FREE VS. PAID TOOLS

Free vs. paid keyword tools: how do they compare?

It’s simple: free keyword tools are limited compared to paid tools.

That’s not to say that free tools don’t have their uses. But the number of keyword ideas and data they give access to will always pale in comparison to paid tools.

Because of this, paid tools allow you to go way deeper and do more advanced marketing research.

To illustrate, here’s what happens if we type “protein powder” into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer:

123,000+ “phrase match” suggestions from their database of 9.9 billion keywords.

No free keyword tool runs on a database that large.

We also show tons of data points, including:

• Estimated monthly search volume
• Keyword Difficulty (KD)
• Clicks
• CPC

And everything is searchable, filterable, and returned in seconds.

SIDENOTE. We add new keywords to our database and refresh search volumes every month.

Doing this with free keyword tools would be next to impossible.

Plus, to make any real decisions on the competitiveness of a keyword, you should analyze the top 10 ranking pages.

To an extent, you can do that using Google. But in Keywords Explorer, we show backlink data and traffic stats for each of the top 10 results.

Just scroll down to the SERP Overview.

FYI: As far as we’re aware, no other keyword tool, free, or paid, can do this.

Final thoughts

Don’t get me wrong; you can find some good keywords with free keyword tools.

But doing so can be very time-consuming. And time is money.

The reality is that time spent mining Google autocomplete for queries is time wasted. The same is true of merging data from multiple free keyword tools in spreadsheets. You should aim to use that time for more important stuff, like creating content or link building.

Furthermore, paid keyword tools—like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer—run on huge amounts of data. That makes them much more efficient at finding low-competition keywords.

Bottom line: free keyword tools are good when you’re starting out, but as you grow your site, you’ll need paid tools to keep up with the competition.

Did we miss any good free keyword research tools? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.