaller than Google's, and the comparison considers only each site's top 500 referring domains.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs' free tier works on any number of sites you verify, with 5,000 crawl credits a month per project for site audits and up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once in Site Explorer.

Replaces: Site Audit and Backlink Analytics, for your own sites.

Limits: verified sites only. Ahrefs keeps competitor analysis for paid plans. The free Ahrefs alternatives page goes further on backlinks.

Keyword research

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner, inside Google Ads, suggests keywords and estimates monthly searches from Google's own data. Google's help page says you must finish account setup by entering billing information to use basic features like keyword ideas.

Replaces: Keyword Magic Tool, roughly.

Limits: it is built for advertisers. Volumes are rounded, and on accounts with little or no ad spend, answers on Google's own Ads community forum describe seeing ranges rather than exact figures.

Ubersuggest's free account

Ubersuggest offers a free account with keyword suggestions, weekly rank tracking and SEO suggestions, and a daily cap on searches that its pricing page does not put a number on.

Replaces: quick keyword and competitor lookups.

Limits: you hit the daily cap fast, and the cap is not published, so you cannot plan around it.

Moz's free account

A free Moz Community account gives 10 queries a month in Link Explorer and what Moz calls "limited access" to Keyword Explorer and the MozBar.

Replaces: an occasional backlink or keyword check.

Limits: 10 queries a month is a handful of competitors, once.

Auditing a site

Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a desktop crawler whose free version crawls up to 500 URLs per site, finding broken links, redirects, duplicate pages and missing titles. A paid licence is $279 a year.

Replaces: Site Audit, for any site, including a competitor's.

Limits: 500 URLs, and features such as JavaScript rendering, scheduling and saving crawls are paid.

Competitors' traffic and ads

Similarweb's free site pages show total visits for the last three months, traffic sources and top countries for any large site. Small sites show "Not enough data". All the free traffic tools are compared in website traffic checkers.

The Google Ads Transparency Center shows every ad a verified advertiser runs on Google, from Google's own records. For seeing a competitor's live ads it beats Semrush's Advertising Research, though it shows no keywords or spend estimates.

What free cannot replace

A competitor's full keyword list. Every free source either covers only your own site or rations lookups. Building a competitor keyword list properly is where Semrush's paid plans earn their price.

History. Free tools mostly show now. Semrush's paid plans show how a competitor's rankings moved over years.

Watching, not looking. None of these tools tell you when a competitor changes something. You have to remember to check.

That last gap is the one our own product covers, so judge accordingly. Figo checks named competitors' rankings, ads, pages and reviews once a week and emails what changed, from $49 a month after a 7 day trial; there is no free plan. If you only need to look occasionally, the free tools above are enough.

Which free tools to use

• Your own SEO: Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools together.
• Keyword ideas: Keyword Planner, then Bing's keyword research for a second source.
• A technical audit: Screaming Frog's free crawl, or Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for your own site.
• A quick competitor lookup: Semrush's own free plan.
• Competitor traffic and ads: Similarweb's free pages and the Google Ads Transparency Center.
• You need competitor keyword data every week: that is a paid job; see what Semrush costs before deciding.