Free Ahrefs Alternatives for Small Sites

Ahrefs is excellent, but for a small blog or a local business it is often more than the budget allows. The good news: most of what you need day to day is covered by free Ahrefs alternatives, including some free tools from Ahrefs itself. Below are twelve options grouped by task, with honest notes on their limits, and a simple stack you can set up in an afternoon.

Published: 2026-09-21 · Satelo

First, what do you actually need?

Paid SEO suites bundle many jobs. Small sites usually need only five of them:

1. See who links to you.
2. Find keywords people search for.
3. Find technical problems on your site.
4. Check a competitor or a potential partner site.
5. Track whether things are getting better.

For your own site, free tools are often more accurate than paid ones, because they use first-party data from the search engines. For other people’s sites, free tools are limited, and that is where paid suites earn their money.

Backlinks

1. Google Search Console (Links report)

Shows top linking sites, top linked pages and anchor text, straight from Google. It is a sample, not a complete list, but it is the closest view of what Google sees.

2. Bing Webmaster Tools

Includes a backlinks report for your site and lets you compare backlink data for other domains. It also has a free keyword research tool and site scan.

3. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs’ own free tier for sites you verify. You get site audit and backlink data for your own properties. It does not let you research competitors in depth, but for monitoring your site it is hard to beat.

4. Free backlink checkers

Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush all offer free, limited lookups for any domain: usually the top backlinks and an authority score, with a daily cap. Good for a quick look at a partner site.

Keywords

5. Google Keyword Planner

Free with a Google Ads account (you do not need to run ads). Volumes are shown as ranges unless you spend money, but the keyword ideas are useful.

6. Google Trends

Shows relative interest over time and by region. Ideal for seasonal topics and comparing two phrasings.

7. Search Console Performance report

The best keyword tool for an existing site: queries you already get impressions for. Pages ranking 8–20 are the easiest wins.

8. Autocomplete and “People also ask”

Free, live and specific. Type your topic into Google, note suggestions and questions, and build sections around them.

Technical audits

9. Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free version)

Desktop crawler, free for up to 500 URLs per crawl, which covers most small sites. Finds broken links, missing titles, redirects and duplicate content.

10. PageSpeed Insights

Google’s free tool for Core Web Vitals, with real-user data where available. See Core Web Vitals for small sites for what to fix first.

Checking other sites

11. Satelo free check

Enter any domain at satelo.io/check to get a Quality Score from open data: Tranco rank, domain age, Common Crawl index size and PageSpeed. Useful before buying a guest post or accepting an exchange partner, because it is hard to inflate with purchased links.

12. Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive shows how a site looked in the past. Use it to spot expired domains repurposed for link selling; more in how to spot PBN sites.

Comparison table

A zero-budget SEO stack

• Weekly: Search Console performance report, sorted by impressions, to find pages to improve.
• Monthly: Screaming Frog crawl and PageSpeed check of your top 10 pages.
• Monthly: Search Console and Bing links reports to see new referring domains.
• Before any deal: a Satelo check and a free backlink lookup on the other site.

When paying makes sense

Upgrade when competitor research becomes your daily job, for example if you run an agency, sell links professionally or work in a highly competitive niche. Many paid tools offer monthly plans, so you can buy one month for a research sprint and cancel.

Setting up the free stack, step by step

1. Verify your site in Google Search Console. A DNS record verifies the whole domain, including all subdomains and protocols.
2. Import into Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing lets you import verified sites from Search Console in a few clicks.
3. Add Yandex Webmaster if you have readers in Russia or the CIS.
4. Connect Ahrefs Webmaster Tools using the Search Console connection or DNS verification, and schedule a monthly site audit.
5. Submit your sitemap in each tool so new pages are discovered quickly.
6. Bookmark PageSpeed Insights and the Wayback Machine for one-off checks.
7. Keep a simple spreadsheet: date, clicks, impressions, referring domains, notes on what you changed. Free tools do not keep long history in every report, so your own log becomes valuable.

Common mistakes with free tools

• Treating average position as a rank. Search Console averages across all queries and locations; a page at “position 12” may be in the top 3 for one query and on page 4 for another. Filter by query.
• Comparing link counts across tools. Each index is different. Compare a tool with itself over time.
• Ignoring the date range. Many reports default to the last few months. Extend it before drawing conclusions about trends.
• Chasing every audit warning. Free crawlers flag many minor issues. Fix broken links, missing titles and indexing problems first; cosmetic warnings can wait.
• Relying on one free lookup to judge a partner. A top-backlinks sample can look great or terrible by chance. Combine it with traffic signals, as described in how to check website traffic for free.

What free tools cannot do well

Be realistic about the gaps: full backlink lists for competitors, historical keyword rankings for other sites, keyword difficulty scores and large-scale content gap analysis. If those are central to your work, a paid month is worth it. For most small sites, though, the gap between free and paid matters far less than consistently publishing useful content.

Which free tool to open for which question

A quick mental map saves time. “Why did my traffic change?” Open Search Console and compare date ranges. “What should I write next?” Check queries with impressions but few clicks, then autocomplete. “Is this partner site real?” Run a Satelo check, look at the Wayback Machine and do a free backlink lookup. “Why is my page slow?” PageSpeed Insights. “Did I break something after an update?” A Screaming Frog crawl. Five questions, five tools, no subscription.

Next steps

Set up Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools today, then run a free QS check on your site. For how to interpret the numbers, read domain authority explained, and for link ideas that cost nothing, see free link building strategies.

FAQ

Does Ahrefs have a free version?

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free for sites you verify and includes site audit and backlink data for those sites. Ahrefs also offers limited free lookup tools.

What is the best free backlink checker?

For your own site, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. For other sites, the free checkers from Ahrefs, Moz or Semrush show top backlinks with daily limits.

Can free tools replace Ahrefs completely?

For monitoring your own site, mostly yes. For in-depth competitor research, paid tools still have much bigger indexes.

Is Screaming Frog free?

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs per site, which is enough for most small websites.

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