PPC tools for Google Ads are the software you use to plan, build, measure and check paid campaigns. Almost all the ones that matter are free and made by Google (Keyword Planner, Google Ads Editor, Tag Manager, Data Studio, the Ads Transparency Centre). On the paid side there are suites such as Optmyzr, Opteo, Adalysis or SpyFu, which only make sense above a certain spend and a certain number of accounts.
In the UK "google tag manager" is searched 27,100 times a month, Optmyzr 320, Opteo 260, Adalysis 110 (12-month average, September 2025 to August 2026, Google Ads data via DataForSEO, October 2026).
Yet the first of the four barely features in the "best PPC tools" lists.
On 10 October 2026 we read the ten tool lists Google UK shows for "ppc tools" and "google ads tools", including the ones from Zapier and Search Engine Land. Nine mention Optmyzr, eight Semrush. Only three mention Google Tag Manager, and only one gives it an entry of its own.
What has Tag Manager got to do with campaigns?
It's the tool most people use to install conversion tracking. And tracking is where accounts break, long before bids or ads.
We see it in the accounts we take over. When we started working with Valore Solare, an Italian solar company, the account was counting 15,267 "conversions" in one month against 5,467 clicks. More conversions than clicks: they were technical events. Valore Solare now pays an average of €70.78 for a real enquiry, out of 1,506 collected.
Sunscape, another Italian client, counted 1,487 "conversions" in 2024 at €0.61 each. Once the tracking was rebuilt, enquiries from January to August 2026 came to 144. Fewer, but real.
No paid suite would have fixed those numbers. Rebuilding the tracking from scratch did.
In this guide you'll find:
- the six jobs a Google Ads account needs doing, with the free tool and the paid tool for each;
- our comparison of 10 PPC tool lists with what people in the UK search for: what they recommend and what they leave out;
- the prices of the paid suites, checked on the official price lists, and the spend below which you don't need them.
Let's start.
What a PPC tool does (six jobs, and Google's own tools cover nearly all of them)
A PPC tool (pay per click, advertising you pay for by the click) is useful if it does one of six jobs better or faster: planning, building, measuring, checking, automating, reporting. Lists of ten or twenty tools mix these jobs up, which makes Semrush and Google Ads Editor look like alternatives. They aren't: one looks at competitors from the outside, the other edits your account from the inside.
| Job | The question it answers | Free tool | Paid tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planning | How many searches are there and what does a click cost? | Keyword Planner, Performance Planner | Semrush, SpyFu |
| Building | How do I create and edit hundreds of ads without mistakes? | Google Ads Editor | Optmyzr, Adalysis |
| Measuring | Which clicks turn into real enquiries or sales? | Google Tag Manager, Google tag, enhanced conversions | Nothing replaces it |
| Checking | Which searches do I show up for and who's in the auction with me? | Search terms report, Auction insights, Ads Transparency Centre | SpyFu, Semrush |
| Automating | What can I have a machine check every day? | Google Ads scripts, automated rules | Optmyzr, Opteo, Adalysis |
| Reporting | How do I show the numbers to the people who decide? | Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) | Supermetrics, Data Studio Pro |
So are the paid suites useless?
No. They speed up rows 2, 4 and 5 when there are lots of accounts. But row 3, measurement, isn't covered by any suite: Optmyzr or Opteo optimise on the conversions they find in the account, and if those conversions are technical events they optimise the noise.
The test: what 10 PPC tool lists recommend and what people in the UK search for (Tag Manager: 3 out of 10)
On 10 October 2026 we downloaded each list from its server and searched the article text for the name of every tool. The lists are the ones Google UK shows on page one for "ppc tools" and "google ads tools": Zapier, Vital Agency, Aimers, OutSearch, Search Engine Land, Brafton, Cotera, SEO.ai, TheOptimizer and SegmentStream. Two of them, OutSearch and Brafton, are on .co.uk sites. Next to each tool we put its monthly UK searches and its list price.
| Tool | Monthly searches in the UK | Lists that mention it (out of 10) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | 110,000 | 8 | Free |
| Semrush | 27,100 | 8 | From $139 a month |
| Google Tag Manager | 27,100 | 3 | Free |
| Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) | 12,100 | 6 | Free, Pro version paid |
| Keyword Planner | 8,100 | 5 | Free |
| Supermetrics | 1,900 | 2 | From $44 a month (annual) |
| Ads Transparency Centre | 1,900 | 2 | Free |
| SpyFu | 1,600 | 8 | From $39 a month |
| Google Ads Editor | 1,000 | 7 | Free |
| Optmyzr | 320 | 9 | From $209 a month |
| Opteo | 260 | 4 | From $129 a month |
| Adalysis | 110 | 6 | From $149 a month, based on spend, 30-day trial |
Three things stand out.
The lists push tools that hardly anyone in the UK searches for. Optmyzr is in 9 lists out of 10 and gets 320 searches a month; Google Ads Editor gets 1,000 and Tag Manager 27,100. These tools are priced by number of accounts and by spend: they're aimed at people running dozens of accounts, not at a business with one.
Tag Manager gets three mentions, two of them in passing. Vital Agency gives it one line in a list of Google tools, SegmentStream names it in an FAQ answer. Only OutSearch, a UK Google Ads agency, gives it an entry of its own, in tenth place.
Google Analytics is in 8 lists out of 10, but it doesn't measure Google Ads conversions in place of the tag. It can import them, and that's a choice you make: on an ecommerce site we keep a single source for purchases, either the Google Ads tag or the GA4 import, never both. We explain why in our guide to Google Ads for ecommerce.
Planning: Keyword Planner and Performance Planner (estimates, not promises)
Keyword Planner is the Google Ads tool that suggests keywords and estimates their searches and cost per click, at no cost. It's in 5 lists out of 10, which is too few: it's the only source of search volumes that comes straight from Google.
It has three limits worth knowing before you build a budget on it: without active spend it shows ranges, it adds variants of the same word together, and the 12-month average on a seasonal product can get the month you care about wrong. We measured them on 7 keywords in our guide to how to use Google Keyword Planner, and the Keyword Planner alternatives have a piece of their own.
Performance Planner is the other forecasting tool, and far fewer people look for it: 210 searches a month in the UK, against 8,100 for Keyword Planner. According to Google Ads Help, forecasts are refreshed every day using data from the last 7-10 days, and since 9 March 2026 it no longer plans Display and Video campaigns.
What about the estimates from Semrush or SpyFu?
They're for looking outside your account: which keywords competitors buy, with which ads. For the cost of your own clicks, the real figure is in your account after two weeks of spend. On the three Italian accounts we manage, the average Search Network CPC was €1.81 between September 2025 and August 2026, ranging from €1.18 to €1.92 depending on the sector: three companies, three different prices for the same kind of click. The detail is in our checked Google Ads statistics.
Building: Google Ads Editor (no cost, offline, and in 7 lists out of 10)
Google Ads Editor is the desktop application you download to edit campaigns in bulk, at no cost. According to the Google Ads Editor Help Centre, you download one or more accounts, make your changes offline and then post them: find and replace, copy between ad groups, manage several accounts at once.
Google says it's most useful for accounts with many campaigns and long lists of keywords or ads. In plain terms: on an account with three Search campaigns, the web interface is enough.
In the UK "google ads editor" is searched 1,000 times a month and "google ads editor download" another 210. It earns its place when an account grows: Macropix, an Italian LED display manufacturer that got 328 quote requests from Google Ads in 2025 at €39.44 each, is the kind of account where bulk edits save hours.
Measuring: Tag Manager and enhanced conversions (the tool 7 lists out of 10 skip)
Google Tag Manager is Google's tool for installing and managing tags on a site without touching the code of every page, the Google Ads conversion tag included. It costs nothing, and it's the tool that decides whether all the others are working on real data.
The Tag Manager help article on Google Ads conversions says it in one line that's worth more than the rest of this article: to avoid duplicate conversions in your reports, add a transaction ID. Without one, the same enquiry can be counted more than once.
It happens a lot in the accounts we inherit:
- Valore Solare: 15,267 conversions in a month on 5,467 clicks, all technical events;
- Sunscape in 2024: 1,487 conversions at €0.61, an impossible cost for a B2B service;
- in both cases automated bidding was optimising for exactly those numbers.
And if the platform installs the tracking for you, like Shopify?
Then the risk runs the other way: two sources counting the same purchase, the app and a tag someone added by hand. You check it the same way, by comparing conversions with the month's real orders or enquiries.
The second piece is enhanced conversions: they send Google data such as the email address of the person buying or asking for a quote, hashed with the SHA256 algorithm, and recover conversions that cookies lose. Together with Consent Mode v2, which Google has required in the EEA since March 2024 and which sits under a consent policy that also covers users in the UK, they're the two things we check after the conversion count.
The first check we run on every account costs nothing: the month's conversions against the month's clicks. If the first number is higher than the second, the tracking is broken, and every pound spent on an optimisation suite is working on noise.
Do your conversions outnumber your clicks?
If they do, automated bidding is spending your budget chasing technical events, and no tool will fix that. We check your account's tracking and tell you how many of the conversions you see are real enquiries.
Book a strategy consultationChecking: search terms, Auction insights and the Transparency Centre (SpyFu updates its rankings once a month)
The search terms report shows the real searches that triggered your ads, not the keywords you chose. According to Google Ads Help, it now also groups searches into themes, worked out over the last 56 days. It's the report to open every week for the first two months, because that's where negative keywords come from.
The Auction insights report compares your performance with other advertisers in the same auctions: impression share, overlap rate, outranking share and three other metrics. Two limits are written into the documentation: it works for Search, Shopping and Performance Max, and it shows nothing if your impression share is below 10%.
Google's Ads Transparency Centre is the third tool that costs nothing, and in the UK "google ads transparency" is searched 1,900 times a month. Google launched it on 29 March 2023: for every verified advertiser it shows the ads they've run, in which region and the last date they were shown. On adstransparency.google.com you can filter for the United Kingdom and read competitors' ad copy without a subscription.
So what are SpyFu and Semrush for?
They add spend estimates, history and the keywords competitors buy. With a limit most reviews don't mention: according to the SpyFu help centre (12 December 2025), keyword rankings are updated once a month on average, while domain details update live. SpyFu's own release notes also list fixes aimed specifically at UK data, the latest in 2026 for UK ranking history pages. The full comparison, with prices, is in Semrush vs SpyFu, and the Semrush price list plan by plan in our page on Semrush pricing.
Automating: scripts and auto-applied recommendations (the limit is 30 minutes)
Google Ads scripts are small JavaScript programs that run inside the account and handle repetitive checks: alerts when spend goes over a threshold, pausing keywords that don't convert, broken links on landing pages. Only 3 lists out of 10 mention them, OutSearch among them.
The developer documentation sets the limits: a script can run for 30 minutes at most, 60 if it works on several accounts in parallel from a manager account, and an iterator returns at most 50,000 results. For a small business they're almost never a problem; for an agency with a hundred accounts they are, and that's where a paid suite starts to earn its fee.
Then there are the recommendations Google applies on its own. Auto-apply can be switched on and off whenever you like, and Google points out that it doesn't increase your budget.
So where's the risk?
Some recommendations broaden keyword match types or add networks without anyone deciding to. In our guide to Google Ads for small businesses it's among the mistakes we find most often in inherited accounts. Our advice is to keep it switched off and read the recommendations one by one.
Reporting: Data Studio (renamed again) and Supermetrics
Data Studio is Google's tool for building reports and dashboards connected to Google Ads, Analytics and other sources, with a version that costs nothing. Until April 2026 it was called Looker Studio: on 11 April 2026 Google went back to the old name, with a standard version and a Pro one.
In the UK "looker studio" still gets 12,100 searches a month, so the two names will live side by side for a while. Our guide to Looker Studio explains how to build your first report.
The Google Ads connector costs nothing and, according to the documentation, from a manager account it connects up to 50 accounts per data source. Supermetrics is for when you need Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn and other platforms that Google doesn't connect by itself in the same report: the Starter plan starts at $44 a month billed annually, $55 billed monthly (Supermetrics pricing page, 10 October 2026; the currency shown depends on where you browse from).
The report that matters puts the cost per real enquiry next to the number of enquiries, month by month.
Paid tools: when they're worth the fee (and why they start at $129 a month)
Paid PPC suites automate checks, ad tests and bid management across many accounts. They all price by ad spend or by number of accounts, which already tells you who they're built for.
| Tool | What it's for | Entry plan | What the first plan includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opteo | Automated checks and suggestions on Google Ads | $129 a month | 10 accounts, up to $25,000 of spend a month |
| Optmyzr | Automations, rules, reports across several platforms | From $209 a month | Essentials plan, up to 25 accounts, priced by spend |
| Adalysis | Ad tests, audits, budgets | From $149 a month, based on spend | Unlimited accounts and users, 30-day trial |
| SpyFu | Competitors' keywords and ads | $39 a month | Basic plan, keyword rankings updated about once a month |
| Semrush | Keyword and competitor research, SEO and advertising | $139 a month | SEO plan, 5 projects, 500 tracked keywords |
| Supermetrics | Data from several platforms in your reports | $44 a month (annual) | One core destination, Starter plan |
Let's do the sums with our own numbers. A small business starting with a £1,500 monthly budget, the figure we use in our article on what Google Ads costs, would pay Opteo $129 a month (about £97.54 at the Bank of England rate of 8 October 2026, $1.3226 to the pound) for a plan designed for ten accounts and up to $25,000 of monthly spend.
Below a few thousand pounds a month on one or two accounts, Google's own kit is enough. The suites pay for themselves when there are lots of accounts, the budgets are large and there's no longer time for manual checks. Not before.
What about AI? Doesn't ChatGPT already do all this?
It helps you write ad variations and read large exports; Search Engine Land's list puts AI assistants sixth. But it works on the data you give it: with 15,267 fake conversions on 5,467 clicks, it reaches the wrong conclusions.
Frequently asked questions
For day-to-day work, Google's own are enough. Keyword Planner and Performance Planner for estimates, Google Ads Editor for bulk edits, Google Tag Manager and enhanced conversions for tracking, the search terms report, Auction insights and the Ads Transparency Centre for checking, scripts for automation and Data Studio for reports.
No, not for a small business with one or two accounts. Suites such as Opteo, Optmyzr or Adalysis price by accounts and spend: Opteo's entry plan costs $129 a month and is designed for ten accounts and up to $25,000 of monthly spend.
No. The Google Ads conversion tag can also be installed directly in the code or through platform apps such as Shopify's. Tag Manager makes it easier to manage tags without touching every page and to add the transaction ID that prevents double counting.
Yes. With Google's Ads Transparency Centre, at adstransparency.google.com, you filter for the United Kingdom and see the ads of every verified advertiser, the region and the last date they ran. SpyFu and Semrush add spend estimates and the keywords competitors buy, but SpyFu updates its keyword rankings only about once a month.
Yes. On 11 April 2026 Google took the tool back to the Data Studio name, with a standard version that costs nothing and a Pro version. The Google Ads connector still costs nothing and from a manager account connects up to 50 accounts per data source.
Where to start (the tag first, then everything else)
In short:
the tools that matter for Google Ads are almost all Google's own, and they cost nothing;
only 3 PPC tool lists out of 10 mention Google Tag Manager, which is searched 27,100 times a month in the UK;
if conversions outnumber clicks, the tracking is broken and no suite will fix it;
paid suites start at $129 a month, on plans built for several accounts.
There's one thing you rarely find in tool lists. The tool that moves an account's results most isn't software: it's the search terms report, opened every week, because that's where you see which searches you're really paying for. Only two lists out of ten mention it: it has no price tag, so it doesn't make the rankings. If you pick your tools based on what's missing in your own account rather than on a league table, you'll often find the first thing to spend isn't a subscription but an hour checking the tracking. How we think about choosing between SEO and Google Ads is in a separate article.
If you'd like us to check the tracking and the account for you, that's the work of our Google Ads service.
See you next time!
