Which keyword research tool is best, and which are free?
Start free, with Google's own data. Google Keyword Planner, free inside a Google Ads account, shows how often terms are searched and what advertisers bid for them, and Google Search Console shows the searches your site already appears for. Google Trends compares interest in terms over time, and Ahrefs' free Keyword Generator turns a seed word into ideas with volumes. Semrush's free account allows 10 reports a day. Pay once you publish every week: Ahrefs Starter at $29 a month is the cheapest paid way in, while Ahrefs Lite at $129 and Semrush's SEO plan at $139 a month ($117.33 billed yearly) add competitor research, and Semrush's plan tracks 500 keywords a day. AnswerThePublic, from $20 a month, turns a topic into the questions people type, which is useful for blog and FAQ pages. The rule: Keyword Planner and Search Console until you are publishing weekly, then one paid tool, not two.
A walk-through of free keyword tools, most of them Google's own (Keyword Planner, Search Console, Trends) and what each is good for, updated August 2026.
Google's free keyword tool inside Google Ads: how often terms are searched and how that changed, suggested bids, and forecasts. Anyone with a Google Ads account can use it after creating a campaign.
The only honest way to answer "is SEO working" is to look at real search data, and Google Search Console is the free, first-party tool that shows exactly which queries bring you clicks and impressions. Set it up on day one so you can see traffic build (or not) instead of guessing. It also flags indexing and crawl issues that quietly keep new sites out of search.
Before you spend a weekend guessing, Google Trends gives you a real, free read on whether interest in your idea is rising, flat, or fading, and where in the country it's strongest. For a founder building outside the big startup hubs, the geography and city-level view is genuinely useful: you can see if demand clusters somewhere you can actually reach. Treat it as a demand signal to start from, not proof on its own.
Semrush's plan page: a Free account with 10 reports a day, and the SEO plan at $139 a month ($117.33 billed yearly) for 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords, with SEO plus AI-search plans above it.
Ahrefs' plan page: Ahrefs Free, Starter at $29 a month, Lite at $129, Standard at $249 and Advanced at $449, with AI-search visibility tools sold on top.
