AnswerThePublic alternatives are tools that find the questions and real searches around a keyword, taking them from Google's autocomplete, from the "People also ask" boxes or from a keyword database with search volumes. AnswerThePublic is the best known: since 2022 it has belonged to NP Digital, Neil Patel's agency, as the Neil Patel blog explains, and its free version now stops at 3 searches a day according to its help centre, updated in May 2026.
On 10 October 2026 we checked the first page of Google UK for "answer the public alternatives". The first organic result is Answer Socrates' own blog, and it ranks Answer Socrates first. The fourth is a 2023 article on Neil Patel's blog, written by the company that owns AnswerThePublic. Another comparison further down puts SE Ranking at the top. None of them checks what matters if you write for Google UK: how many of the questions these tools find are actually searched for in Britain. Below you'll find the documented limits of each tool, prices in pounds and an analysis we ran on 5,869 UK questions to work out which kind of tool you really need.
AnswerThePublic's limits in 2026
These figures come from the tool's official documentation and pricing page, checked in October 2026.
- Free version: 3 searches a day, 30 AI responses a month, volumes and CPC shown on only two branches of the report, exports capped at 30 keywords (source).
- Paid plans: the pricing page lists Starter, Standard and Pro, with 100, 200 and 300 searches a month and 1, up to 3 and up to 10 users. The help centre article on plans, updated on 7 October 2026, still calls them Starter, Growth and Business and gives different user counts (source). The counter resets every day at midnight UTC (source), which is 1am in the UK during British Summer Time.
- Refunds: subscriptions are non-refundable; the 7-day trial can be used only once and only on monthly plans (source).
- Location: the filter works only at country level, not city level, and not every country and language is supported (source). For local work in the UK the help centre suggests adding a place name such as London to the keyword instead.
English is fully covered: it's one of the interface languages and one of the database languages, according to the page on languages and locations updated in July 2026. The same help centre warns that it's normal to see results in other languages now and then, when there are few queries in the chosen language. With English that's rarely an issue. For UK users the real limit is the country filter: you can't separate the questions asked in Manchester from those asked in Cornwall.
The pricing page shows only the annual prices in its page source: Starter at US$13.33 a month, Standard at $66 and Pro at $132.66, billed annually, with "4 months free" on annual billing. At the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 ($1.3226 to the pound) that's about £10.08, £49.90 and £100.30 a month. We couldn't read the monthly-billing prices in a verifiable form, so check them at checkout. The tool says it takes its questions from Google, YouTube, Amazon and ChatGPT (homepage).
How often AnswerThePublic and its alternatives are searched for in the UK
| Search | Monthly searches in the UK (average) | Lowest and highest month |
|---|---|---|
| google trends | 90,500 | 74,000 - 110,000 |
| semrush | 27,100 | 22,200 - 40,500 |
| answerthepublic | 8,100 | 4,400 - 9,900 |
| ubersuggest | 6,600 | 3,600 - 8,100 |
| keyword tool | 1,000 | 480 - 2,400 |
| exploding topics | 880 | 720 - 1,000 |
| also asked | 480 | 320 - 590 |
| answer socrates | 260 | 170 - 390 |
| answerthepublic alternatives | 40 | 20 - 50 |
AnswerThePublic sat at 8,100 searches a month for most of the past year, peaked at 9,900 in January and April 2026 and fell to 4,400 in August 2026. August is a quiet month for the whole sector, though: between July and August Semrush drops from 27,100 to 22,200 and Ubersuggest from 4,400 to 3,600, so read the fall with care. People actively looking for an alternative are a niche: 40 searches a month, the same figure for "answer the public alternative" and "answerthepublic alternatives".
Most UK questions get 10 searches a month or fewer
Before you choose a tool, it helps to know what it has to find. From the DataForSEO Labs database, which uses Google Ads volumes, we pulled every UK search containing two keywords from different sectors that starts with a question word: how, what, why, when, where, which, who, can, do, does, is, are, should, will. We picked "heat pump" and "self assessment", the tax return every sole trader in the UK has to file. Data checked on 10 October 2026, with volumes last updated in September 2026.
| Keyword | Questions found | 10 searches a month or fewer | No volume recorded | At least 100 | At least 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| heat pump | 3,429 | 2,236 (65.2%) | 490 (14.3%) | 191 (5.6%) | 43 (1.3%) |
| self assessment | 2,440 | 1,153 (47.3%) | 595 (24.4%) | 151 (6.2%) | 14 (0.6%) |
Put the second and third columns together and about three questions in four, 79.5% for "heat pump" and 71.6% for "self assessment", show either 10 searches a month, the lowest figure Google Ads displays, or no volume at all. One detail also inflates the top of the table: Google Ads groups close variants, so "how does a heat pump work", "how do heat pumps work" and "how does heat pump work" all show 6,600 searches. That's one volume repeated three times. The seed also pulls in other markets: the most searched question containing "heat pump" is "what is a heat pump tumble dryer", at 8,100 a month, which is no use to a heating installer. Genuinely different questions with real demand are even fewer than the table suggests.
This is why there are two families of tools. The ones that start from volumes, such as Semrush and Ahrefs, sort the head of the list well but tend to hide the tail, because a single "volume greater than 10" filter cuts it off. The ones that start from autocomplete or question boxes, such as AnswerThePublic and its direct alternatives, do the opposite: they show the tail and don't tell you what it's worth. Google itself says autocomplete reflects real searches but "doesn't simply display the most common queries on a given topic", so it isn't a measure of volume. If you write articles or FAQ pages for UK readers, you need both. We go into this in more depth in our guides to long-tail keywords and zero-volume keywords.
AnswerThePublic alternatives compared
Prices come from the official price lists, checked on 10 October 2026, before VAT. All these tools set their prices in US dollars: the sterling figures use the Bank of England daily spot rate for 8 October 2026, £1 = $1.3226.
| Tool | Where the questions come from | UK and English | Without paying | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AnswerThePublic | autocomplete from Google, YouTube, Amazon, ChatGPT | English interface and database, country filter | 3 searches a day | $13.33 a month billed annually (£10.08) |
| AlsoAsked | "People also ask" boxes | all regions and languages, according to the price list | credits for unregistered users, amount not stated | $12 a month (£9.07) |
| Answer Socrates | autocomplete and "People also ask" | claims any language and any country | 3 searches a day | $19 a month (£14.37), $190 a year (£143.66) |
| KeywordsPeopleUse | autocomplete and "People also ask" | claims users in 150 countries and 64 languages | 7-day trial with a card | $15 a month (£11.34) |
| Keyword Tool | autocomplete from Google and 15 other platforms | 190+ Google domains, 120+ languages | up to 750 suggestions, volumes only partial | not verified |
| Semrush Keyword Magic Tool | database of 27.3 billion keywords, questions filter | separate UK database | 10 reports a day | $139 a month (£105.10) |
| Ahrefs | keyword database, Questions report | United Kingdom in English (en-GB) | Keyword Generator at no cost | $29 a month (£21.93) |
| Google Search Console | the real queries that bring impressions to your site | yes | always at no cost | £0 |
AlsoAsked
AlsoAsked reads only the "People also ask" boxes and shows them as a tree: one question, the questions Google opens beneath it, and the ones that open beneath those. On its homepage it claims city-level targeting "in all languages supported by Google" and, with deep search, an average of 150 questions per query (alsoasked.com).
There are three plans: Basic at $12 a month with 100 credits, Lite at $23 with 300 and Pro at $47 with 1,000, which is £9.07, £17.39 and £35.54 plus tax. All include unlimited users, CSV export and API access; what changes is search history, from 24 hours on Basic to a year on Pro (price list). On 10 October the annual prices shown were exactly twelve times the monthly ones, despite a "save 20%" banner, so check the figure before paying. It's the most useful tool when you need to build the structure of an article, because the tree shows the order in which people ask their questions. It also helps you decide what goes into an FAQ section or which question to target for a featured snippet.
Answer Socrates
It's the alternative closest to the AnswerThePublic experience without a subscription: 3 searches a day, one recursive search, 500 clustering credits a month and one CSV download a month, with no credit card (price list). It takes its questions from autocomplete and "People also ask" and says it works "in any language and any country" (homepage).
The annual plans cost $190 (Socrates Lite, 1,200 searches a year), $390 (Seneca, 6,000 searches) and $690 (Aurelius, unlimited searches); in pounds that's £143.66, £294.87 and £521.70. The included clustering groups similar questions together, a job you would otherwise do by hand: we explain how to decide which keywords belong together in our guide to keyword clustering.
KeywordsPeopleUse
Four plans at $15, $39, $79 and $299 a month (£11.34, £29.49, £59.73 and £226.07), with 150, 500 or 1,500 credits or unlimited credits, and unlimited users on all of them. The 7-day trial needs a card, and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee after that (price list). On the same page the vendor says it has users in 150 countries and 64 languages, without listing them; that describes its customers, not the markets it covers.
On its comparison page (KeywordsPeopleUse vs AnswerThePublic) it argues that AnswerThePublic only returns searches containing the exact phrase you enter. It's a partisan argument, but it describes a real limit of every autocomplete-based tool, including the method we used for the table above: a question worded differently from the seed doesn't show up.
Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool claims more than 190 Google domains, more than 120 languages and 16 platforms, including YouTube, Bing and Amazon (keywordtool.io). Without an account it returns up to 750 suggestions per search; full volumes, CPC and competition are only in the Pro version, along with bulk upload of 1,000 keywords at a time. The pricing page couldn't be reached when we checked on 10 October 2026, so verify the cost on the site. It makes most sense if you work in several languages or on platforms other than Google.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
If you already pay for Semrush, you don't need another tool: the Keyword Magic Tool has a filter that shows only keywords phrased as questions and works on a database of more than 27.3 billion keywords (Semrush knowledge base). Without a subscription you get 10 reports a day with 10 results each and no export.
The SEO plan costs $139 a month (£105.10), or $117.33 a month billed annually (£88.71) (price list). The advantage over AnswerThePublic is the volume next to every question; the drawback is the one in the table above, because the tail below 10 searches carries little weight in the sorting. We work through the full cost of the plans in our guide to Semrush pricing.
Ahrefs
Keywords Explorer supports the United Kingdom in English, en-GB (Ahrefs help centre). The no-cost Keyword Generator includes a "Questions" report with keywords phrased as questions. The cheapest plan, Starter, costs $29 a month (£21.93); Lite costs $129 (£97.54) (price list). Prices and limits in pounds are in our guide to Ahrefs pricing, and if Ahrefs doesn't convince you, the comparison with other tools is in our piece on Ahrefs alternatives.
Google Search Console with a regex filter
It's the no-cost option almost every comparison forgets, and the only one that shows real questions with real data. In the Performance report, under Query, you can add a filter with a custom regular expression: Search Console uses RE2 syntax and isn't case-sensitive unless you ask it to be (Search Console help). For questions in English this one works:
^(how|what|why|when|where|which|who|can|do|does|is|are|should|will)\b
The words after "who" catch yes/no questions such as "is a heat pump worth it" as well as the wh- ones. What you get are the questions your site already appears for, with impressions, clicks and average position: the best ideas for a new article are often there. The limit is obvious: you only see queries where you're already visible. We explain how to read this data without being misled in our guide to Google Search Console; other useful filters are in our piece on finding blog post ideas.
Google itself
Autocomplete and the "People also ask" boxes cost nothing and are the raw material for almost every tool on this list. Opening them by hand takes time but no money, and it's the quickest way to see the real results page for a question and understand its search intent. To see whether a question is seasonal there's Google Trends, which, unlike autocomplete, is built to measure how popular searches are.
Which one to choose, case by case
- You write a few articles a month and don't want to pay: Answer Socrates and AnswerThePublic's own allowance, 3 searches a day each, plus Search Console with the regex filter.
- You need to plan the structure of an article or an FAQ page: AlsoAsked, even just the $12 Basic plan.
- You already have Semrush or Ahrefs: use the questions filter you already pay for. A second subscription only makes sense if you want the tail below 10 searches.
- You work in several languages or on YouTube and Amazon: Keyword Tool, once you've checked the price list.
- Your site has had traffic for at least a few months: start from Search Console. These are your questions, not an estimate.
All these tools find questions; none of them decides which ones deserve a page. For that you need the rest of keyword research: volumes, difficulty, competition, and a comparison with the pages you already have. If the right tool depends on what it measures, the full table is in our guide to keyword research tools. The same questions are also the starting material for getting cited in AI-generated answers, as we explain in our piece on answer engine optimisation. If you'd rather someone set this work up for you, it's part of our SEO service.
AnswerThePublic alternatives: frequently asked questions
Yes, with a limit. According to the AnswerThePublic help centre, updated in May 2026, a free account allows 3 searches a day, 30 AI responses a month and exports of up to 30 keywords. Volumes and CPC are shown on only two branches of the report.
For the most similar experience, Answer Socrates: 3 searches a day, one recursive search and 500 clustering credits a month, with no card. For questions with real data, Google Search Console with a regex filter on question words. A Semrush account without a subscription gives 10 reports a day, but with only 10 results each.
Yes. English is both an interface language and a database language, and you can filter results by country. The filter stops at country level, though: you can't narrow it to a city or region, so for local research the help centre suggests adding a place name to the keyword.
Because the tail of questions is very long. In our analysis of 5,869 UK questions, pulled from DataForSEO Labs for "heat pump" and "self assessment", between 72% and 80% show 10 searches a month or no volume at all. That doesn't make them useless: taken together, they can be worth more than a single high-volume keyword.
NP Digital, Neil Patel's agency, which bought it in 2022 according to the Neil Patel blog.
One last point that you won't find in tool comparisons. If three questions in four have no measurable volume, the choice of tool matters less than where you look for questions. The ones customers ask your sales team on the phone, by email or at a trade show don't go through any database, and they're often the most precise version of what those customers later type into Google. It's worth collecting them before you open a tool.
