![\"Semrush](\"https://cdn.buttercms.com/output=f:webp/Th0w5MlKSEyoXKkArXC5\")
Are there any free SEO competitor analysis tools that are useful for pro marketers?
\nYes, there are a few. But definitions of “free” vary.
\nFree tools typically fall into three categories.
\nFree trials provide access to premium tools for a limited time. These are useful for testing software before purchasing. Some trials give you the complete feature set to evaluate.
\nPermanently free accounts are usually too limited for professional use. But there are exceptions.
\nFree AI models can be used to create custom SEO competitor analyses.
\nHere are my top recommendations, plus which free tools to skip
\nSummary: Semrush is a market leader in SEO competitor analysis.
\nYou can sign up for a free account with limited data or a free trial of their Pro or Guru plan.
\nBest for: Professional marketers and agencies
\nFree tier limitations: The permanently free account tools offer 10 rows of data for analysis, while the free trials have no limitations.
\nMy take: Opt for the free 14-day trial. You’ll get full access to all tools and features.
\nLet’s take a closer look.
\nI’ve been using Semrush for years, but it’s been a while since I used their permanently free account. To explore it, I signed up under a different email address.
\nThese are the main competitor analysis tools you’ll get access to:
\n\nLet’s take a closer look at the Keyword Gap tool. I use this frequently for content planning. The tool enables you to find keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you aren’t.
\nHow much can you do for free with Keyword Gap?
\nTo find out, I added backcountry.com as my domain and compared it to rei.com.
\nAt the top of the page, you’ll see exactly what you do with a paid account.
\nBelow this, you’ll get rows of keywords.
\nThe real power in this tool is in the filters. For instance, you can filter by:
\nI signed up for the free trial to use all the filters and access unlimited data.
\nRunning the same Backcountry vs REI comparison, I got over 2,300 pages of results.
\nYou can use any filters in any combination. For instance, I filtered by Commercial and Transactional keywords to return results that signal buying intent.
\nThen I used the Advanced filters to exclude terms brand and sales terms.
\nLastly, I filtered by Keyword Difficulty, setting a custom value between Easy and Possible.
\nThe takeaway: You can do full competitor gap analyses with the free trial.
\nNext, I tested the Semrush Backlink Gap tool.
\nWith the permanently free account, I got another 10 rows of data.
\nSwitching to the free trial, I ended up with 787 pages of backlink opportunities for Backcountry.
\nFor instance, I see Harvard has linked to REI 17 times.
\nI can expand the harvard.edu row to see the exact backlinks.
\nMarketing professionals will definitely want access to all filters and features. So I recommend the free trial.
\nHere’s how to get the most out of the trial.
\nFirst, use our promo link to double your free trial from 7 days to 14 days.
\nWhen you sign up, choose between the Pro or Guru plans.
\nYou’ll need to enter a credit or debit card number in order to get the free trial.
\nOnce you get the free trial, you’ll have access to all their SEO competitor tools, including:
\n\nBottom line: Semrush is arguably the global leader in comprehensive SEO competitor analysis. With a 14-day free trial, you’ll gain full access to these tools and can quickly assess their value.
\nNext is an option that’s permanently free with limited data.
\n[cta:market]
\nSummary: Exploding Topics provides a permanently free competitor analysis tool.
Best for: Non-marketers who want top-line competitor metrics.
Free tier limitations: No limitation on usage. Top Pages and Competitor tiles are limited to 2 rows; Top Ranking Keywords are limited to 3. You can pull more data from Semrush with a free account.
My take: Useful for topline competitor metrics.
\nEnter any domain into the Exploding Topics Competitor Analysis Tool, and you’ll get a sampler of free data pulled from Semrush.
\nTo test it, I entered the domain for Fuller Tea Leaf Company.
\nThe results page features 4 metrics at the top:
\nYou’ll also get 1-year trend lines for referring domains and backlinks.
\nThe Top Pages and Main Organic Competitors tiles list 2 results, with a link to view more in Semrush.
\nThe Top Ranking Keywords tile provides 3 results, along with Keyword Difficulty, CPC, Volume, and Traffic percentage metrics.
\nThe tool offers a 14-day free trial of the Semrush Pro Plan, so you can access more data.
\nBottom line: The Exploding Topics tool is helpful for a quick overview of competitor performance.
\nSummary: ChatGPT can be used effectively to augment SEO competitor analysis.
\nBest for: Content marketers of any experience level.
\nFree tier limitations: ChatGPT is free to use. However, free users can only access GPT-4o a limited (and undisclosed) number of times “within a five-hour window.” Users receive a message if they reach their limit. [Source: OpenAI Free tier FAQ]
\nMy take: Success depends on well-crafted prompts and a willingness to experiment.
\nFor starters, you can use AI at the pre-publication stage or to update existing content to boost its competitiveness.
\nConsider using ChatGPT to compare your unpublished article to one or more competitor articles that are ranking high for the target keyword.
\nTo do this, upload a PDF of your article and at least one competitor's article. Then, craft a precise and clear prompt.
\nInclude:
\nPrompt optimization: Anthropic recommends using XML tags to structure prompts. This can help the model yield more precise results. Is it the same for OpenAI models?
\nI asked ChatGPT for its take.
\nHere’s the reply:
\nTip: Ask ChatGPT to review your entire prompt and make recommendations for improvement.
\nPrompt example:
\n<role>
\nYou are a senior SEO strategist with 10+ years of experience in competitive analysis. And you’re familiar with AI-enhanced content optimization.
\n</role>
\n<context>
\nYou’ve written an SEO article targeting the keyword [\"keyword\"]. Before submitting it for editing, you want to ensure it matches or exceeds the quality and depth of a top-ranking competitor article.
\n</context>
\n<instructions>
\nCompare \"my-article.pdf\" to \"competitor.pdf\":
\n1. List up to 10 subtopics the competitor article includes that are missing from my-article.pdf.
\n2. From those, identify up to 3 subtopics that would be highly relevant or interesting to [insert audience description, e.g., “professional marketers”].
\n3. Note any special page features in competitor.pdf (e.g., tables, charts, callouts, comparison grids) that are absent in my-article.pdf.
\n4. Compare formatting, layout, and writing style. Suggest formatting and textual improvements to enhance the LLM-readability and scannability of my-article.pdf.
\n</instructions>
\nI ran my prompt in both ChatGPT and Claude. Both returned many helpful recommendations. Here’s an example below.
\nYou can use the fourth step above as a standalone prompt. Be sure to add your own instructions.
\nGEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is a nascent field, but it’s not too early to treat LLM-readability as a competitive advantage.
\nHere’s a small part of a recommendation I obtained for an article I analyzed with Claude Sonnet.
\nLook for new reasoning models released by OpenAI. These are often free upgrades, at least temporarily.
Examples are o3 and 04-mini. Both boost visual perception (useful for reading charts, diagrams) and the problem-solving accuracy of ChatGPT.
You can also try your prompt in other AI models, like DeepSeek or Claude, to see if there’s a notable difference.
\nBottom line: Regardless of the model you use, running SEO competitor analysis prompts can yield surprising nuggets of value.
\n[cta:trafficanalytics]
\nSummary: Spyfu is a budget SEO tool that offers a free version via their homepage.
Best for: Small businesses without marketing staff.
Free tier limitations: The permanently free tool provides 5 rows of data per analysis.
\nMy take: Spyfu provides a generous amount of useful competitor data for free. This will satisfy some small businesses and solopreneurs. Professionals will need a more advanced tool, like Semrush.
\nAt the top of the Spyfu homepage, you’ll see a field to enter a domain.
\nThis gives you limited access to all their tools, for free.
\nEnter a competitor’s domain into the field, and you’ll view:
\nYou can click through some of these metrics to get more detailed data.
\nFor instance, clicking through on the competitors takes you to a trend chart with Google algorithm update annotations.
\nYou can tab between different time frames to display SEO keyword trends, monthly clicks, and monthly value.
\nBelow the chart, there’s a bit more data, like monthly value of clicks.
\nHowever, with the free version, you can’t select competitors: you can only view data on those Spyfu selects for you.
\nYou can also analyze competitor domains for their top 5 keywords, pages, or backlinks. That data can be sorted by different dimensions, such as volume, keyword difficulty, or domain authority score.
\nClick on the SEO Overview tab to view even more data.
\nThe “Newly Ranked Keywords” feature includes a drop-down date picker.
\nBottom line: Spyfu offers an impressive amount of free data with no time limits on usage. That said, even the paid version is too limited to satisfy marketers with advanced SEO knowledge.
\nFind out why I prefer Semrush over Spyfu, and see how it stands up in a three-way Ahrefs vs Spyfu vs Semrush test.
\n[cta:backlinks]
\nSummary: Moz competes with Semrush as a budget alternative. Its free tools (and paid tools) are far more limited than those available from Semrush.
Best for: Beginner marketers.
Free tier limitations: The permanently free tools are extremely limited. The free trial is available for 7 days.
My take: Skip. The tool is not useful for professionals. And I don’t recommend a free trial or the paid version of Moz.
\nMoz offers several free SEO tools, including one for competitive research.
\nDetails: The free Competitive Research tool is limited to 3 reports a day.
\nI ran a “report” for outdoorresearch.com and got some basic numbers like Domain Authority and number of Ranking Keywords.
\nThese numbers are not clickable.
\nYou’ll also see a list of Top Competitors and Keyword Opportunities. The latter comes from their Keyword Gap report.
\nHowever, like Spyfu, Moz picks the competitors that appear in the free tool.
\nIn this instance, they included Amazon. So one of the recommended keywords was “headphones,” even though Outdoor Research doesn’t sell headphones.
\nLikewise, the Content Opportunities were bland. Plus, there was no way to interact with the report to access further data.
\nMoz does offer a 7-day free trial that requires a card.
\nBottom line: Moz has a legendary place in the history of SEO software, but it has not kept pace with the industry, and its tools are disappointing.
\nSummary: Ubersuggest, which positions itself as a budget competitor to Ahrefs and Semrush, provides a free version and a 7-day free trial. It's one of the smaller options on this list: Ubersuggest gets around 11,500 monthly visits.
\nBest for: Budget-conscious solopreneurs and micro businesses.
Free tier limitations: The permanently free version can only be used to analyze 1 website.
\nMy take: Because the free account is limited to analysis of 1 website, it’s not useful for SEO competitor analysis.
\nRank tracking: The free version of Ubersuggest only gave me historical data for the day I used it: June 5th. So there was nothing useful here.
\nTracked keywords: You can track up to 25 keywords. But again, no historical data is available.
\nBacklinks: You’ll get basic metrics like domain authority, total number of referring domains. But you’ll see a prompt to upgrade to the 7-day free trial to get historical data.
\nWhen you click the 7-day free trial button, you’ll be offered the Individual plan for $29/month. However, that only allows you to analyze 5 competitors.
\nBy comparison, the free trial or paid versions of Semrush do not limit the number of competitor domains analyzed.
\nAlso, keyword gap analysis in Semrush is far more versatile than what Ubersuggest offers.
\nThe bottom line: UberSuggest's free version isn’t useful for SEO competitor analysis. And Semrush outperforms Ubersuggest’s paid version.
\nThat said, if you’re interested in Ubersuggest, I recommend taking free trials of this software and Semrush and comparing them.
\nSummary: SE Ranking competes with Semrush and Ahrefs. A free account is not available, but you can access a free trial.
\nBest for: Mid-level marketers.
Free tier limitations: The free trial lasts 14 days, and competitor data is limited to 6 months of history.
\nMy take: The competitor data is slow to appear. Semrush is more advanced. Try both and decide for yourself.
\nSE Ranking does not have a permanently free version, even though some articles suggest it does
\nHowever, you can get a 14-day free trial; no card required.
\nSE Ranking has a My Competitors section, where you can add your domain and several competitors.
\nI used outdoorresearch.com as my main domain and selected 3 top competitors.
\nMinor quibble: the competitor data took a few hours to load.
\nTabbed charts include:
\nEach tab displays trend line charts with an excellent UI and crosshair tooltips.
\nHere’s a close-up of the Search Visibility tab.
\nBelow the available trendline charts, you’ll find sortable tables.
\nThe close-up below shows how many keywords each competitor has in the top 5/10/30 positions of Google SERP.
\nGiven these are big brands, the numbers look inordinately small.
\nA quick check of Semrush reveals Outdoor Research has 4,773 keywords in the top 5 of Google.
\nThe low numbers in the SE Ranking free trial must be tied to a free trial limit imposed on the total number of keywords analyzed.
\nThe limitations present in the AI tool support that.
\nFor SE Ranking’s new AI SERP competitors, the free trial limits you to 20 keywords (which you manually add) and 1 search engine.
\nI recommend the free trial to Semrush as a stepping stone to a paid subscription.
\nBudget-conscious marketers may want to compare the Semrush free trial with SE Ranking’s.
\nExperiment with the ChatGPT prompt provided in this article. Customize it to suit your needs.
\nReady to augment your competitive strategy?
\nChoose one of the top free SEO competitor analysis tools covered here and start amplifying your results.
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