The 4 best free keyword research tools in 2025 | Zapier TechTricks365

There’s no shortage of tools purpose-built for keyword research (literally hundreds of them), and they run the gamut from beginner-focused to highly advanced. They also range from totally basic and unhelpful to super valuable.

When done right, the best keyword research tools simplify and streamline your workflow—they make it easier to find the right keywords to target and give you the data you need to actually rank for them. But they shouldn’t require you to empty out your bank account and sell your first-born child in order to access that data.

After years of working with multiple clients who use all different tools for keyword research and SEO content optimization, I’ve seen the best (and the worst) of them—and I know how important it is to choose the right keyword planner tool. To help, I considered nearly 90 tools with a free option for keyword research. After in-depth testing, here are the four best free keyword research tools, including the all-around greats and apps built for more specific use cases.

The best free keyword research tools

What makes the best keyword research tool?

The features that make for a great keyword research tool are pretty straightforward: you search for a given keyword, and the tool tells you about it. But there are so many different ways to use keyword data, so I wanted to find tools that could handle a variety of use cases, along with a few designed for some of the most popular uses for keyword research.

During testing, I looked primarily at the factors below to determine which apps made the initial list.

• Data included. The best keyword research tools give you all the data you need to rank for your chosen keyword. All of the apps I selected include, at minimum, traffic, keyword difficulty, and competitive SERP analysis.

• Keyword optimization guidance. You shouldn’t have to be a 10-year SEO industry veteran to use keyword research tools—the best tools offer simple, straightforward suggestions to optimize for your keywords. There are tools (like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz) that do complete SEO analysis on your site, checking for everything from site speed and technical details to domain authority and topic clusters. That’s not what we’re looking for here. We’re looking for tools that any business owner or marketer can use to quickly understand their target keyword and optimize their site to rank for it.

• Free plan allowances and upgrades. Some tools include super limited results for free and call it a “free plan.” Or they put time limits on the free plan, effectively making it more of a trial. I only included tools with evergreen free plans generous enough to actually be useful—and they won’t break the bank when it’s time to upgrade, either.

• Standalone functionality. Since you’re looking for something free, your keyword tool should be a one-stop shop—without requiring any additional tools or extensions to work for you, especially not ones you’d have to pay for. And while I didn’t consider them for this roundup, there are a number of great WordPress SEO plugins you can start using right away if you have a WordPress site.

To find the best of the best, I put each tool that checked those boxes to the test by running through an in-depth protocol. Here’s what my testing workflow looked like:

• If needed, I created an account and went through any provided onboarding or guided tutorials (many of these free apps don’t require account creation or provide any onboarding).

• I searched for a few different kinds of keywords—e.g., “free keyword research tools,” “chocolate cake,” and “white sneakers for women”—to see the results for different search intent.

• I checked which related keywords, metrics, and other data were offered. I also made note of the source, whether information was pulled from Google, included non-search engine websites (like social media or forums), or was drawn from the tool’s own native data.

• I verified allowances for the free plan—whether limited by time, number of results, metrics included, searches per day or month, or something else—and the cost to upgrade to a paid plan if needed.

• Where available, I tested out additional keyword research tools like competitive gap analysis, content optimization features, and more.

After spending over a dozen hours with these apps this year, I landed on the four best keyword research tools—each with a manageable free version—below.

The best free keyword research tools at a glance

The best free keyword research tool for paid keywords

Google Keyword Planner (Web)

Google Keyword Planner pros:

• Completely free forever, even if you don’t use Google Ads

• Helpful forecasting features for budgeting if you do use Google Ads

• Can pull keyword suggestions from just your website

Google Keyword Planner cons:

When it comes to PPC keyword research, Google Keyword Planner is one of the best tools out there. It’s completely free (even if you don’t buy Google Ads), so you never have to worry about running into limits or expensive upgrades.

Google Keyword Planner includes two main features: one for exploratory keyword research and discovery and another for more in-depth research on search volume and forecasting.

The Keyword ideas feature is similar to many of the tools on this list: you search for a seed term, and it generates other keyword ideas, along with details on monthly search volume, change over time, competition, ad impression share, and bid ranges. You can refine your keyword list by brand or non-brand keywords, source website, and more. If you’re also using Google Ads, the Forecast feature makes it easier to plan ahead for your paid ads and budget in advance.

Keyword Planner can inform your organic strategy, too, by showing you where ranking organically may help you save on PPC costs.

Google Keyword Planner pricing: Free

The best free keyword research tool for advanced SEO

Semrush (Web)

Semrush pros:

• Tons of granular keyword data

• Wide range of specialized keyword research tools

• Pretty generous free plan

Semrush cons:

If you’re looking for something more advanced, Semrush shares a ton of keyword data and makes it easy to dig into the details, like SERP features (featured snippet, reviews, site links, image pack, and so on) and granular analysis of current results. Semrush offers a broad range of keyword research tools, too, from the standard traffic and search volume data to content-driven keyword research and competitive keyword gap analysis.

That range is what really sets Semrush apart, including the standard Keyword Overview, the Keyword Magic Tool for exploratory keyword research, a Keyword Manager and position tracking, competitive Keyword Gap analysis, keyword cannibalization report, and Organic Traffic Insights, which—when connected with your Google Analytics or Search Console account—can uncover those famously tricky “not provided” keywords.

As an added bonus, the SEO Content Template tool lets you automatically create a content brief and optimize content as you write by grading your content in real-time for readability, originality, tone of voice, and SEO: it uses a handy bullseye graphic to help you strike the right balance. Plus, the tool visually checks off SEO recommendations (like using your target and related keywords and adding relevant links and images) as you go.

The app’s Copilot AI will even make proactive recommendations: flagging when your rankings drop for tracked keywords, for example, making technical SEO recommendations, and prompting you to add additional information to help fine-tune your data.

All of this means that upgrading will cost you a pretty penny—but you can use it for free at low volumes to start.

You can do more with Semrush by connecting with Zapier to keep track of SEO tasks across Semrush and your project management tool, automate site audits and re-crawls, connect with Google Analytics goals, and more. Here are some examples.

Semrush pricing: Free plan includes up to 10 Analytics reports per day and 10 tracked keywords; paid plans start at $139.95/month for up to 10,000 results per report and 500 tracked keywords.

The best free keyword research tool for ad hoc needs

KWFinder (Web)

KWFinder pros:

• Tons of datapoints available free

• Unique data like keyword opportunities

• Part of a broader SEO suite

KWFinder cons:

If you don’t need to do a lot of keyword research in your day-to-day, KWFinder is a strong option. The free plan limits you to 5 searches per day, but each keyword search offers a ton of data. That includes standard metrics like monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, related keywords, and a breakdown of the pages currently ranking for your keyword.

But KWFinder also includes a number of unique and super helpful details, like searcher intent for each keyword and the type of content already ranking (e.g. listicle, homepage, blog, or product page).

My favorite of these is the keyword opportunities column, which identifies weak points in the top five results and suggests how you can capitalize on those weaknesses and outrank them. For example, it can identify if the top results are outdated (more than six months old) or missing the full keyword in their meta title.

KWFinder is also part of the broader Mangools suite, which includes a number of other SEO tools, many of which are available for free in some limited way—like the SERP simulator, AI search grader, and SEO content optimizer.

KWFinder pricing: Free plan includes up to 5 keyword searches per day; paid plans start at $29.90/month for up to 100 lookups per day and additional results.

The best free keyword research tool for content marketing

Ubersuggest (Web)

Ubersuggest pros:

Ubersuggest cons:

Normally, I wouldn’t consider a keyword research tool with such a low daily limit (the free plan only includes 3 searches per day), but Ubersuggest offers up so much data within each search that it’s worth a look anyway.

The Keyword Overview tool includes monthly search volume (broken down by country), SEO and paid difficulty scores, and Content Ideas—pulled from currently ranking results, with data on visits, other keywords, backlinks, and performance on Facebook, Pinterest, and Reddit. Ubersuggest is also the only tool I tested that breaks out comparison keyword ideas, a big category for content marketers.

Beyond keyword research, Ubersuggest also has features for rank tracking, identifying SEO opportunities based on your site, analyzing your backlinks, and an AI writer tool.

While the free plan is pretty limited, it’s workable if you don’t do a ton of keyword research all at once—and the upgrade to an Ubersuggest paid plan is pretty reasonable.

Ubersuggest pricing: Free plan includes 3 searches per day; paid plans start at $29/month for 150 searches per day and 125 tracked keywords per domain.

Can you use AI chatbots for keyword research?

You can ask AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini to do keyword research for you—but should you?

The main benefit of going the AI route is simplicity. You can ask for straightforward, simplified results and get a simple, streamlined answer.

Here’s Gemini, for example.

And here’s ChatGPT.

ChatGPT was more upfront about the sources it used (at the bottom of the answer, you could click on Sources to see the specific websites the chatbot referenced). But it also offered search volume and keyword difficulty numbers pulled from AdTargeting’s keyword research tool.

Gemini, on the other hand, told me it couldn’t pull precise monthly search volume numbers (it’s not even connected to Google Keyword Planner) and actually suggested I’d be better off using a dedicated SEO tool. Running deep research prompts took a long time and, while it did bring Gemini’s response in line with what ChatGPT offered in terms of real numbers for the metrics, it didn’t yield any more useful information from either chatbot.

Here’s Gemini’s report:

And ChatGPT’s.

Both ChatGPT and Gemini continue to improve, but to get the kind of information a dedicated keyword research tool offers isn’t possible in a chatbot right now. Case in point: I ran the exact same prompt through both ChatGPT and Gemini five minutes later and got completely different sets of keywords.

If you’re in a bind and need simplified, bottom line-style information on a keyword quickly, an AI chatbot may be of some help. But as of today, I wouldn’t recommend using an AI chatbot as your primary keyword research tool—especially given the number of truly helpful dedicated free keyword research tools you can use instead.

Of course, lots of dedicated SEO tools (though usually not the free ones), will have AI built in—that’s the best of both worlds.

When should you upgrade from a free keyword research tool?

The short answer is: only when you need to. If you can get all the data you need without going over the allowances of one of the free plans above, there’s no reason to upgrade to a paid plan (or switch to a fully paid tool).

With that said, here are a few signs it may be time to consider upgrading:

• You’re regularly hitting the monthly or daily search limits of your current solution.

• You’re missing out on features you can’t get for free, like content optimization guidance or the ability to track your site’s keywords and rankings over time.

• You need additional SEO features that an upgraded all-in-one tool can provide (like technical SEO, site auditing, etc).

When the time comes, some of the tools on this list can grow right along with you. But if you want to see all your options, here are Zapier’s lists of helpful SEO tools to get you started:

Related reading:

This article was originally published in June 2021. The most recent update was in June 2025.