16 alternatives to Ahrefs (14 free)
16 alternatives to Ahrefs, picked out of 15 saved Instagram reels and 10 liked tweets, from creators like @heytony.agency, @tom_doerr, @harshhhgautam. 14 of them are free, freemium or open source.
AnswerThePublic is a search listening and keyword research tool that pulls autocomplete data from search engines and AI platforms. It arranges queries into visual branch diagrams organized by questions, prepositions, and comparisons to reveal what audiences are asking. Marketers and creators use it to identify customer pain points and brainstorm content topics.
An open-source extension for the Claude Code CLI that evaluates how well websites appear in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It runs parallel subagents to analyze AI crawler permissions, content citability, schema markup, and brand mentions. It generates markdown and PDF audit reports, proposals, and llms.txt files.
claude-seo is an open-source SEO analysis plugin designed for Claude Code, bundling 26 sub-skills and 19 specialist sub-agents. It automates full-site audits, Core Web Vitals checks, Schema.org validation, and AI search citability scoring across parallel agents. It outputs testable, falsifiable markdown or PDF recommendations grounded in primary-source search guidelines.
OpenSEO is an open-source alternative to expensive SEO suites like Semrush and Ahrefs. It allows users to self-host their SEO dashboard on Docker or Cloudflare Workers, paying only for the underlying DataForSEO API usage rather than fixed monthly tool subscriptions. It also features integrations and MCP support to connect SEO workflows directly into AI coding agents.
Ubersuggest is a web-based SEO platform developed by Neil Patel and NP Digital. It provides keyword discovery, domain traffic estimation, backlink tracking, and website technical audits. It helps site owners and marketers find ranking gaps against competitors and prioritize technical fixes based on estimated traffic impact.
A practical workflow setup that configures Claude Code with API keys for Keywords Everywhere, DataForSEO, Google Search Console, and your CMS. It covers endpoint-specific recipes for keyword clustering, programmatic landing pages, backlink outreach, internal linking, and content updates.
This technique uses the 'Start with a website' feature inside Google Ads Keyword Planner to analyze a competitor's domain. Google scans the target site and extracts the keywords and search queries it associates with their content. It offers a fast, free way to uncover high-intent search terms to target in your own search ad campaigns.
This tip and script show how to query Common Crawl's free web graph datasets to extract backlinks for any target domain. It provides an alternative to expensive SEO subscriptions by letting you calculate top linking domains and host counts locally using simple command-line tools.
GEO SEO SuperApp is a desktop application for macOS that unifies technical site crawls, Search Console workflows, and AI-driven content analysis into a single workspace. It connects to your existing accounts (such as ChatGPT, On-Page.ai, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools) and uses guided 'recipes' to automate routine agency audits, indexation checks, and optimizations.
This technique uses native Google Search Console data to identify pages that get high impressions but few clicks. By finding the specific queries driving impressions and weaving those terms naturally into the page's copy, you can improve keyword relevance and organic traffic without paid SEO tools.
This SEO tactic uses exported performance data from Google Search Console to identify keywords where your site already ranks past position three. By updating existing pages or creating dedicated content for these terms, you can capture more organic traffic with relatively low effort.
heyTony Site Audit is an accessible technical SEO auditing tool designed to crawl websites and pinpoint ranking blockers. It checks for issues like broken links, orphaned pages, and site speed bottlenecks, pairing each finding with straightforward explanations and video tutorials on how to fix it. It serves as a low-cost alternative to bulky enterprise SEO platforms for small business owners and creators.
This workflow turns raw scraped webpage HTML into an interactive visual SEO dashboard using Claude Artifacts. By feeding crawled page data into Claude 3.5 Sonnet, it evaluates meta tags, headings, and technical elements without requiring a dedicated paid SEO audit subscription.
Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that overlays keyword research metrics directly onto Google, YouTube, Amazon, and AI tools like ChatGPT. It provides search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, and trend charts without needing to visit standalone SEO portals. It is widely used as a budget-friendly alternative to expensive enterprise SEO suites.
Monid is an agent tool registry that connects AI assistants like Claude to over 2,400 APIs and services without individual subscriptions. Through a single skill file or MCP server, agents can discover tools dynamically and pay per API call from a shared balance, enabling automated workflows like full SEO teardowns and web scraping.
Semrush is a comprehensive marketing intelligence platform used to analyze search traffic, optimize SEO, and manage digital visibility. It provides tools for keyword research, competitor domain auditing, technical site health diagnostics, and AI search presence tracking.