# Free AI tools for SEO: what is genuinely free, what each one is for, and what to skip

Canonical: https://whatisgeo.app/free-ai-tools-for-seo/
Publisher: Adapt Progress Evolve Limited
Updated: 2026-10-26

> The most useful free tools for AI-era SEO are the platforms' own: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, plus a manual check of AI answers. A free AI assistant helps with drafting, but check its work.

Start with the free reports the search engines provide for your own site. Then add free checking tools and a manual look at AI answers. Almost anything else sold as a "free AI SEO tool" is a capped tier or a trial. Either is fine to use, as long as you know which one you are looking at.

## What "free" means for SEO tools, and why most free tiers are samples

"Free" covers three different things, and most listicles blur them:

1. **Free because the platform wants a healthier web.** Search engines run reports and testing tools for site owners without charging for them.
2. **Free tiers.** A cut-down version of a paid product. You get enough to see what it does, but rarely enough to run your whole site through it.
3. **Trials.** The full product with an end date: a sales process with a countdown.

None of these is wrong to use. Readers get misled when all three are called "free" without saying which is which.

Limits and plan details change, often without notice. We quote a limit only where we read it on the vendor's own page, and we give the date. For everything else, check the vendor page on the day you read this.

We also name no "best" tool. Our method for this page is three questions. Does the platform itself say it is free? Does it show your data or someone's opinion? What can it not tell you?

## Free tools that show your real data

Set these up first. Everything else depends on them.

**Google Search Console.** Google describes it as "a free service offered by Google" that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search. Its Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, and you can group the data by the queries people typed. That is your baseline: what people searched for, when Google showed you and whether they clicked.

On AI features, Google's documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted towards the overall data in Search Console. That traffic is already inside your totals. Check the report's filters yourself before assuming you can separate it out.

**Bing Webmaster Tools.** Microsoft says you can "get started for free". In February 2026 it announced an AI Performance report in public preview. The report shows how often your content is cited in Microsoft Copilot, in AI-generated summaries in Bing and in some partner integrations. It also shows which URLs were cited and a sample of the phrases the AI used to find them. Microsoft is clear that these counts show citation activity, not ranking or importance. Previews change, so check the report's status when you sign in.

Neither tool shows what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity said about you to a real person. Each one reports only on its own platform. For how to read this data properly, see [how to measure AI visibility](/how-to-measure-ai-visibility/).

## Free tools that check crawling, markup and page problems

**Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator.** Google's structured data documentation recommends starting with the Rich Results Test to see which Google rich results can be generated for a page. For generic schema.org checks, it points to the Schema Markup Validator, which tests markup "without Google-specific validation". The Rich Results Test also reports whether a robots.txt rule stops Google crawling the page. Both work on a live URL or on a code snippet you paste in.

Read the results for what they are. A pass means the markup can be read and is eligible. It does not mean Google or an AI assistant will use it. For the longer version, see [schema markup for AI](/schema-markup-for-ai/).

**Your robots.txt, checked against each vendor's own docs.** OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic each publish which crawlers they run and how to allow or block them in robots.txt. OpenAI, for example, separates OAI-SearchBot (for ChatGPT search results) from GPTBot (for training its models), so you can allow one and block the other. The vendors define their own bot names, so read their pages, not a list copied from somewhere else. We keep the detail in one place: [AI crawlers and robots.txt](/ai-crawlers-robots-txt/).

**A desktop crawler.** Screaming Frog's own product page says the free version of its SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs (checked 26 October 2026). Above that you need a paid licence.

## Free ways to check what AI assistants say about you

This is a manual job, and at small scale that works fine. Our recommended routine:

1. Write down the questions a customer would really ask, in their own words.
2. Ask them in the assistants your audience uses.
3. Record the answer, the date, whether you were named and which sources were cited.
4. Run the same list again later, without changing it.

Why repeat it? AI answers can differ between runs of the same question, so one check is one observation. That is a working rule from practice, not a statistic. A pattern across several runs tells you more than any single answer. When you report a pattern, say how many runs it is based on.

Free "AI visibility checker" tools automate a version of this. Before trusting one, ask how many runs sit behind the result, which prompts were used and which model answered. If the tool cannot say, you cannot interpret the score. Our [AI visibility checker](/ai-visibility-checker/) guide covers what those tools can and cannot tell you.

## Using a free AI assistant for SEO tasks, and where it goes wrong

A free assistant earns its place in the dull middle of SEO work: drafting title tag options, summarising an exported list of queries, suggesting how to group them and tidying a clumsy paragraph.

It goes wrong in predictable places. It will describe your site without being able to see it. It will state a "best practice" with total confidence. It will analyse a pasted spreadsheet and quietly skip the awkward rows. Give it your real data, ask it to show its working and check the output against the source.

Google's guidance supports this. Its page on generative AI content says these tools "don't retrieve facts" and instead predict a likely sequence of words. It asks you to fact-check and review AI-generated content before publishing. It also warns that using generative AI to create many pages without adding value for users may breach its spam policy on scaled content abuse. In 2023, Google said it rewards high-quality content "however it is produced". The risk comes from publishing unchecked output at scale. There is more in [is AI content good for SEO](/is-ai-content-good-for-seo/).

Free plan limits for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini change often. Check each vendor's own plans page before you rely on one for regular work.

## Free tiers and trials from paid tools: how to read them

Treat a free tier as a demo with a cap. Four questions sort them quickly:

1. Does it show your own data, or a generic sample?
2. Is the cap so low that you cannot finish the job you came for?
3. Does it say how each result was produced?
4. When the trial ends, what can you export and keep?

If the answers are "generic", "yes", "no" and "nothing", the tier exists mainly to sell the paid plan. That is allowed. Just do not build a workflow on it.

## A free toolkit by job, in the order we would set it up

This is our recommendation. It is ordered by what each step depends on, and it is not a ranking.

| Order | Job | Free option | What it cannot tell you |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | See your real search data | Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools | What other AI assistants say about you |
| 2 | Check markup and crawler access | Rich Results Test, Schema Markup Validator, your robots.txt checked against vendor docs | Whether anything will actually be shown or cited |
| 3 | Find page problems | The free version of a desktop crawler | Anything past its crawl limit |
| 4 | Check AI answers | A fixed list of questions, asked by hand and logged | A stable result from a single run |
| 5 | Speed up drafting and analysis | A free AI assistant | Whether its output is true; you check that |

Try paid tools last, and only for a gap these steps have shown up. If you skip ahead, you end up tuning a site you cannot measure.

## What free tools cannot do

They cannot tell you why something happened. Search Console shows a drop, but working out the cause is still your job.

They cannot give you a stable AI visibility score from one check, and free checkers rarely disclose their method.

They cannot judge which customers, pages and claims matter to your business.

And no tool, free or paid, can guarantee you a place in an AI answer. For the fuller measurement method, see the [measuring progress section](/#measurement) of our main guide.

## From the same studio

These are made by the studio that publishes this guide.

- [visibilitytoai](https://visibilitytoai.com/): If checking AI answers by hand stops scaling, it is one option for tracking whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity name and cite your company; put the free-tier questions on this page to it as to any other tool.

## Questions people ask

### Are there really free AI tools for SEO?

Yes, but read "free" carefully. Google describes Search Console as a free service, Microsoft says you can get started with Bing Webmaster Tools for free, and Google points site owners to the Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator for checking markup. Most third-party "free" offers are capped tiers or trials, so check the vendor page on the date you read it.

### Can ChatGPT do SEO for free?

A free AI assistant can help with drafting and analysis. It cannot see your Search Console data unless you give it, and Google warns that generative AI predicts likely words instead of retrieving facts, so check everything it produces. Free plan limits change, so check OpenAI's own plans page.

### Is Google Search Console free, and does it show AI Overviews data?

Google describes Search Console as a free service. Google's documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted towards the overall data in Search Console, so that traffic is already in your totals.

### Are free AI visibility checkers accurate?

Treat any single result as one observation, because AI answers can differ between runs of the same question. That is a working rule from practice, not a statistic. A checker is only as useful as the method it discloses: how many runs, which prompts and which model.

### Do I need to pay for an AI SEO tool at all?

Not to start, in our view. The free first-party reports, markup tests and a hand-run prompt check cover the basics. Pay when you hit a specific gap you cannot close by hand.

## Sources

- [Search Console Help: About Search Console](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9128668)
- [Search Console Help: Performance report (Search results)](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553)
- [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
- [Bing Webmaster Tools: About](https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about)
- [Bing Webmaster Blog: Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview (February 2026)](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview)
- [Google Search Central: Introduction to structured data (testing tools)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data)
- [Search Console Help: Rich Results Test](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7445569)
- [Schema.org: Schema Markup Validator](https://validator.schema.org/)
- [OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers](https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots)
- [Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers](https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots)
- [Anthropic: Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler)
- [Screaming Frog: SEO Spider (free version and licence, checked 26 October 2026)](https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/)
- [Google Search Central: Guidance on using generative AI content on your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content)
- [Google Search Central Blog: Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content (February 2023)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content)