In this guide, we’ll walk through the nine best keyword research tools worth trying right now—both free and paid.
1. Keyword Magic Tool
Pricing: A free trial is available. Pricing starts at $139.95/month for the Semrush SEO Toolkit.
Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool generates potentially thousands of keyword ideas you can use to create content that increases your visibility—all based on a general term you enter that's related to your business (a seed keyword).
Simply enter a seed keyword and your target location to get a list of related keywords.
I also recommend adding your domain to get personalized insights.
You’ll then see the following metrics for each keyword:
- Search volume: The average number of monthly searches a term has gotten over the last 12 months
- Intent: What users are trying to achieve with their search (can be informational, transactional, commercial, navigational, or a combination)
- SERP Features: Whether the keyword triggers special search results like AI Overviews, featured snippets, or People Also Ask boxes
- Trend: A graph showing how search interest has changed over the last 12 months
- Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD%): How hard it would be for your specific domain to rank in the top 10 positions for that keyword
- Potential Traffic: The estimated monthly traffic you could get if you rank highly for that keyword
To narrow your search to terms you can realistically rank for that would still drive a decent amount of traffic, select the “Personal KD %” filter and set it to “Easy.” And use the “Volume” filter to set “100” as the minimum search volume.
Or use the “Questions” tab to find long-tail, question-based keywords (e.g.,“what is agile project management”) that you can use to create content. Particularly if you’re interested in being mentioned in AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
What I Like
One useful feature is the ability to remove competitor-focused terms that I don’t want to target.
I’ll demonstrate this using the term “travel bags,” which could be a useful seed term for finding specific terms to use on product pages.
If Louis Vuitton is a competitor, I wouldn’t want to include terms including their brand name.
So, I use the “Exclude keywords” filter to remove competitor names from the list.
Then, I can use the “Intent” filter to show only terms with the “Commercial” and “Transactional” intent to focus on keywords users search when they’re actively comparing options and ready to buy.
This gives me a list of high-intent keywords I can confidently use on product pages.
2. Keyword Overview
Pricing: A free trial is available. Pricing starts at $139.95/month for the Semrush SEO Toolkit.
Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool gives you a complete snapshot of any specific keyword (or a list of keywords) to determine whether it’s a good idea to target.
You can break down keyword data by country, region, or even city. So, if you want to see whether a keyword is worth targeting specifically in New York, this tool makes that easy.
You’ll then see key metrics like volume and keyword difficulty tailored to that specific location.
Or skip entering the specific location and instead enter your domain to get AI-powered insights specific to your domain.
You’ll also see suggestions for related keywords and keyword groups. Which is helpful if you’re interested in covering different angles of the same topic to establish yourself as an authority.
What I Like
This tool is really useful for seeing non-personalized ranking results across countries—which is great for anyone doing international SEO.
So, if I were to write a blog post targeting “free crm software” that can perform well in both the U.S. and India, I can easily see what’s ranking well in both countries.
Here are the U.S. results:
And I can see the same for India by simply switching the location in the tool.
3. ChatGPT
Pricing: A free version is available. Paid plans start at $20/month.
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI that can understand and generate human-like text based on your prompts. It’s not a keyword research tool on its own.
But with the right prompts, it can speed up keyword discovery and help you explore new angles. Especially at the very start of your research process.
For example:
“I’m creating a landing page for a project management SaaS tool built for remote marketing teams. What are some keywords a marketing manager at a mid-sized company might search when they’re trying to improve collaboration, meet deadlines, and streamline approvals across a remote team? Please include both short-tail and long-tail variations.”
Here’s the output:
You can then plug those ideas into the Keyword Overview tool within Semrush’s SEO Toolkit to understand whether they’re worth targeting.
You can also ask ChatGPT to:
- Group keywords into topic clusters (collections of related pages on a main topic, with each page targeting multiple related terms)
- Suggest long-tail variations (more specific versions of a broad keyword)
- Turn keyword lists into blog titles or content ideas
Just remember that ChatGPT isn’t a dedicated keyword research tool backed by SEO data. It won’t show you accurate search volumes, difficulty scores, or SERP insights.
What I Like
I use ChatGPT to surface very specific questions my audience might be typing into search engines.
To model how this can work for a company that creates project management software for finance teams, I prompted ChatGPT with this:
“Give me 30 bottom-of-the-funnel questions that a financial operations manager at a mid-sized company might search when looking for project management software. Focus on pain points like tracking budget approvals, managing timelines, and collaborating across departments.”
ChatGPT returned questions like:
- Which project management software supports multi-level budget approvals?
- Can I automate financial approvals in project management tools?
- Which tools help finance approve timelines tied to budget?
These kinds of prompts are great for brainstorming content ideas, especially for sales collateral or support content.
4. Google Keyword Planner
Pricing: Free with a Google Ads account.
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool that’s primarily built for advertisers running Google Ads, but it also works well for basic SEO keyword research.
You can enter a keyword or URL, and the tool returns related keyword suggestions along with:
- Monthly search volume ranges (like 1K–10K)
- Competition (how difficult it might be to bid on, which may also indicate how difficult it is to rank for)
- Estimated cost per click (CPC) for ads
You can also filter results by location, language, and date range.
What I Like
This tool is great if you’re looking for a free tool that lets you discover high-value, low-competition keywords in a specific location.
So, let’s say I’m targeting small business owners in India with content about financial tools.
I’d start by entering a seed term like “invoice software” and set the location as “India.”
Then, I’d sort the results by “Monthly searches.” And select “Add filter” > “Competition” >“Low.”
This will uncover high-value keywords I could realistically rank for.
5. Google Search Console
Pricing: Free.
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows how your site performs in organic search, and you can use it to find keywords you’re ranking for that you might want to target more directly.
You can see a list of queries your pages rank for in search results.
For each query, you’ll find the following metrics:
- Total impressions: How many times your pages were displayed to users in Google Search results for a specific query
- Total clicks: How many times your results for the query were clicked
- Average position: The average ranking for a given query
- Click-through rate (CTR): The number of clicks relative to the number of impressions
These insights are based on actual Google data—they’re not estimates.
Just keep in mind that this view is query-based, not page-specific. So, the metrics here can reflect the combined performance of multiple pages ranking for the same keyword.
If you want to evaluate specific pages, use the “Pages” tab.
What I Like
Google Search Console makes it easy to find a group of queries that your site is showing up for but not getting much traffic from.
Just head to “Search results,” click “+ Add filter,” and select “Query.” Select “Queries containing” from the drop-down and enter a term that represents the group you’re interested in.
Then sort by impressions (high to low) and scan for keywords with few clicks.
It’s a simple way to spot underperforming queries where you already have some visibility.
6. Surfer’s Keyword Research Tool
Pricing: Starts at $99/month. The Chrome extension is available for free.
Surfer is an SEO content optimization platform that also includes a dedicated keyword research tool.
After you enter a seed term, you’ll see results displayed in keyword clusters (groups of closely related terms that can be targeted together in a single page).
For each cluster, you’ll see:
- The main keyword and its variations
- Intent
- Monthly search volume (MSV)
- Keyword difficulty (KD)
When you click on a cluster, Surfer gives you the option to launch the Content Editor tool. So you can move straight from research to writing.
Surfer also offers a free Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer that shows data like monthly search volume and cost per click right in Google search.
This can be especially useful when you want to validate keyword ideas on the fly.
What I Like
Surfer’s free Chrome extension is great for validating keyword ideas while browsing Google.
So, if I want to see which term of two terms has a higher search volume while conducting research, I can just Google both phrases rather than switching to a dedicated keyword research tool.
7. Keyword Gap
Pricing: A free trial is available. Pricing starts at $139.95/month for Semrush’s SEO Toolkit.
Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool lets you compare yourself against your competitors to find keyword opportunities.
Just enter your domain and those of up to four rivals to see how your keyword footprint stacks up against the competition.
Scroll down to see a detailed keyword list along with key metrics like intent, volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, and each site’s current ranking position.
You’ll see several tabs you can switch between, depending on what you're trying to find.
Pay particular attention to these tabs:
- Missing: Keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t
- Weak: Keywords you rank for but for which your competitors rank higher
- Untapped: Keywords you don’t rank for but at least one competitor does
You can also filter this list by volume, difficulty, and intent.
What I Like
This tool helps me spot high-intent keywords that competitors are ranking for but I’m not.
Let me show how to find these using Monday and competitors like Asana, Trello, ClickUp, and Smartsheet.
Just select the “Missing” tab and use the “intent” filter to check the boxes next to “Commercial” and “Transactional.”
The results show some good ideas for pages that could work well for blog posts and comparison pages.
8. AnswerThePublic
Pricing: Free for limited daily searches. Paid plans start at $11/month.
AnswerThePublic is a keyword discovery tool that pulls autocomplete data from Google, Bing, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, and even Instagram. And then presents results that are organized into clear categories.
You start by entering a keyword (like “influencer marketing”) and choosing a country and language.
The tool then returns hundreds of suggestions, grouped into:
- Questions: Question-based terms
- Prepositions: Terms that include prepositions
- Comparisons: Terms that compare two items
- Alphabeticals: Terms that start with a specific letter
Search volume and CPC data is shown for every keyword.
While the tool doesn’t offer advanced filters or SERP data, it’s a fast and visual way to surface long-tail keywords you might not think of on your own. Especially in the early stages of content planning.
What I Like
AnswerThePublic makes it easy to quickly find dozens of question-based keywords that are pulled from autocomplete data across relevant platforms.
That makes it good for finding question-based keywords to target for numerous content types and distribution channels.
It’s a solid free tool for uncovering long-tail content ideas based on what people are actually asking.
9. Reddit Keyword Research Tool
Pricing: Free.
HigherVisibility’s Reddit Keyword Research Tool helps you find keyword ideas directly from Reddit by entering a subreddit.
The tool then shows popular searches from the subreddit and displays them in a simple table along with:
- The estimated monthly U.S. search volume
- A “Context” link, which opens a Google search based on your selected subreddit and keyword
This is helpful for identifying topic angles that real people are actually discussing. And if you’re building content for a highly niche audience, this can surface options that other tools miss.
If you want additional metrics for these terms, export and analyze results using another tool.
What I Like
This tool is great for building a substantial keyword list based on numerous subreddits—without having to manually sift through everything.
For example, look at what subreddits show that are related to “career.”
Simply going through each relevant option is likely to yield many valuable terms.
Which Keyword Tool Should You Use?
The right keyword tool for you depends on your needs.
If you want Google-specific data straight from the source, try Google Keyword Planner and Search Console.
If you have a minimal budget and need some initial ideas, try AnswerThePublic or ChatGPT.
If you need a variety of tools with extensive features, go with Semrush’s SEO Toolkit.