Free SEO tools are the software that measures a site without a subscription, and the kit that holds up in 2026 is short: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs Free (formerly Ahrefs Webmaster Tools), Screaming Frog up to 500 URLs and PageSpeed Insights. On 10 October 2026 we checked, one by one, the 76 tools listed as free by the five Italian lists on Google's first page in Italy, the market we work in: 13 are no longer where the guides say they are, 8 because they've been retired, absorbed or can't be reached.
Lists of free tools age badly.
Two of the five guides we analysed date from 2022, and Google UK isn't much fresher: on 10 October 2026 its first page for "free seo tools" included a guide from July 2021 and one from March 2024. Inside the Italian guides you'll find things like this:
- Google's Mobile-Friendly Test, still recommended, retired on 1 December 2023: today the link takes you to the Lighthouse documentation;
- a link to Seorch, a German SEO analysis tool, that now opens a casino page in Greek;
- Looker Studio named as such in two guides, when since April 2026 it's been called Data Studio again.
So what? If a link doesn't work, I'll find an alternative.
True, if you notice straight away. The problem comes when you notice after building a report, a habit or a decision on top of a tool that no longer exists.
And there's a second, more expensive confusion: free and paid tools measure different things, not the same thing at different prices.
We see it on the projects we run. Sunscape, which develops solar plants in Italy, went from 329 to 5,809 organic impressions a month between March and August 2026, as we describe in our article on how long SEO takes. Impressions are data Search Console gives you at no cost.
Macropix, a Milan-based LED screen manufacturer, moved from position 88 to 2 for "monitor pubblicitario" (advertising monitor) and has a share of voice of 25.55%, ahead of Amazon (18.08%). That figure, on the other hand, comes from Semrush, a paid tool, because it also looks at competitors' sites.
And what does that have to do with a list of free tools?
The line between those two cases is the subject of this article: how far free goes, and which of the free tools people keep recommending are still alive.
In this guide you'll find:
- the census of the 76 tools, guide by guide, including the ones that have gone;
- the 16 most cited, with their no-cost limits checked on the official pages;
- the no-cost kit by job and the exact point where it stops being enough;
- three two-minute checks to tell whether a free tool still works.
Let's start.
The test: 76 "free" tools in Italy's top guides, 13 needing correction (checked on 10 October 2026)
On 10 October 2026 we searched "strumenti seo gratuiti" (free SEO tools) and "tool seo gratis" (SEO tools free) on Google from a smartphone, with Italy as the location. We took the five first-page guides with a list dedicated to free tools: Fattoretto Agency, Semrush Italia, WhitePress, AIOSEO and 01net. Most of the tools are international, so the results apply to anyone using them.
From each one we extracted the tools presented as free: 126 mentions, 76 different tools. For each tool we opened the official page or the link the guide used from our server, followed the redirects, queried the Chrome Web Store for extensions and looked for closure announcements on the makers' sites.
| Guide | Date | Tools cited | Retired, absorbed or unreachable | Name, owner or address changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fattoretto Agency | January 2022 | 32 | 3 | 2 |
| Semrush Italia | June 2022 | 31 | 4 | 3 |
| WhitePress | January 2024 | 20 | 1 | 3 |
| AIOSEO | April 2024 | 13 | 0 | 1 |
| 01net | December 2025 | 30 | 1 | 3 |
| Total mentions | 126 | 9 | 12 |
Removing duplicates, 13 of the 76 tools have a problem, 17%. The mentions affected are 21 out of 126.
The oldest guide isn't the worst off: Semrush Italia's, from June 2022, has 7 entries out of 31 needing correction. But even the most recent one, from December 2025, has 4 out of 30.
The 8 that no longer work as described
- Mobile-Friendly Test (Google): retired on 1 December 2023, as the Google Search Central note says;
- web.dev Measure (Google): the address now redirects to PageSpeed Insights;
- Web Vitals extension (Google): support ended on 13 January 2025, with its features moved into the Performance panel of Chrome DevTools (Chrome for Developers announcement);
- SplitSignal: the page redirects to Semrush Enterprise, it's no longer a product in its own right;
- Sloth: the domain redirects to an agency's site, SALT.agency;
- Search Response: the domain doesn't resolve;
- Keyword Sheeter: the server returns error 521 (server down);
- Synup Listing Scan: the tool page returns a 404.
The 5 that have changed name, owner or address
- Data Studio: it had that name until 2022, then became Looker Studio, and since April 2026 it's Data Studio again (Google announcement). The guides use both names;
- HARO: closed in 2024 after being renamed Connectively, sold in April 2025 to Featured.com (Cision press release), which reopened it;
- SEOquake: the extension is alive (version 4.2.2 on the Chrome Web Store), but the seoquake.com site now redirects to Backlinko's SEO checker;
- Soovle: the domain leads to a page on SEO.com, where the tool now works;
- Seorch: the tool exists at seorch.de, but the .eu link used in one of the guides opens a casino.
So the guides are badly written?
No, they were written and then left alone. Three of the 8 tools that have gone are Google's, and Data Studio itself has changed name twice in four years. A list of free tools has a use-by date, and none of the five states one.
The 16 most cited tools: what they give you at no cost today (limits taken from the official pages)
Sixteen tools appear in at least three of the five guides. They're the ones a reader comes across most often, so we checked them on the official pages, one at a time.
| Tool | Guides (out of 5) | Status on 10/10/2026 | What you get at no cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | 5 | active | your site's queries, clicks and impressions; via the API up to 25,000 rows per request, 1,000 by default |
| Google Analytics 4 | 5 | active | on-site behaviour; user-level data kept for 2 or 14 months |
| PageSpeed Insights | 4 | active | real Chrome user data for the last 28 days plus a Lighthouse test |
| SEOquake | 4 | extension active, site redirected to Backlinko | on-page and SERP metrics in the browser |
| AlsoAsked | 4 | active | monthly no-cost credits without registering; plans from $12 a month |
| Google Keyword Planner | 4 | active | Google search volumes; needs a Google Ads account |
| GTmetrix | 3 | active | no-cost registration; the Lite plan costs $4.99 a month for 50 tests |
| Google Trends | 3 | active | relative interest on a 0-100 scale, never absolute volumes |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | 3 | active | crawls up to 500 URLs; licence £199 a year |
| TechnicalSEO.com | 3 | active, now signed by Max Prin | hreflang and robots.txt testers, structured data generator |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | 3 | active | your site's data on Bing and backlinks for any domain |
| Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) | 3 | active, renamed in April 2026 | reports and dashboards; the Pro version is paid |
| HARO | 3 | reopened by Featured.com in 2025 | no-cost sign-up for journalists' requests |
| Hunter | 3 | active | 50 credits a month |
| Rank Math | 3 | updated 6 October 2026 | WordPress plugin, more than 4 million active installations |
| Yoast SEO | 3 | updated 29 September 2026 | WordPress plugin, more than 10 million active installations |
Two things stand out.
First: six of the sixteen are Google's. That's the part of the kit that really costs nothing, with no credits or time-limited trials. But it's also the company that retired three of the 8 tools that have gone.
Second: the most generous no-cost tool, in our view, is cited by only one guide in five, and under a generic name. It's Ahrefs Free, the new name for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: unlimited verified sites, 5,000 crawl credits a month per project in Site Audit, and 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at a time in Site Explorer.
But is data capped at a thousand rows any use?
On a company site with a few hundred pages, almost always. The limit bites on an ecommerce site with thousands of URLs, where you need different tools (you'll find them in our guide to ecommerce SEO tools).
The no-cost kit that holds up, job by job (no time-limited trials)
A no-cost kit works if it covers the jobs, not if it lines up as many names as possible. There are six jobs, and one tool is enough for each.
- What happens on Google: Google Search Console, and alongside it Bing Webmaster Tools, which also shows backlinks for sites that aren't yours (we used it in our backlink check on 11 sites).
- What people do on the site: Google Analytics 4, with data retention set to 14 months instead of 2.
- Technical crawling: Screaming Frog up to 500 URLs (here's our guide to Screaming Frog), or Ahrefs Free's Site Audit on verified sites. Seobility Basic adds 100 pages per crawl and 10 tracked keywords, with no expiry.
- Speed: PageSpeed Insights for real-user data, the Performance panel in Chrome DevTools for debugging. You no longer need the Web Vitals extension.
- Keywords and questions: Keyword Planner for volumes, Google Trends for seasonality, AlsoAsked or QuestionDB (5 searches a month at no cost) for questions.
- The CMS: a single SEO plugin out of Yoast, Rank Math and All in One SEO, which on WordPress.org reports more than 2 million active installations. Which one the sites on page one actually use is something we measured in our article on SEO plugins for WordPress.
For reports, Data Studio connects Search Console and Analytics at no cost. How to build them is in our guide to Looker Studio, written before it went back to its old name.
Free doesn't mean free trial
The lists also include tools that aren't free at all. 01net puts SE Ranking among the free tools, yet its pricing page offers a 14-day trial and then starts at $103.20 a month on annual billing (about £78). Exploding Topics has a 7-day trial and then starts at $39 a month.
And Semrush, which Google UK suggests next to "free seo tools" in its "People also search for" box, has a 7-day trial and an account without a subscription limited to 10 Domain Overview queries a day; the SEO plan costs $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed annually (about £89). Prices checked on 10 October 2026, before VAT, converted at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026 ($1.3226 to the pound).
They're good tools. But a two-week trial isn't a kit: when the trial ends, your historical data stays locked inside.
When no-cost data is worth more than paid data (3,223 estimated visits, 10 real clicks)
Search Console's no-cost data has a quality no suite can match: it measures instead of estimating. And that's where the most expensive mistakes show up.
On 13 September 2026, for an Italian LED screen manufacturer ranking first on Google Italy for "led wall", the paid rank tracker estimated 3,223 visits a month on that keyword. Search Console, over the same period, counted 966 impressions and 10 clicks. The full comparison is in our article on SEO software and how far their data agrees.
How does a first place get 10 clicks?
Because estimated traffic is the tool's model, while impressions and clicks are what Google actually recorded. Anyone who'd built a business plan on those 3,223 estimated visits would have been out by two orders of magnitude.
The same goes for the scores from free checkers: an "SEO score" from 0 to 100 is one tool's formula, not Google data, as we measured in our article on what an SEO score is.
Making decisions on estimated visits?
You've just seen a first place that the tool valued at 3,223 visits and that brought in 10. We start from the real data in Search Console and Analytics, connect keywords to enquiries and tell you where it's really worth spending.
Book a strategy consultationWhere no-cost tools stop: other people's sites (and why you pay there)
With no-cost tools you can measure everything about your own site. What you can't see is other people's sites: which keywords a competitor ranks for, which pages bring it traffic, who links to it.
Macropix's share of voice, 25.55% against Amazon's 18.08% on the same keyword group, is exactly that kind of data. No free tool calculates it, because you need a database that has also crawled the search results and the competitors' sites.
The partial exception is Bing Webmaster Tools, which shows backlinks for any domain. Beyond that the line is clear, and we cover it with prices in two articles: low-cost SEO tools, for anyone who wants to spend as little as possible, and the best SEO tools, for anyone choosing a suite. If you're torn between the two most used, there's our Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison.
How to tell in two minutes whether a free tool is still alive (the three checks from our test)
These are the same checks we ran on the 76 tools. Use them before installing anything you've found in a list.
1. Open the link and see where you land
A redirect tells you almost everything. web.dev/measure takes you to PageSpeed Insights, soovle.com to SEO.com, the old Mobile-Friendly Test address to the Lighthouse documentation. If you land on a page about something else, the tool has gone.
2. For plugins and extensions, check the last update
Rank Math was updated on 6 October 2026, Yoast on 29 September. An extension that hasn't moved in years, or carries an end-of-support notice like Web Vitals, can stop working overnight: for Web Vitals, Google has announced it will revoke the key that reads the real-user data.
3. Read the pricing page, not the home page
"Free" on a home page can mean three different things: no cost with no time limit (Seobility Basic), no cost with credits (Hunter at 50 a month, Wappalyzer at 50 site lookups a month) or a time-limited trial (SE Ranking, 14 days). Only the pricing page makes it clear.
Frequently asked questions about free SEO tools
Yes. Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, Google Trends and Google Analytics 4 cost nothing and have no time-limited trials: all you need is a Google or Microsoft account. Ahrefs Free and Screaming Frog up to 500 URLs don't expire either, with limits on the amount of data.
On your own site, yes, because queries, clicks, technical errors and inbound links can all be measured at no cost. On competitors, no: to find out which keywords they rank for and who links to them you need the databases of the paid suites.
Not really. On 10 October 2026 Semrush offered a 7-day trial and an account without a subscription limited to 10 Domain Overview queries a day. The SEO plan costs $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed annually, about £89 before VAT.
It crawls up to 500 URLs with almost all the analysis features, so it's enough for a company site with a few hundred pages. On an ecommerce site with filters and variants you hit the limit straight away and need the annual licence, £199 a year.
Partly: they find real technical errors such as missing titles or broken links, but the final score is one tool's formula and not Google data. Two different checkers give the same page different scores.
Yes. Google's Keyword Planner gives you volumes, Search Console shows the queries your site already appears for, Google Trends shows seasonality, and AlsoAsked or QuestionDB show the questions people ask, with a few no-cost searches a month.
In brief
13 of the 76 tools cited by the Italian guides are no longer where the guides say.
The no-cost kit that holds up covers six jobs, one tool per job.
Search Console measures, the suites estimate: on "led wall", 3,223 estimated visits against 10 real clicks.
No-cost tools stop where your competitor's site begins.
There's one last thing the test taught us. Free tools change name, owner and address (13 out of 76 in this test), but the most valuable data they read is always the same: your site's impressions and clicks, which belong to you and not to the tool. Exporting them regularly is worth more than any list, this one included. And if you want to work out what to do with them, our SEO consultancy starts right there.
See you next time!
