Free Alternatives to Ahrefs and Semrush That Actually Work

Short answer: Search Console, Screaming Frog, Keyword Planner, PageSpeed Insights and Google Business Profile cover most SEO work for a single site, and Search Console data is more accurate than any paid estimate because it comes from Google. The three genuine gaps are competitor backlink data, competitor rankings and true search volume. Those are what a subscription actually buys.

The engine I built to audit my own site uses zero paid APIs. That was a design constraint, and closing each commercial-tool gap with a free source is what most of the work went into. The MIT-licensed source code is public on GitHub, including the volume-source checks described below.

The free stack, and what each replaces

Search Console is not a consolation prize

This is the part people get backwards. Search Console reports what Google actually recorded for your site: real impressions, real clicks, real average positions. A paid tool's ranking figure is a sample taken from a datacentre somewhere, at some time, for a hypothetical user. For your own site, Search Console is the more authoritative source, not the cheaper one.

It has real limits, and they matter enough that I wrote a separate article on the four ways it will mislead you — withheld low-volume queries, filters that persist silently, date ranges that do not describe the data, and an average position that describes no real search.

Screaming Frog's free tier covers most Nepali sites entirely

500 URLs is a genuine limit and also more than most small business sites contain. Within it you get the crawl, status codes, titles and descriptions, canonical tags, the internal link graph and an internal PageRank equivalent.

That last one is worth the download on its own. It is how I found that my privacy policy held more internal authority than any commercial page — 90.07 against a median of 13.85 — because the footer linked to it from all 31 pages. No paid tool would have told me that any better.

The three gaps, stated honestly

I would rather name these than pretend a free workaround exists.

1. Competitor backlink profiles

This is the hardest gap and there is no honest free substitute. Search Console shows your own links authoritatively, which is genuinely useful, but you cannot inspect a competitor's profile. Free tiers of commercial tools show a small sample — enough to see the shape, not enough to work from. If link building is your main constraint, this is where paying is defensible.

2. Competitor rankings

You can measure a competitor's pages, word counts, structured data and site structure by crawling their public site. That is how I produced this comparison for my own audit:

What that cannot show is where they rank or what traffic they receive. Structure is observable. Performance is not.

3. True search volume

Keyword Planner is the only source whose numbers originate with Google, and without ad spend it shows broad ranges. Commercial tools present precise-looking figures that are modelled from clickstream samples and extrapolated — and for a market the size of Nepal, that sample is thin enough that estimates can be wrong by large multiples or absent entirely.

This is why my tooling refuses to publish a search volume unless a real source supplies one, rather than filling the field with a plausible number. A confident wrong figure is worse than an acknowledged gap, because you cannot plan around something you believe.

When paying is actually justified

• Link building is your constraint. You need competitor link data, and there is no free equivalent.
• You manage many sites. Time saved crosses the subscription cost quickly.
• You need competitor intelligence to sell, which is a legitimate agency need even when it does not change the work.

When it is not justified: you run one site and have not yet acted on what Search Console already told you free. That describes most businesses asking the question. A subscription is a way to feel equipped; the same money spent fixing a leftover noindex tag or a broken redirect chain produces more.

Where to start today

1. Google Search Console. Non-negotiable. Verify the site, then read the queries page and split brand from non-brand.
2. Google Business Profile, if you have any physical location. For local businesses in Nepal this frequently outweighs everything on the website.
3. Screaming Frog. Crawl the site. Look for missing titles, redirect chains, and any leftover noindex.
4. PageSpeed Insights on your most important page, mobile tab. That is how visitors on Ncell or NTC mobile data actually experience it.

Those four will surface more genuine problems than most businesses can work through in a quarter. The constraint has never been access to data.

Common questions

Can you do SEO without Ahrefs or Semrush?

For most of the work, yes. Search Console, Screaming Frog, Keyword Planner and PageSpeed Insights cover a single site well.

Best free keyword research tool?

Keyword Planner for Google-sourced volume ranges; Search Console for queries you already appear for, which is more valuable.

Free backlink checker?

Search Console for your own links, authoritatively. There is no honest free option for competitor profiles.

How accurate are free volume estimates?

Less than assumed, worst in small markets. All non-Google figures are modelled. Nepal-sized markets have thin samples.

When is paying worth it?

Competitor intelligence, link building as your main constraint, or managing many sites. Rarely for a single site.

What should I set up today?

Search Console, Google Business Profile, Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights. In that order.