Cheap SEO Tools in 2026: 12 Picks, Prices Checked

Updated October 23, 2026, by the Rillow team. We make Rillow, an SEO data server for AI agents, and it is one of the 12 tools here. There are no affiliate links, and we checked every price on the maker's own site on October 23, 2026.

The best cheap SEO tools to start with in 2026 are free. Google Search Console, Ahrefs Free and the free version of Screaming Frog cover your rankings, your backlinks and your technical issues, as long as you only need data about your own site. When you need search volumes for topics you don't rank for yet, the cheapest paid SEO tools are Keywords Everywhere at $84 a year, Ubersuggest at $80 a year and OpenSEO at $10 a month. Below are 12 cheap SEO tools, what each one costs for a year, and who each one is for.

Cheap SEO tools compared

Prices are in US dollars except Screaming Frog, which sells in pounds. Ubersuggest also sells its Individual plan for $120 for life, which its pricing page shows as a limited-time offer.

How we picked and ranked these tools

We looked for SEO tools a person running one site can afford without a client paying for it. Each tool had to:

• Cost $350 a year or less for one site, or be free.
• Do at least one core SEO job well: keyword research, rank tracking, a site audit or backlinks.
• Publish its price on its own site, so you know the cost before you sign up.

The free tools come first, because they are where every site should start. The paid tools follow in order of what one site owner gets for the money. We left out tools whose cheapest plan is well above that line: SE Ranking now starts at $129 a month, Ahrefs Lite at $129 a month, and Wincher's rank tracking from $49 a month.

The free SEO tools to start with

1. Google Search Console

Price: free.

Google Search Console is the only place to see how Google itself sees your site: the searches you show up for, your clicks and average position, and which pages are indexed. Every other tool on this list estimates traffic. Search Console reports it.

Best for: every site. Set it up before anything else.

Limits: it only shows searches you already appear for, so it can't tell you what to write next for a topic you have no page on.

2. Ahrefs Free

Price: free. Ahrefs' paid plans start with Starter at $29 a month.

Ahrefs Free gives you Ahrefs' data for sites you prove you own: the keywords your site ranks for, your top pages, the sites that link to you, and a site audit that checks for more than 170 technical and on-page issues. It is a free account, not a trial.

Best for: checking your own backlinks and running a monthly site audit.

Limits: no Keywords Explorer, so no search volumes for new topics, and no data on sites you don't own.

3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Price: free for up to 500 URLs, then £199 a year per licence.

Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler. It visits every page on your site and lists broken links, missing titles and descriptions, redirect chains, duplicate pages and more. Its pricing page says the free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers most small sites.

Best for: technical audits of a site under 500 pages, free.

Limits: it runs on your computer, and the reports are built for people who already know what a canonical tag is.

4. Google Keyword Planner

Price: free with a Google Ads account.

Keyword Planner is Google's own keyword tool for advertisers. You don't have to run ads to use it, but accounts without ad spend see search volumes as broad ranges, like 1K to 10K, instead of exact numbers.

Best for: a rough sense of how many people search for a topic, at no cost.

Limits: ranges instead of numbers, no keyword difficulty, and no view of who ranks today.

Bing Webmaster Tools is free too, and worth setting up next to Search Console if Bing and Microsoft Copilot matter to you.

The cheapest paid SEO tools

5. Keywords Everywhere

Price: $84 a year on the Bronze plan, which works out to $7 a month, billed yearly. Bronze includes 100,000 credits a year, and one credit is one keyword, per its pricing page.

Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension that adds search volume and related keywords next to Google's results as you search. It is the cheapest way to get real numbers on searches you don't rank for yet.

Best for: someone who researches topics by searching Google and wants volumes on the page.

Limits: no rank tracking or site audit, and credits expire after a year.

6. Ubersuggest

Price: $12 a month or $80 a year for the Individual plan, per its pricing page. The same page offers lifetime access for $120 as a limited-time deal.

Ubersuggest, from Neil Patel's company, puts keyword research, rank tracking, a site audit and backlink data in one simple app. The Individual plan covers one site, with 150 searches a day and 125 tracked keywords.

Best for: beginners who want one cheap app that does a little of everything.

Limits: smaller limits and less data than Ahrefs or Semrush, and one site per Individual plan.

7. OpenSEO

Price: $10 a month, which includes $10 of data usage. Extra usage costs more, and the code is open source, so you can host it yourself for free.

OpenSEO gives you keyword research, backlinks, rank tracking and site audits, with Search Console data that doesn't use your $10. It works in a web app and inside AI agents such as Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT.

Best for: developers and people who use an AI agent and want to pay only for the data they use.

Limits: heavy research uses more than the included $10, and hosting it yourself means running it yourself.

8. Mangools

Price: Mangools Basic is $30.50 a month, or $226.20 a year ($18.85 a month), per its pricing page.

Mangools bundles five easy tools: KWFinder for keywords, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher for rank tracking, LinkMiner for backlinks and SiteProfiler. Basic allows 100 keyword lookups a day and 200 tracked keywords, updated weekly, and every plan includes API and MCP access, so an AI agent can use the data too.

Best for: beginners who want the friendliest keyword tool, billed yearly.

Limits: rankings update weekly on Basic, and the monthly price is about 60% higher than the yearly one.

9. Rillow (ours)

Price: free to start with 30 credits, no credit card. Solo is $19 a month or $190 a year, with 100 credits a month. One credit is 10 cents of data.

Rillow is an SEO data server for AI agents. You connect it to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI or claude.ai, and your agent gets keyword volumes and difficulty, Google's live results with the AI answer, competitors, backlinks, your Search Console and Analytics numbers, a content plan and daily rank tracking. Your agent does the work, and Rillow's web app shows what it did. We also have free SEO tools, such as keyword clustering and a content brief generator. Our setup page shows how to connect each agent.

Best for: founders who already build with an AI agent and want it to do their SEO with real numbers.

Limits: it is built for agents, so there is no point-and-click keyword tool in the web app. If you don't use an agent, one of the tools above fits better.

10. Ahrefs Starter

Price: $29 a month, per Ahrefs' pricing page.

Starter adds Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer and Rank Tracker to what Ahrefs Free gives you. Ahrefs describes Starter as a plan for light use, for people starting out.

Best for: someone who wants Ahrefs' keyword data and expects to look up a handful of topics a month.

Limits: it is built for light use, and the next plan up, Lite, costs $129 a month.

11. SEO PowerSuite

Price: $349 a year for the Professional license, about $29 a month, per its pricing page. A free version lets you work on one project without saving it.

SEO PowerSuite is a set of four desktop apps for rank tracking, site audits, backlinks and outreach. Professional covers unlimited projects, and the free version crawls up to 500 URLs and shows up to 1,100 backlinks.

Best for: people who prefer desktop software and one yearly payment.

Limits: desktop apps, not a web app, and the interface takes some learning.

12. DataForSEO

Price: pay as you go, with a $50 minimum top-up that never expires, per its pricing page.

DataForSEO sells raw SEO data through an API: keywords, Google results, backlinks and more, priced per request. Many SEO tools are built on it, Rillow included. It has its own MCP server, so an AI agent can call it directly.

Best for: developers, and AI agent users who are happy to work from raw data.

Limits: no app to click through. You need code or an agent to use it.

A full SEO setup for under $100 a year

For one site, this covers every core SEO job for $84 a year:

• Google Search Console: your clicks, positions and indexing. Free.
• Ahrefs Free: your backlinks and a monthly site audit. Free.
• Screaming Frog, free version: a full crawl of a site under 500 pages. Free.
• Keywords Everywhere Bronze: search volumes for new topics. $84 a year.

If you work in an AI agent, swap Keywords Everywhere for OpenSEO at $10 a month or Rillow at $19 a month, so the agent gets the numbers itself. Our list of the best SEO MCP servers compares the options.

When a cheap SEO tool isn't enough

Cheap SEO tools cover one site well. You'll outgrow them when you:

• Research many competitors in depth every week.
• Run SEO for clients and need reports with your logo on them.
• Track thousands of keywords across many sites.

At that point, the full suites earn their price. Our Ahrefs alternatives guide compares what you get at each price.

Frequently asked questions