Cheap SEO tools are the ones that cost between nothing and about £30 a month and cover one or two SEO jobs (tracking rankings, checking the site, finding keywords), almost never all of them. The price that matters isn't the entry price, though: tracking 100 keywords on Google UK costs anything from $1.80 a month with a pay-as-you-go API to $139 with Semrush's entry plan, according to the official price lists we read on 10 October 2026.
The script is always the same.
You open a list of "best cheap SEO tools", pick the lowest number, subscribe.
Two months later you find out that the cheap plan doesn't cover the keywords you need. Or it doesn't export. Or it keeps one month of history.
So you move up a plan.
Which costs three or four times as much.
The mistakes we see most often in clients' accounts are three:
- looking at the price per keyword instead of the price for your keywords: SE Ranking costs 6.5 cents a keyword, but its smallest plan starts at $129;
- paying for two tools that do the same thing, almost always two rank trackers (the software that checks every day where a page appears in Google);
- subscribing before switching on Search Console, which costs nothing and measures instead of estimating.
There's also an information problem. On the first page of Google UK for "cheap seo tools" on 10 October 2026, five of the nine organic results had been published in 2024 or 2025. And TechRadar's snippet still listed Semrush Pro at $119.95: on Semrush's official price list today the entry plan is $139, and the Pro name has gone.
Why should we be the ones to do the sums?
Because we do them for every client before opening a subscription.
Sunscape develops solar farms and looks for land all over Italy. We track 143 keywords, and in six months the number on the first page went from 1 to 38. With 143 keywords, Ahrefs Starter (50 keywords) and Ubersuggest's first plan (125) are already too small.
Macropix, a Milan manufacturer of LED screens, went from position 88 to 2 in five years for "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor) on Google Italy, as we explain in our guide to SEO for manufacturing. To see a curve like that you need history. And it's the first thing cheap plans cut.
Below you'll find:
- what 11 tools cost to track 100 keywords, worked out from the official price lists;
- what you can do at no cost and where it stops being enough;
- the four tools under £30 and what they take away;
- what paying per use costs, with the bill for the searches behind this article;
- why $10 "group buys" are the most expensive saving of all.
Let's start.
What it costs to track 100 UK keywords (tool by tool)
The real cost of an SEO tool is the price of the smallest plan that covers your work, not the entry price. To make it comparable I fixed a scenario: one site, 100 keywords on Google UK. For each tool I read the entry plan, the keywords included and the update frequency on the official price list.
| Tool | Entry plan | Tracked keywords included | Updates | Cost per keyword per month | Cost to track 100 keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | no cost | every query with impressions, your own site only | daily (average position) | 0 | 0 |
| DataForSEO (API, standard queue) | pay as you go, $50 minimum payment | as many as you pay for | when you send the request | $0.018 | $1.80 (£1.36) |
| Rank Math PRO | €7.99 a month, annual only (first year) | 500, only your own WordPress sites | not stated | €0.016 | €7.99 |
| SERPRobot | $4.99 per bot | 75 per bot | every 24 hours | $0.067 | $9.98 for 2 bots (£7.55) |
| Ahrefs Starter | $29 | 50 | weekly | $0.58 | doesn't cover it (capped at 50) |
| Ubersuggest | from $29 | 125 per project | weekly | $0.23 | $29 (£21.93) |
| SpyFu Basic | $39 ($33 on annual billing) | 5,000 | weekly | $0.008 | $39 (£29.49) |
| Seobility Premium | €59.90 | 300 | desktop daily, mobile every 3 days | €0.20 | €59.90 |
| Ahrefs Lite | $129 | 750 | weekly | $0.17 | $129 (£97.54) |
| SE Ranking Core | $129 | 2,000 | daily | $0.065 | $129 (£97.54) |
| Semrush SEO | $139 | 500 | daily | $0.28 | $139 (£105.10) |
Prices before VAT on monthly billing unless stated, in the currency the vendor publishes, checked on 10 October 2026 on the official pages of DataForSEO, Rank Math, SERPRobot, Ahrefs Starter, Ubersuggest, SpyFu, Seobility, Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Semrush. Pounds in brackets converted from US dollars at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 ($1.3226 to the pound). Rank Math and Seobility showed us euro prices, and Seobility's pound option shows no amounts. For DataForSEO the calculation is 30 checks a month of the first page (10 results) per keyword. "Not stated" means the price list doesn't say. Cost per keyword is the fee divided by the keywords included: that's our calculation.
Three things this table says and the price lists don't.
Cost per keyword rewards people who buy more keywords than they use. Among the suites, SE Ranking is the cheapest per unit, 6.5 cents. But with 100 keywords you pay $129 for 2,000 rows and use one in twenty. SpyFu goes further still: $39 for 5,000 keywords, which only pays off if you track thousands and can live with weekly updates.
Under $10 there are only tools that do one thing. SERPRobot checks rankings and that's it. The DataForSEO API returns the raw results page: turning it into a readable spreadsheet is up to you, or a developer.
Ahrefs' entry price doesn't cover the scenario. The $29 Starter plan stops at 50 keywords in Rank Tracker and, as the Ahrefs help centre says, you can't buy extra credits on that plan.
And with 143 keywords, as for Sunscape?
The sums shift again. SpyFu stays at $39. Ubersuggest needs a $5 add-on (250 more keywords), so $34. SERPRobot stays at two bots, which cover 150. DataForSEO goes up to $2.57. The same work costs from $2.57 to $139: a gap of more than 50 times.
If you want to understand what the ranking number you're paying for actually measures, we explain it in our guide to keyword rankings.
What you can do without paying (and the exact point where it stops being enough)
With the no-cost tools you can do all the work on your own site: queries, clicks, technical errors, inbound links. What you can't see is other people's sites, meaning what your competitors rank for.
The six we switch on for every project, before any subscription:
- Google Search Console: impressions, clicks and average position for every query, with 16 months of history. The interface shows up to 1,000 rows, the API up to 25,000 per request (Google documentation).
- Bing Webmaster Tools: as well as data on your own site, it shows the backlinks of any domain, as we saw in our backlink check on 11 sites.
- Ahrefs Free: a limited Site Explorer and Site Audit on sites you verify as your own.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: the technical crawl, at no cost up to 500 URLs. A licence costs £199 a year (Screaming Frog FAQ).
- Seobility Basic: 1 project, 100 pages per crawl, 10 tracked keywords, no expiry date.
- Semrush's free account: 10 reports a day and one demo project.
But is data you don't pay for worth as much as data you do?
Often it's worth more. For an Italian LED screen manufacturer ranking first for "led wall" on Google Italy, the paid rank tracker estimated 3,223 visits a month. Search Console, at no cost, counted 10 from 966 impressions. The full comparison is in our article on SEO software and how far their data agree.
The point where no-cost tools stop being enough is precise: when the question is about a site that isn't yours. Which keywords a competitor shows up for, which pages bring it traffic, who links to it. That's where you need the suites' databases. Everything else is covered in our guide to free SEO tools, and with these six you can run a complete SEO audit on a medium-sized site.
Under £30 a month: what you're really buying (and what they take away)
Under £30 a month there are four tools that stand up to professional use: Rank Math PRO, SERPRobot, Ubersuggest and Ahrefs Starter. Each one cuts something specific, and that's what you need to check before paying.
Rank Math PRO (€7.99 a month, but only on WordPress)
It's a plugin, not a platform. The price list gives 500 tracked keywords and unlimited personal WordPress sites, client sites excluded. The price is for the first year on annual billing, so what you actually pay up front is €95.88 plus VAT; renewal goes up to €8.99 a month. The price list showed us euros. If your site isn't on WordPress, it's not an option. For the rest of the set-up there's our guide to WordPress SEO.
SERPRobot ($4.99 per 75 keywords)
The most bare-bones rank tracker we found. Each "bot" costs $4.99 a month (about £3.77) and updates 75 keywords every 24 hours. No audit, no keyword research, no competitors. If your only problem is knowing where you stand every morning, it's the lowest price with an interface.
Ubersuggest (from $29 a month)
The first plan includes 1 project, 125 keywords updated weekly, 150 reports a day and a 1,000-page site audit. Each add-on costs $5 a month. There's also a lifetime plan, but the FAQs on the price list are clear: lifetime purchases are final and non-refundable, and the 7-day trial only applies to the monthly subscription. If you're wondering whether there's something better at the same price, the comparisons are in our piece on Ubersuggest alternatives.
Ahrefs Starter ($29 a month)
It's the way into Ahrefs' database, with the handbrake on: 200 credits a month, 250 rows per report, no export, one month of history, 50 keywords in Rank Tracker, monthly renewal only and no extra users.
Is one month of history too little?
It depends on what you need to prove. Macropix took five years to go from position 88 to 2. With one month of history you see a single frame of that climb. The full price list, plan by plan and in pounds, is in our article on Ahrefs pricing.
Paying per use: the API that costs less than a coffee (with the bill for this article)
A pay-as-you-go SEO API charges only for the requests you make, with no subscription. With DataForSEO a Google page of 10 results costs $0.0006 in the standard queue (answer in about 5 minutes), $0.0012 in the priority queue and $0.002 in live mode, meaning within seconds.
For the UK version of this article I read three SERPs in live mode on Google UK: "cheap seo tools" on mobile and desktop, and "affordable seo tools" on mobile.
Total cost: $0.006.
So why doesn't everyone use it?
Because the low price comes with three conditions written on DataForSEO's price list:
- the minimum payment is $50, which at $1.80 a month lasts over two years but has to be paid up front;
- the price is for 10 results: every extra 10 results multiplies the cost, so tracking the top 100 positions costs 10 times as much, $18 a month (about £13.61) for 100 keywords;
- search operators such as site: multiply the cost by 5.
Above all, the API returns raw data. Someone has to write the script that requests it every day and puts it in a spreadsheet. For a business without a developer, the real cost is those hours. At the agency we use a rank tracker with an interface (Keyword.com) for daily tracking and keep the API for one-off tests, like the ones in this article.
Group buys and shared accounts (the saving you pay for later)
Group buys are services that resell shared access to Semrush, Ahrefs and other suites for a few dollars a month: dozens of people use the same account. They breach the vendors' terms of service.
It isn't a niche phenomenon.
On 10 October 2026, Google's AI answer for "cheap seo tools" (desktop, United States) cited two group-buy services among the cheap options, at prices between $10 and $22 a month, and one of the two was also the fourth organic result. The same answer warned that they usually breach the vendors' terms. On Google UK the same day none of the organic results for the same query was a group buy, and the AI Overview was generated on request, so our scan couldn't read its sources. The offers still circulate in the UK too.
Semrush's terms (section 4.1, last updated 25 August 2026) say that each account is designed for an individual user, that two or more individuals may not share a single authorised user's account, and that Semrush may suspend or terminate it at its sole discretion if it sees access from too many locations, devices or IP addresses.
In plain numbers:
- the account can disappear overnight, along with your projects and ranking history;
- the domains you track, yours or your clients', end up in an account you share with strangers;
- you don't get an invoice from the vendor, so that cost has no document to put in your accounts or to reclaim VAT on.
If your budget is $20 a month, Ahrefs Starter or Ubersuggest cost a little more and are yours. We've lined up the legitimate options below Semrush's price in our piece on Semrush alternatives.
When the cheap tool costs more (three cases from clients' accounts)
A cheap tool costs more when its limit forces you into a second subscription or a bigger plan halfway through a project. The cases we see most often are three.
1. The keyword cap. With Sunscape's 143 keywords, Ahrefs Starter (50 keywords) isn't enough and you move up to Lite: from $29 to $129 a month, $1,200 more a year (about £907) for 93 rows. Sometimes it's worth it, because Lite also brings 750 keywords, 5 projects and six months of history. Sometimes it's better to cut the keywords that have never brought in an enquiry.
2. History. Ahrefs Starter keeps one month of data, Ahrefs Lite six. If you have to explain to a partner or a manager why SEO has been running for a year, one month of history isn't evidence. How to read the real timescales is covered in our guide on how long SEO takes to show results.
3. Metrics that entry plans don't have. For Macropix we measure a 25.55% share of voice, ahead of Amazon, on the keywords in its sector on Google Italy. Share of voice (your share of visibility across all the searches you track) is often missing from entry plans: in Semrush, as we found when comparing the best SEO tools and their price lists, it only appears on the Advanced plan ($549 a month on monthly billing, checked on 10 October 2026).
And there's a fourth case, the most mundane: two rank trackers paid for at the same time. It happens when you take a cheap tool for rankings and then a suite for competitors, without noticing that the suite already tracks rankings.
Are you paying for an SEO tool you don't fully use?
You've just seen that tracking the same 143 keywords costs anything from $2.57 to $139 a month, and that the right limit matters more than the price. Let's look together at what you really need to measure on your site, what data you already have in Search Console at no cost, and which subscription, if any, helps you make better decisions.
Book a strategy consultationWhich to choose for your site (brochure site, online shop, several clients)
The right cheap SEO tool depends on how many pages your site has and how many keywords you need to track, not on someone's ranking. These are the combinations we suggest most often.
| Type of site | Tools | Rough monthly cost | What's left out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brochure site or local business, up to 50 keywords | Search Console + Screaming Frog (no-cost version) + Rank Math PRO (if WordPress) or 1 SERPRobot bot | from 0 to about €8 or $5 (£3.77) | competitor analysis |
| Online shop or site with thousands of pages | Search Console + Screaming Frog with a licence + Seobility Premium (25,000 pages per crawl) | about £16.58 (annual licence divided by 12) + €59.90 | a deep UK keyword database |
| If you need to watch UK competitors | Search Console + SpyFu Basic | $33 on annual billing ($399 a year, about £301.68) | daily rank updates |
| Freelancer or agency with several sites | SE Ranking Core or Seobility Agency | $129 for 10 projects (about £9.75 a project) or €209.90 for 20 projects (€10.50 a project) | nothing under £25 covers this case |
Prices before VAT, read on the official price lists on 10 October 2026; pounds converted from dollars at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 ($1.3226 to the pound). The combinations are our starting suggestions, not a rule.
The last row is the one lists of cheap tools don't mention. If you look after more than five sites, there's nothing serious under £25. It's better to think in cost per site, which with SE Ranking Core comes to about £9.75 a project. Even so, the subscription is the small part of the budget: the big part is the hours, as we explain in our article on what SEO costs.
In short
The entry price isn't the price.
What counts is the smallest plan that covers your keywords.
For 100 keywords it ranges from $1.80 to $139 a month.
Search Console first, because it measures instead of estimating.
Group buys are cheap until the account disappears.
One last rule, rarely applied in the industry: every 90 days, write down the decisions you've made thanks to each subscription. A page rewritten, a keyword dropped, a competitor discovered. If the list for a tool is empty, that tool costs too much even at $5. If you'd rather those numbers turned into decisions without going through five subscriptions, that's the work we do in our SEO consultancy, and we go deeper into tracking positions in our guide to rank tracking.
Frequently asked questions about cheap SEO tools
No. The no-cost tools cover your own site: Search Console for queries and clicks, Screaming Frog up to 500 URLs, Bing Webmaster Tools for backlinks. None of them tells you which keywords a competitor ranks for: for that you need a suite, even if only Semrush's free account with 10 reports a day.
It depends: if you can write a script, the DataForSEO API costs $1.80 a month for 100 keywords checked daily on the first page. With a ready-made interface, SERPRobot costs $4.99 per 75 keywords. If your site is on WordPress, Rank Math PRO includes 500 for €7.99 a month on annual billing.
Yes, a limited one: a free account gives you 10 reports a day across all tools and one demo project. The entry paid plan, SEO, costs $139 a month before VAT, or $117.33 a month on annual billing (price list checked on 10 October 2026).
It depends: only if you already know you'll use Ubersuggest for years, because the FAQs on its price list say lifetime purchases are final and non-refundable. Use the 7-day trial of the monthly plan first, which starts at $29.
No. A language model doesn't have search volumes or measured rankings: if you ask for them, it estimates. It's fine for drafts and ideas, and according to the ONS the share of UK businesses with 10 or more employees using AI rose from around 12% in late 2023 to around 35% in June 2026, but the numbers you base decisions on have to come from Search Console or a keyword database.
No. Semrush's terms of service, section 4.1, say that two or more individuals may not share a single authorised user's account and allow Semrush to suspend or terminate the account. When the account goes, so does your projects' history.
