7 best free AI tools for SEO (2026 tested guide)

Trying to rank on Google can be challenging. AI Overviews are changing search results, and competition is increasing. For a growing business, the cost of many top-tier SEO platforms can be a significant barrier.

This guide presents a workflow built on tested tools. We will cover tasks from keyword research and writing content to technical checks, focusing on options that do not require a paid subscription.

What are AI SEO tools?

AI SEO tools are applications that use artificial intelligence to assist with or automate tasks related to search engine optimization. Initially, this involved basic functions like keyword grouping. Today, AI can generate articles, conduct technical site audits, and identify backlink opportunities.

A key concept is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). This involves structuring content for AI search engines, like Google's AI Overviews or Perplexity, to easily understand and feature. Modern AI SEO tools often incorporate AEO principles, helping users create content with clear, straightforward information that performs well in these new search environments. The diagram below illustrates how AEO helps content get featured in modern search results.

How we chose the best free AI tools for SEO

To make the cut, every tool had to meet a few key rules:

• Meaningful Free Plan: The tool needed a permanently free plan or a fremium model that’s generous enough for ongoing work. No short-term trials that pressure you into upgrading after a week.

• Genuinely AI-Powered: It had to use machine learning or large language models to offer insights that you couldn't get from a simple data scraper or calculator.

• User-Friendly: You shouldn't need a degree in data science to use it. The interface and features had to be accessible for people who aren't deep technical SEO experts.

• Tangible Results: Each tool had to provide clear value, whether that’s saving you hours of manual work, uncovering new ranking opportunities, or helping you create better content.

A quick comparison of top free AI SEO tools

The 7 best free AI tools for SEO in 2026

After testing, the following seven tools were selected for their value and accessibility for users without a budget.

1. eesel AI blog writer

The eesel AI blog writer is designed to address the challenge of creating high-quality, optimized content at scale. Users provide a keyword, and the tool generates a blog post that can include AI-generated images, infographics, relevant YouTube videos, and quotes from Reddit. The tool analyzes a user's website to adapt to the brand voice and can integrate product mentions. For example, we used this tool as part of a strategy that grew our organic impressions over a three-month period.

• Pros: It creates a media-rich article instead of a plain text draft. It is also optimized for AEO, with content structured for AI answer engines.

• Cons & Pricing: The free version includes a watermark on the generated content. Paid plans start at $99 for 100 blog posts per month. A free post generation is available for trial.

2. Google Search Console

For any website owner, Google Search Console (GSC) is a fundamental tool. It provides direct data from Google on site performance in search results. While not a generative AI, it uses machine learning to group queries and identify performance trends. GSC is useful for monitoring site health, understanding traffic sources, and finding opportunities. The Performance report, for instance, can help identify "striking distance" keywords, those lingering on page two that could hit page one with a content refresh.

• Pros: It provides first-party data directly from Google on search rankings. The service is free and offers actionable insights.

• Cons & Pricing: Data is limited to websites you own, making it unsuitable for direct competitor analysis. It is a free service from Google.

3. Harpa AI

Harpa AI is an AI assistant that functions as a free Chrome extension. According to their site, it is used by over 500,000 professionals. It can connect to AI models like ChatGPT and Claude to perform various tasks on any webpage, such as summarizing videos or extracting on-page SEO data. The tool is useful for competitor analysis and content research. For example, it can extract headings and keywords from a blog post, which can save time on manual data entry.

• Pros: It packs dozens of different workflows into a single free extension. It also comes with over 100 pre-built commands for marketing, SEO, and productivity.

• Cons & Pricing: The free plan has daily usage limits. Its power also depends on which underlying AI model you connect it to. For heavy users, premium plans start at $12 per month when billed annually.

4. SE Ranking

Many all-in-one SEO platforms require a paid subscription. SE Ranking, however, offers a 14-day free trial with access to its full suite of tools. This allows users to experience an enterprise-grade platform without a financial commitment. Its AI-powered features can help analyze visibility in AI search results. The trial is suitable for conducting a detailed, one-time site audit or planning content.

• Pros: The trial offers unrestricted access to the platform for two weeks. A notable feature is the AI Visibility Tracker, which monitors brand presence in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.

• Cons & Pricing: It is a time-limited trial, not a permanently free tool. Once the trial is over, paid plans start at $52 per month when billed annually.

5. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a widely used tool for technical SEO audits. It is a desktop app that crawls a website similar to a search engine bot. The free version allows users to crawl up to 500 URLs, which is sufficient for many small-to-medium-sized websites. It helps identify technical issues such as broken links (404 errors), analyze internal linking, find duplicate page titles, and audit redirects.

• Pros: You get a professional-grade technical site crawl completely free. No other tool gives you this level of detail without making you pay.

• Cons & Pricing: The interface can be intimidating for beginners, and the 500 URL limit won't work for large e-commerce or enterprise sites. A paid license for unlimited crawling is $259 per year.

6. Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is a conversational answer engine that provides synthesized answers with cited sources. This format makes it a useful tool for understanding Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). It can be used to identify which articles and sources AI engines trust for specific topics. The free plan gives you 5 Pro searches per day, which lets you test your queries with more powerful models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5. The cited sources can inform content strategy and link-building efforts.

Chatgpt an perplexity.ai for sure.

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• Pros: Its transparency is its biggest strength. It gives you a clear roadmap for creating the kind of content that will perform well in an AI-driven search landscape.

• Cons & Pricing: The free version uses a less advanced AI model for standard searches. The Pro plan, which gives you unlimited access to the top-tier models, costs $20 per month.

7. SEO.AI's free tools

SEO.AI provides a collection of 46 free, single-purpose tools for specific SEO tasks. This library of web-based utilities does not require a login or sign-up. These tools are useful for performing quick, individual tasks. The AI-powered Internal Linking Tool, for example, analyzes a site and suggests relevant internal links. The Backlink Checker provides a quick overview of a site's backlink profile.

• Pros: You get access to dozens of specialized tools for free without needing to create an account, which makes them fast and efficient for one-off jobs.

• Cons & Pricing: The tools aren't integrated, so you can't run a comprehensive site-wide analysis in one place. SEO.AI's main product is a paid platform for automated content, which starts at $149 per month.

How to get the most out of your free AI SEO toolkit

While these tools are useful individually, they can be more effective when combined into a workflow. Here is a sample process for handling SEO tasks using only free tools.

The trick isn’t just 'using AI tools' it’s connecting them into a workflow: research → creation → optimization → distribution → visibility in LLMs.

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1. Step 1 (Research): Start your research with Perplexity AI. Ask it the core questions your audience is asking to see what kind of answers it gives and which sources it trusts. Use your 5 daily Pro searches to get deep insights on your most important topics.

2. Step 2 (Competitor Analysis): Find the top-ranking URL for your target keyword and run it through Harpa AI. In seconds, you'll have a breakdown of its structure and keyword usage. Then, pop that URL into SEO.AI's free Backlink Checker to see who's linking to them.

3. Step 3 (Content Creation): Now that you're armed with all this research, use the eesel AI blog writer to generate a comprehensive, optimized article that incorporates all of your findings in just a few minutes.

4. Step 4 (Technical Check & Monitoring): Once your article is published, run the new URL through Screaming Frog to make sure there are no on-page technical issues. Finally, keep an eye on its performance over the coming weeks and months using Google Search Console.

This approach covers all your bases, from ideation and research to creation and analysis, all without a single subscription fee.

For a broader look at even more free tools available, the following video provides a great overview of several top options that can complement the workflow described above.

This video showcases 10 different free AI tools that can enhance your SEO and content creation efforts.

Using free AI SEO tools to automate content, not strategy

Effective AI tools for SEO can function as assistants, handling repetitive tasks so users can focus on strategy. While technical audits and keyword research are crucial, content creation is often a significant time investment. A single, well-researched blog post can take a considerable amount of time to produce, and this is an area where AI can provide significant leverage.

Several tools on this list address different aspects of SEO. For content generation, tools like the eesel AI blog writer are designed to streamline the process by creating a complete article, which can help scale content production efforts.