7 Best Cheap SEO Tools 2024 (50 Most Affordable Software)

by Chris Von Wilpert, BBusMan • Last updated April 8, 2024

Expert Verified by Leandro Langeani, BBA

First-Person Perspective: We buy, test and review software products based on a 3-step rating methodology and first-hand experienceIf you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our rating methodology and how we make money.

Today there are over 200 different SEO tools to help businesses boost their visibility and ranking online. We spent 48 hours comparing the top 50 cheapest tools to find the seven best that will help you get higher Google rankings.

What are the Best Cheap SEO Tools?

  1. RankIQ — best of the best
  2. Mangools — best bang for the buck
  3. SEO PowerSuite — best free alternative 
  4. Ubersuggest — best for small businesses
  5. Serpstat — best all-in-one solution 
  6. SE Rankings — best for search engine marketers
  7. Long Tail Pro — best for finding less competitive keywords

Our Verdict — Best Of The Best

Price: Starts at $29/month

RankIQ is a comprehensive SEO tool that provides actionable insights for your sites to rank higher. We think it’s the best of the best because of the AI-powered SEO tools, the content optimizer, and its great pricing.

The Best Part:

  • Guesswork, away. The “title optimizer” report gives you which keywords should be used in your titles so that you get the highest click-through rates.

The Worst Part:

  • Low volume for agencies. If you’re an agency, doing a ton of work for clients, RankIQ may feel a bit restrictive in some senses, like the limit of 80 keywords reports per month, for example.

Get RankIQ if you want the absolute best cheap SEO tool.

I recommend you get started with the Lite plan for $29/month.

(starts at $29/month)

Best For

RankIQ is best for anyone who wants to rank higher, without breaking the bank: bloggers, affiliate marketers, SEO agencies, business owners.

Top Features

  • Made by a pro-blogger. RankIQ’s founder is a blogger himself, who walks the walk, and goes above and beyond to help everyone get the most of the software. He also seems to be a great guy!

  • Great content made easy. With the Content Optimizer, you can see a list of all of the keywords and related terms you should include in your article, which makes Google fall in love with your content.

  • Low-competition library. RankIQ gives you a library of hand-picked lists of keywords that are dying to get some good content optimized for them.

  • Highest-scoring topics. RankIQ gives you a list of topics Google wants more content to cover, which can help you structuring your content.

  • AI report. RankIQ gives you a SEO report that scores your post, identifying the main areas for improvement, in order for you to rank on Google.

Pricing

RankIQ offers four pricing plans:

  • Lite: $29/month for up to eight reports per month.
  • Standard: $49/month for up to 16 reports per month.
  • Pro: $99/month for up to 36 reports per month.
  • Agency: $199/month for up to 80 reports per month.

Try RankIQ today with the Lite plan.

Our Verdict — Best Bang For The Buck

Price: Starts at $19.90/month

Mangools is our pick for best bang for the buck because it lets you do the same critical SEO tasks (keyword research, competitive intelligence, and backlink analysis) at less than half the price of more well-known SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

It’s just as easy-to-use as the more expensive tools, and surfaces similar keyword ideas to the more expensive tools.

The Best Part:

  • Easy to use interface. Great UX and visualizations make this tool as easy as a three-piece puzzle to understand, even for complete newbies.

The Worst Part:

  • Less horsepower than the “OG’s” Ahrefs and Semrush. Those guys have been doing it for so long it’s really hard to beat them in some things, like Ahrefs’ backlink database or Semrush’s keywords database.

Get Mangools if you want a powerful SEO tool on a budget.

I recommend you get started with the 10-day free trial, then upgrade to the Premium Plan at $69/month.

(10-day free trial)

Best For

Mangools is best for anyone: bloggers, affiliate marketers, SEO agencies, business owners, and even complete beginners.

Top Features

  • Keyword research tools. Mangools finds high-value keywords for campaigns and generates new content ideas, so you can boost your SEO rankings with the right topics, without researching for hours.
  • Competitor analysis tool. Learn who your competitors are, their strategies, and their keywords, so you’re always on top of what the competition is spending their time and money on.
  • Get smart with SERPChecker. Get granular site metrics on specific keywords (like the domain authority of all top ranking pages for a keyword) so you can see at a glance how competitive any topic is.
  • Keyword rank tracking. Keep track of your most valuable organic search keywords and your website’s visibility against your competitors. Track the results of your SEO efforts over time.
  • Sophisticated backlink analysis. Understand your website's current backlink profile and find the most linked pages on any website. It also helps you find and weed out bad links, to keep your site as clean as possible.

Pricing

Mangools offers four pricing plans:

  • Entry: $29/month for solopreneurs and freelancers.
  • Basic: $49/month for freelancers, SMBs on a budget, and SEO individuals. 
  • Premium: $69/month for in-house teams and marketing agencies. 
  • Agency: $129/month for big marketing agencies and large in-house teams.

All paid plans have a 48-hour money back guarantee.

Annual subscriptions provide a 35% discount.

Try Mangools today with a free 10-day trial.

Our Verdict — Best Free Alternative

Price: Starts with a free plan

SEO PowerSuite is an SEO toolkit that comes with four desktop applications. One for rank tracking and keyword research, one for on-page SEO and technical SEO audits, one for backlink research, and one for link building and outreach. 

SEO PowerSuite is our choice for the best free alternative because the free version gives you access to actually useful SEO features, such as keyword research, keyword search volume, backlink analysis, competitor rank tracking, keyword optimization and site audits. Very generous for a free version.

The Best Part

  • Premium SEO features at no cost. SEO PowerSuite gives you access to a few premium features that allow you get real strategic about your SEO, for free. When you learn that Cisco, Microsoft, Heineken, IBM, and Disney are a few examples of companies that use SEO PowerSuite, you start to understand how powerful this tool may be for your business.

The Worst Part

  • Can't export data and save projects on the free plan. You only get these extra features on the paid version, so once SEO PowerSuite makes it into your daily “business toolbox”, or if you provide SEO services to clients, it might be worth it to upgrade to a paid plan.

Get SEO PowerSuite if you need a free SEO tool that delivers actual strategic information.

I recommend you get started with the Free plan, then upgrade to a paid plan for extra SEO punch (starting at $299/year).

(free plan)

Best For

SEO PowerSuite is best for people looking for actionable SEO insights while keeping their credit cards cozy in their wallets.

Top Features

  • Competitor analysis tool. Find out what your competitors are doing in terms of backlinks, keywords, and content strategy. Get insights into your competitor website traffic and keep up with the competition.
  • SEO auditing tool. Discover SEO issues within your websites, like broken links. Fix what Google doesn’t like and watch the SEO juice flow.
  • Social media engagement metrics and reports. Understand how your blog posts and landing pages are performing on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, and so on.
  • In-depth keyword research tools. Find the keywords that will move the needle, so you’re able to focus on spending your time where you’ll have the most results, quicker.
  • Local and global SEO tools. Optimize your website for specific locations and languages, so you can expand and dominate other markets.

Pricing

SEO PowerSuite offers three pricing plans:

  • Free: Free forever for freelancers and individuals.
  • Professional: $299/year for in-house SEO specialists and business owners.
  • Enterprise: $499/year for industry experts and SEO agencies.

All paid plans offer a 7-day free trial.

Try SEO PowerSuite today with the free plan.

Our Verdict — Best For Small Businesses

Price: Starts at $12/month

Ubersuggest is our pick as the “best for small businesses” because it’s a dirt-cheap SEO tool that offers all the basics you’ll need: keyword research, content ideas, keyword tracking, and more in its free version. And it only gets better from there.

Nike, Microsoft, Dell, Adobe and Shopify use UberSuggest.

The Best Part

  • Get actionable SEO insights, even with the free version. You can get personalized SEO suggestions, search engine rankings, and limited keyword ideas on the free version. 

The Worst Part

  • The data is not comprehensive. Ubersuggest has limited databases in their backlink and keyword research tools, when compared to Mangools.

Get Ubersuggest if you want a very cheap and easy-to-use SEO tool that does all the basics extremely well.

I recommend signing up for Ubersugget's 7-day free trial, then upgrading to a paid plan (starting at $12/month).

(7-day free trial)

Best For

Ubersuggest is best for small businesses and individuals managing up to 15 websites.

Top Features

  • Related keywords. Discover keywords related to the primary ones you want to rank for. This gives you a rich list of content ideas you can use to scale your website’s organic traffic.
  • Chrome extension. Assess a website’s organic keywords, organic monthly traffic, backlinks, domain authority, and more, right from your browser.
  • SEO Tip Of The Day. Discover simple SEO tactics everytime you load a page on Ubersuggest from Neil Patel’s team.
  • Paid difficulty. Discover the cost of ranking for a particular keyword on paid search. This is a great way of identifying lucrative content opportunities your competitors still haven’t found out about.
  • Keywords Generator. Get a .csv file of the list of keywords your competitor is ranking for, for free. In the file, keywords are ordered from most to least relevant, based on the content you already have on your website.

Pricing

Ubersuggest offers three pricing plans: 

  • Individual: $12/month, for entrepreneurs and small businesses managing one website (or get lifetime access for $120 one time).
  • Business: $20/month, for medium sized businesses operating 4-7 websites (or get lifetime access for $200 one time).
  • Enterprise / Agency: $40/month, for large businesses and agencies operating up to 15 websites (or get lifetime access for $400 one time).

All lifetime plans have a 30-day money back guarantee.

Try Ubersuggest today with a 7-day free trial.

Our Top Three Picks

Here’s a quick summary of our top three picks:

  1. RankIQ — best of the best
  2. Mangools — best bang for the buck
  3. SEO PowerSuite — best free alternative

Here’s a quick comparison of our top seven picks:

Tool

Entry Offer

Pricing

RankIQ

None

Starts at $29/mo

Mangools

10-day free trial

Starts at $49/mo

SEO PowerSuite

Free plan

Starts at $299/year

Ubersuggest

7-day free trial

Starts at $12/mo

Serpstat

7-day free trial

Starts at $69/mo

SE Rankings

14-day free trial

Starts at $39/mo

Long Tail Pro

8-day trial for $8

Starts at $37/mo

Here are the top 50 cheap SEO tools we considered in this review:

  1. RankIQ
  2. Mangools 
  3. SEO PowerSuite 
  4. Ubersuggest 
  5. Serpstat
  6. SErankings
  7. Long Tail Pro
  8. GTmetrix
  9. SurferSEO
  10. GrowthBar
  11. Google Analytics 
  12. Google Keyword Planner
  13. Google Pagespeed
  14. Check My Links
  15. Screaming Frog 
  16. Open Link Profiler 
  17. SiteChecker Pro
  18. WhatsMySerp
  19. Keywords Everywhere 
  20. Google Search Console 
  21. Rank Math
  22. WebCEO
  23. BUZZSumo
  24. SpyFu
  25. Moz Pro 
  26. Raven tools
  27. BuzzStream
  28. LinkHunter 
  29. Majestic 
  30. Keyword Revealer 
  31. Diib
  32. NightWatch 
  33. Alexa 
  34. Google trends
  35. Feedly
  36. Link Prospector 
  37. iSpionage
  38. SeoQuake
  39. Woorank
  40. Similarweb
  41. Varvy SEO Tool
  42. PitchBox
  43. Siteliner 
  44. Linkminer
  45. Seed Keywords
  46. Social Blade
  47. SEOptimer
  48. SEObility
  49. Authority Labs
  50. Advanced Web Ranking

What Is the Best Free SEO Tool?

The best free SEO tool is SEO PowerSuite. With this tool, you can access all the best and premium SEO features for free. The only drawback is the inability to export data from the tool. SEO PowerSuite also offers two paid plans.

Can I do SEO on my own?

Yes, you can! One of the easiest, quickest ways to learn how to do SEO on your own is to follow The Ski Slope Strategy.

Do I need an SEO tool? 

Yes, if you want to get sizeable organic traffic

SEO tools are essential to do keyword research and analyze the results of your efforts. Some benefits of using SEO tools include:

  1. They help you dissect your competitors' content strategy.
  2. Built-in keyword research tools that provide an endless stream of keyword ideas and opportunities.
  3. Saving time on manual SEO audits.
  4. Providing actionable SEO metrics and high-speed information that supports decision-making.
  5. Providing you with marketing insights to boost your search engine rankings. 

What tools do I use for SEO?

There are over 200 SEO software toolkits that you may use for your business, depending on your needs. Some SEO tools are more expensive and extensive than others. However, if you are on a budget and want something comprehensive yet affordable, you can try out any of our top three picks. 

The best and most affordable SEO tool we found is RankIQ.

How much do SEO tools cost?

SEO tools can go for as much as $999/month, to as low as $12/month. Some offer annual plans, others offer monthly plans, and a few offer lifetime options. Their charges are usually based on their features, tools, and number of keyword searches per day.

The Bottom Line

Here are our top picks for the best cheap SEO tools to try this year:

  1. RankIQ — best of the best
  2. Mangools — best bang for the buck
  3. SEO PowerSuite — best free alternative 
  4. Ubersuggest — best for small businesses
  5. Serpstat — best all-in-one solution 
  6. SE Rankings — best for search engine marketers
  7. Long Tail Pro — best for finding less competitive keywords

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