Ten free Semrush tools for SEO and content research

Executive overview

Most marketers know their own site's analytics but have no visibility into competitors. Semrush's free tier covers the full SEO workflow — from competitor research and keyword tracking to technical audits and content optimisation — without a credit card.

Free accounts get 10 searches per day (shared across domain and keyword tools) and access to 10 tracked keywords. The tools below cover every core SEO use case.

The free Semrush account is a complete entry-level SEO toolkit, not a stripped-down trial.

The 10 free tools

1. Domain Overview — Enter any competitor domain to see domain authority score, paid vs organic traffic, backlinks, and traffic by country.
2. Keyword Overview — Enter any keyword to see search volume, difficulty, and related data for a specific term.
3. Keyword Magic Tool — Discover new keyword opportunities your site could rank for; counts against the daily 10-search limit.
4. Keyword Tracking — Monitor rankings for up to 10 keywords across your site and competitors; set alerts for ranking drops.
5. Listing Management — Run a free audit of local business listings across 70+ directories (Google Business Profile, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing) in the US and 25 other countries.
6. Site Audit — Crawl up to 100 URLs to get an overall site health score, issue breakdown, and fix recommendations.
7. SEO Content Template — Enter a target keyword to get competitor insights, recommended related keywords, and suggested text length; export as a content brief or AI prompt.
8. SEO Writing Assistant — Paste any text to receive feedback on readability, SEO, originality, and tone of voice with specific highlighted fixes.
9. Plagiarism Checker — Generates a report covering plagiarism likelihood, AI-written content detection, readability, reading time, and grammar errors.
10. Persona Builder (App Center) — Pre-made templates to document audience personas; free with no limits noted.

Key limits and considerations

• Daily search limit: 10 queries, shared across domain and keyword tools — each domain lookup or keyword search consumes one.
• Keyword tracking capped at 10 keywords on the free plan.
• Google permits AI-generated content provided it meets E-E-A-T standards (experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness); tools 8 and 9 help ensure this.
• A 7-day free trial of Guru or Pro unlocks full functionality with no payment required upfront.