A local SEO tool is software that measures or manages a business's presence on Google Maps and in searches that include a place name: the Google Business Profile data, the position on the map point by point, whether the address and phone number match across directories, and reviews. The basics cost nothing (Google Business Profile and Search Console). Tracking one listing on a grid with 5 keywords costs between $10 and $60 a month, about £7.56 to £45.37, according to the official price lists we checked on 10 October 2026.
Search "local seo tools" on a phone in the UK and, that same day, four of the nine organic results are the vendors' own product pages: BrightLocal, Localo, SE Ranking and Semrush. A fifth is a free checker from TechnicalSEO.com.
The other four are an Ahrefs guide to local SEO and three "best tools" lists: one from an Australian site, one from a personal blog and one from a UK agency, Mouthy Marketing. They rank the tools one after another.
So what's wrong with reading a vendor's page or a top-ten list?
Nothing, until you buy. Every tool with a public price list among the eleven we checked shows its prices in dollars, not pounds, often per location. That includes BrightLocal, which is based in Brighton. And the lists put tools that do different jobs side by side, as if they were alternatives.
The mistakes we see most often:
- paying for a directory management service before sorting out the Google profile;
- checking "the ranking" on Maps from a single point, usually the office;
- reading the profile statistics as if they were all unpaid traffic.
We know the last one well. Contesini Consulenze runs two energy advice offices in the province of Mantua, in Italy: Google Ads campaigns focused on the area around the two offices brought in 299 enquiries at €7.20 each. For a business like that, the calls from the Google profile can include calls generated by the ads, and further down you'll see why.
Sunscape, on the other hand, looks for land for solar farms all over Italy, region by region: there the work is tracking by area, with 143 keywords tracked, which went from 1 to 38 on page one in six months.
In this guide you'll find:
- the four jobs a local SEO tool does, and which tool does which;
- which tools people in the UK actually search for: 123,500 searches a month for Google's business profile, 6,610 for all the specialist software put together;
- what it costs to track a listing on a grid, credit by credit;
- how the 11 most-cited tools handle the UK, and where the catch is.
Let's start.
The four jobs of a local SEO tool (two cost nothing)
Every local SEO tool does one of four jobs: it measures what the profile brings in, measures the position on the map, keeps your details consistent across directories, or manages reviews. The ten-tool lists mix them up, which makes Local Falcon and Yext look like alternatives. They aren't: the first tells you where you show up, the second sends your details out to other sites.
| Job | The question it answers | Free tool | Paid tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Measuring results | How many calls, directions requests and clicks does the profile bring? From which searches? | Business Profile Performance report, Search Console | Semrush Local Pro (profile data history), Localo |
| Measuring position on the map | Where do I show up, neighbourhood by neighbourhood? | Trial credits: 100 on Local Falcon, 200 on Whitespark, 50 on Semrush | Local Falcon, Whitespark, Semrush Map Rank Tracker, BrightLocal |
| Keeping details consistent | Are name, address and phone number the same everywhere? | Adding them by hand to the few UK directories that matter | BrightLocal Citation Builder, Semrush Listing Management, Yext, Uberall, Partoo |
| Managing reviews | Who leaves reviews, and who replies? | Replies from the Business Profile | Whitespark Reputation Builder, BrightLocal Grow, Semrush Local Pro |
What if I have one location and no budget?
Rows one and four cost you nothing. You can run the grid with trial credits, once, to see where you stand. Buy the rest only when you know what's missing: diagnosis comes first, and it's the method we use in our guide on how to improve your Google Maps ranking.
Which tools people in the UK search for (123,500 searches against 6,610)
People in the UK search for Google's tool, not for specialist software. We pulled the average monthly UK search volume for the name of each tool:
| Tool searched for | Monthly searches in the UK |
|---|---|
| google business profile | 74,000 |
| google my business | 49,500 |
| brightlocal | 3,600 |
| apple business connect | 1,600 |
| yext | 1,600 |
| bing places | 1,300 |
| local falcon | 320 |
| gmb everywhere | 320 |
| whitespark | 320 |
| partoo | 140 |
| moz local | 140 |
| pleper | 50 |
| semrush local | 50 |
| local viking | 50 |
| places scout | 20 |
| local seo tools | 170 |
The gap is wide: Google's business profile gets 123,500 searches a month, all the specialist software put together 6,610, almost 19 times fewer. And of those 6,610, 3,600 are for BrightLocal alone, the one British name in the group. Take out BrightLocal and Yext, and the tools that fill the lists don't reach 1,500 searches between them.
So specialist tools aren't needed?
They're needed by anyone who has to prove a result, which means anyone looking after several locations or several clients. For everyone else, the first tool is the one they already search for. For comparison, in our guide to the best SEO tools, Search Console on its own gets 135,000 searches a month in the UK.
Google's free tools (and the figure that mixes organic and ads)
The Performance report in Google Business Profile is the official statistic for the listing: it shows views, searches, calls, directions requests, website clicks, messages and bookings. It only works on verified profiles.
Three details in Google's help page on performance change how you should read it:
- the data includes interactions from Google Ads, as well as those from organic search;
- views count unique people, and the same person counts once a day;
- the Searches metric updates at the start of the month and can take up to five days to show.
The first point is the one almost everyone who also advertises gets wrong. On a project like Contesini, where the campaigns cover the same area as the listing, a rise in calls from the profile is not proof that local SEO is working. To separate the two channels you need Google Ads conversions on one side and a tracking parameter on the website link in the profile on the other.
Search Console does the complementary job: the real queries for the website. Filter it for searches that include the town or city name and it tells you how much local organic is worth. We did this for an outdoor shop in Rome in our guide to local SEO: non-branded local queries had a CTR of 5.2%, queries with the shop's name 37.6%.
The other two free ones are Apple Business Connect (1,600 searches a month in the UK) and Bing Places (1,300). They don't measure anything on Google, but they're two listings to keep in line: you'll find them alongside the UK directories in our guide to local citations.
The grid: what it costs to track a listing (from $10 to $60 a month)
Grid tracking runs the same search from lots of points on the map and shows where the listing ranks at each one. You need it because there's no single ranking on Maps: it changes with the distance of the person searching, as we explain in our article on the local pack.
Local Falcon, Whitespark and Semrush all use the same system: each point on the grid costs one credit. So we took a typical scenario and did the sums: one listing, 5 keywords, a 7x7 grid (49 points), one scan a week. That's 980 credits a month.
| Tool | Plan | Price per month | Credits per month | Covers the 980 credits? | Listings covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whitespark Local Ranking Grids | entry plan | $10 (£7.56) | 2,000 | Yes | 2 |
| Local Falcon | Starter | $24.99 (£18.89) | 7,500 | Yes | 7 |
| Semrush Map Rank Tracker | Basic | $30 (£22.68) | 4,000 | Yes | 4 |
| Semrush Local | Base | $30 (£22.68) per location | 375 | No (enough for 1 keyword) | 0 |
| Semrush Local | Pro | $60 (£45.37) per location | 1,225 | Yes | 1 |
| BrightLocal | Track | $41 (£31), or $31 (£23.44) billed annually | grid on 5 keywords, frequency not stated | Not stated | 1 |
Two things the price list doesn't make clear.
The most expensive plan isn't the one with the most room. Semrush Local Base costs $30 per location and includes 375 credits: enough for one keyword a week on a 7x7 grid. Whitespark gives you 2,000 for $10. Semrush does add other things, though: an AI agent that publishes posts and replies to reviews.
Free trials are enough for a diagnosis, not for ongoing tracking. A single 7x7 scan uses 49 credits: Local Falcon's 100 give you two scans, Whitespark's 200 give you four. Semrush's free plan gives 50 credits, but only on a 5x5 grid and for one keyword.
And which grid metric should I look at?
The average position across the points tells you little, because it mixes the neighbourhood where you're first with the one where you don't appear at all. Local Falcon, which runs grids from 3x3 to 21x21, shows Share of Local Voice (SoLV) alongside the average: its own metric for how often a business ranks in the top three on the grid. That's closer to what a customer sees, because the pack usually shows three listings. Semrush has a share of voice metric too, weighted towards the higher positions. Position tracking in general, map included, is the subject of our guide to rank tracking.
Do they work in the UK? Eleven tools checked one by one (all priced in dollars)
A local SEO tool works in the UK if the vendor states that it covers the country: for the grid it only has to read Google Maps anywhere, for directories it needs a network of UK sites. On 10 October 2026 we checked the pricing pages, help centres and official sites of 11 tools: the ones that turn up most often in the page-one lists, plus Partoo and Uberall, which are aimed at multi-location brands in Europe.
| Tool | Main job | UK coverage | Entry price | Price list in pounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | listing and statistics | Yes | free | - |
| Google Search Console | site queries and clicks | Yes | free | - |
| Local Falcon | grid on Google and Apple | Yes, "Global Availability" stated | $24.99/month | No |
| Whitespark | grid, citations, reviews | Yes for the grid: any area, up to a whole country | $10/month | No |
| Semrush Local | grid, directories, reviews | Yes, UK among the Listing Management countries | $30/month per location | No |
| BrightLocal | rankings, grid, citations | Yes, platform built for the US, UK, Canada and Australia | $41/month | No, although the company is in Brighton |
| Moz Local | directories, grid | Yes: US, UK and Canada only | $20/month | No |
| Localo | profile management | Yes, "every country" stated | $49/month + VAT | No |
| Uberall | directories for multi-location networks | No UK-specific site | price on request | No prices published |
| Yext | directories for multi-location networks | Publishes a UK Modern Slavery Act statement | not checked | not checked |
| Partoo | local presence management | English site, UK not mentioned | demo only | No prices published |
Moz Local is the case that reads differently from the UK. In most of Europe it's a tool to avoid, because its pricing page says it supports listings management in three countries only: the US, the UK and Canada. For a UK business it's one of the few directory tools that names the country outright. The Lite plan costs $20 a month, or $199 billed annually (about £150), and includes Local Grid, review monitoring and what Moz calls 90+ listing directories. Each physical location needs its own subscription.
On directories, coverage is there, but it needs weighing up. BrightLocal's pricing page says the platform works in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, and its Citation Builder starts at $2 a citation. Semrush's Listing Management lists the UK and names Yell, Scoot, 192.com, InYourArea and Cylex among its directories. But in the UK the directories that actually show up in the results are few: in our check of six local searches, Yell and Gumtree appeared in four, and Yelp, Foursquare and Hotfrog in none. For a single location you can add the ones that matter by hand in an afternoon.
Uberall and Yext are a different category. Uberall sells plans to brands with many locations and doesn't publish prices; Yext presents itself as a platform for large brands and says its Scout tool analyses more than 12 million business locations. Tools like these make sense when there are dozens of locations and the problem is updating opening hours and bank holiday times on all of them on the same day.
Paying for a local SEO tool you don't fully use?
You've just seen that a subscription can be billed per location in dollars, or not have the credits for a weekly grid. We start from your listing: diagnosis, grid and a set of tools sized to your locations, with no overlapping subscriptions.
Book a strategy consultationThe classic rank tracker still has a job (for the blue links, town by town)
A classic rank tracker measures where the website ranks in the organic results, and for local search it has to be set to the town or city, not the country. It's a different job from the grid: in local organic results the website and its links count, not the profile. In Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors 2026, a survey of 47 local search specialists, on-page signals account for 33% of local organic rankings and links for 24%.
For Sunscape, tracking is exactly this: pages and keywords built region by region, because a landowner searches with the name of their region ("agrivoltaico veneto", agrivoltaics in Veneto). In six months the keywords on page one went from 1 to 38 out of 143.
The tools:
- Semrush Position Tracking, which follows the same keywords across several towns, as Semrush's guide to tracking multiple locations shows;
- BrightLocal's Local Rank Tracker, included in the Track plan: up to 100 keywords and four competitors per location;
- Whitespark's Local Rank Tracker, from $14 to $200 a month (about £10.59 to £151).
How to read rankings without being misled by averages is covered in our article on keyword rankings.
Which set of tools to choose (four situations, annual prices)
The right set depends on one thing: how many locations you have to show growth for.
| Situation | Tools | Approximate cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| One location, the owner does it | Business Profile, Search Console, trial credits for an occasional grid | £0 |
| One location tracked continuously | The free set + Whitespark Local Ranking Grids, Local Falcon Starter or Moz Local Lite | from $120 to $299.88 (about £91 to £227) |
| 2 to 5 locations, or a consultant with a few clients | The free set + BrightLocal Track | $558 billed annually (about £422) |
| Dozens of locations, a chain or franchise | Uberall, Yext or Partoo, plus a grid | ask the supplier |
None of the first three situations needs more than one subscription. If you pay for two that both run grids, one is surplus. And remember that the software is the small part of the cost: how much it weighs in an agency fee is in our article on what local SEO costs. To work out whether the spend pays for itself, start from what the clicks the map gives you would cost in Google Ads: we did the sums for 18 UK local searches in our article on the benefits of local SEO.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Google Business Profile shows views, searches, calls and directions requests; Search Console shows the website's queries, which you can filter by town or city. For the grid there are trial credits: 100 on Local Falcon, 200 on Whitespark and 50 on Semrush's free plan, enough for one or two diagnostic scans.
Yes. On 10 October 2026 Moz Local's pricing page says it supports listings management in the US, the UK and Canada only. The Lite plan costs $20 a month or $199 billed annually, per location. BrightLocal and Semrush Listing Management also state that they cover the UK.
It depends: with one or two locations, no, because the UK directories that actually show up in the results are few, Yell and Gumtree above all, and you can update them by hand. With dozens of locations, yes, because the problem becomes changing opening hours and bank holiday times everywhere on the same day, which is the job of Uberall, Yext or Partoo.
It depends: Local Falcon suggests tracking Share of Local Voice regularly, every two weeks or monthly, to see the trend. For a single location where nothing is being changed, one scan a month is enough to tell whether the area where you show up is growing or shrinking.
It depends: they're Google's data, so they're real, but according to Google's help page they include interactions from Google Ads, count views as unique people per day and update searches at the start of the month with a delay of up to five days. If you also advertise, separate the two channels before drawing conclusions.
Where to start (the profile first, then the grid)
To sum up:
two of the four jobs cost nothing, with Google's own tools;
the grid costs from $10 to $60 a month (about £7.56 to £45.37) for one listing with 5 keywords;
every tool we checked with a public price list quotes it in dollars, not pounds;
the profile statistics also include interactions from Google Ads.
There's one thing you can already read in the price lists that the tool roundups haven't picked up yet. BrightLocal's entry plan includes a Local AI Visibility Tracker, which checks how a business shows up on ChatGPT and in Google's AI, and Local Falcon has put AI visibility tracking next to the grid. That's no accident: in BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, based on 1,002 US adults, the share of people using ChatGPT or similar tools to get a local business recommendation went from 6% to 45% in a year. The next local SEO tool won't only measure where you appear on the map, but whether an AI assistant names you. What we know about Italy and the UK on this is in our local SEO statistics.
If you'd like us to do the diagnosis, on your listing and with these tools, that's the job of our SEO service.
Until next time!
