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The best SEO tools for small business in 2026

By Priyanshi, CMO · 30 Sept 2026

A small business needs keyword research, rank tracking and a site audit it can run without an SEO team. We priced seven tools for one person and one website and list them by what each costs for that setup, cheapest first, with Veritas, our product, priced by the same rule.

Ubersuggest homepage
Ubersuggest homepage, 29 September 2026
Veritas homepage
Veritas homepage, 29 September 2026
Moz Pro homepage
Moz Pro homepage, 29 September 2026

The short answer

Start free, then pay for the one thing you will use every week. For most small businesses that is rank tracking for a few dozen keywords and a monthly site audit, and three tools here cover that for under $50 a month.

  • UbersuggestFor the lowest bill for a complete suite, $29 a month.$29/mo
  • VeritasOursFor the lowest entry price here, with drafts written from your own material.$16/mo
  • Moz ProFor learning SEO as you go, with unusually deep free guides.$49/mo
  • SE RankingFor local SEO for three locations included in the plan.$129/mo

How to choose an SEO tool for a small business

A small business needs three things from an SEO tool: keyword research to decide what to write, rank tracking to see whether it worked, and a site audit to catch what stops Google reading the site. Backlink databases, competitor intelligence and AI answer tracking are worth paying for only once those three are in use every week.

Start free. Ahrefs Free shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords for sites you verify, Semrush’s free plan allows 10 reports a day, and Ubersuggest and Mangools both have free accounts. A month on free tiers shows which limit you hit first, and that limit is what you should pay to remove.

When you do pay, the cheapest complete setups are Ubersuggest at $29 a month for one project and Moz Pro at $49 for one campaign and 50 tracked keywords; both update rankings weekly. Veritas starts lower, at $16, and adds drafting from your own documents, but its local SEO and AI tracking start on the $78 Growth plan.

If you sell in a place, local search matters more than keyword volume. SE Ranking’s $129 Core plan includes local SEO for three locations and listings across 100+ directories. Moz and Semrush sell listings as separate products priced per location, and Ubersuggest and Mangools show map rankings without managing listings.

Pay for depth last. Semrush and Ahrefs, at $139 and $129 a month, have the largest keyword databases here, and a one-site business rarely uses them in full.

All 7 tools at a glance

Each tool priced for one person and one website, paying monthly: the cheapest published plan that covers it, plus any extra users or add-ons it needs, per month. Where no published plan covers it, the cell says why instead of guessing.

Veritas, Ubersuggest and Moz Pro cost under $50 a month for one site. SE Ranking is the only one whose entry plan includes local listings.

ToolBest forCost a monthFree to startLocal SEO
VeritasOursOwners who want the SEO basics and the writing done in one place$16/moStarterTrial of 7 daysFrom Growth
UbersuggestThe lowest monthly bill for a complete suite$29/moIndividual3 free searches a dayMap scan, no listings
Moz ProOwners learning SEO as they go$49/moStarterFree account, limitedMoz Local, $20 a location
MangoolsSimple keyword research with AI answer tracking bundled$61/moBasic5 free lookups a dayMap rankings, no listings
AhrefsChecking your own site’s backlinks and keywords for free$129/moLiteAhrefs Free, own sitesCity rankings, no listings
SE RankingLocal businesses that will grow into a full suite$129/moCoreTrial of 14 daysIncluded, 3 locations
SemrushOwners who want the deepest data and will pay for it$139/moSEO10 free reports a daySemrush Local, $30 to $60

Veritas prices are in US dollars, as its pricing page shows them to visitors in the United States, excluding GST.

The SEO basics and the writing, in one place

Veritas audits your site, finds the keywords worth targeting and drafts the page from your own material, with a citation on every knowledge-based claim. Try it on one domain.

Start your 7-day free trial See pricing

The SEO toolkit, tool by tool

What each tool gives you for classic SEO, as its own pages describe it. A tick is included, a dashed circle is included with a limit the cell names, and a dash means the vendor’s pages do not describe it.

The gaps that matter for a small business are site audits and how often rankings refresh: Mangools describes no site audit crawler, and SE Ranking and Semrush refresh rankings daily on their entry plans, while Ubersuggest, Moz, Mangools and Ahrefs update weekly.

ToolKeyword dataBacklinksRank trackingSite auditAI writing
VeritasOursVolume, CPC and difficulty from DataForSEOBacklink monitoring on BusinessPosition history on every planGraded for Google and AI crawlersDrafts cited to your own documents
Ubersuggest350 million keywords a month2,000 rows on IndividualWeekly, 125 keywords per project1,000 pages a weekAI Writer, 10,000 words a month
Moz Pro1.25 billion keyword suggestions45.5 trillion links indexedWeekly, 50 keywords on StarterWeekly crawl, 5,000 pages on StarterAI Content Briefs from Standard
Mangools2.5 billion related keywords9.5 trillion backlinks (Majestic)Weekly, 200 keywords on BasicNot describedNot described
Ahrefs28.7 billion filtered keywords35 trillion live backlinksWeekly, 750 keywords on Lite170+ SEO issuesContent Kit add-on, from $99/mo
SE Ranking5.5 billion keywordsBacklink checkerDaily, 2,000 keywords on CoreWebsite auditAI writer
SemrushOver 27.3 billion keywordsBacklink AnalysisDaily, 500 keywords on SEOTechnical Site AuditContent Creation

AI answer tracking

AI answer tracking is optional for most small businesses. Where you want it, Mangools bundles tracking across eight engines into its plans, SE Ranking includes 100 prompts a day in Core, and Ubersuggest tracks ChatGPT on its $29 plan, refreshed monthly.

Moz Pro starts tracking on its $99 Standard plan, Veritas on Growth at $78, and Semrush on Starter at $199. The engine-by-engine grid is below.

Veritas’s entry plan includes site audits, keyword research and cited drafting for one site.Start a 7-day trialSee pricing

Engine by engine, and what tracking costs a yearWhich engines each tool covers on its tracking plan, and the yearly cost for four team sizes

Which engines each tool covers

On the cheapest plan that tracks AI answers. Most vendors list more engines than that plan includes, so this is what you get at the price shown, not the brochure maximum.

Tool and planChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexityAI OverviewsAI ModeCopilot
VeritasOurs
Growth
IncludedNot on this planIncludedIncludedIncludedNot on this planNot on this plan
Ubersuggest
Individual
IncludedNot on this planNot on this planNot on this planNot on this planNot on this planNot on this plan
Moz Pro
Standard
IncludedNot on this planIncludedIncludedNot on this planIncludedNot on this plan
Mangools
Basic
IncludedIncludedIncludedNot on this planIncludedIncludedNot on this plan
Ahrefs
Lite
you chooseyou chooseyou chooseyou chooseyou chooseyou chooseyou choose
SE Ranking
Core
IncludedNot on this planIncludedIncludedIncludedIncludedNot on this plan
Semrush
Starter
IncludedIncludedIncludedIncludedIncludedunclearunclear

A tick is included. Add-on means an extra monthly fee. You choose means the plan lets you pick a limited number of platforms from this list. Unclear means the vendor’s wording does not say.

The plan behind each row, and what changes on higher plans, are on each tool’s review: Moz Pro, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Semrush and Veritas.

What AI answer tracking costs a year

These setups price one thing: tracking how AI assistants answer about you, for a given number of prompts and people, over twelve months. They are not the cost of the SEO toolkit, which is in the table above. Where no published plan fits, the note says why instead of guessing.

ToolGetting started1 seat, 10 tracked prompts, 1 brandOne marketer, one brand1 seat, 50 tracked prompts, 1 brandTeam of five, one brand5 seats, 100 tracked prompts, 1 brandAgency, three brands10 seats, 300 tracked prompts, 3 brands
Ubersuggest$348lowestNo published fit1No published fit1No published fit1
Mangools$732$732lowest$1,692lowestNo published fit2
VeritasOurs$936No published fit1No published fit1No published fit1
Moz Pro$1,188$1,188$3,912$8,304
SE Ranking$1,548$1,548$2,316$4,344lowest
Semrush$2,388$2,388$7,428No published fit1
Ahrefs$2,988$17,988No published fit1No published fit1
  1. 1No published plan tracks the prompts this setup needs; larger volumes are arranged with the vendor.
  2. 2No published plan covers the people this setup needs and the vendor does not publish a per-seat price.

Bars share one scale across the whole table, so cost growth shows as well as rank. A figure far above the rest is marked off scale.

The plan, seats and add-ons behind every figure are worked through on each tool’s review: Moz Pro, SE Ranking, Semrush, Ahrefs and Veritas.

Each tool in brief

VeritasOurs

Best for owners who want the SEO basics and the writing done in one place.

Veritas homepage
Our write-up of Veritas

Start a 7-day trialSee pricing

Veritas has the lowest entry price here. Starter, at $16 a month, covers site audits graded for Google and AI crawlers, keyword research with volume, CPC and difficulty, and 50 tracked keywords for one site, and it drafts pages from your own documents with a citation on every knowledge-based claim.

What you give up at that price: local SEO and AI answer tracking start on Growth at $78, and backlink monitoring on Business at $125. Veritas is ours; it suits an owner who wants the basics and the writing in one place.

Ubersuggest

Best for the lowest monthly bill for a complete suite.

Ubersuggest homepage

Ubersuggest is the cheapest complete suite: $29 a month for one project, with keyword research, a site audit of 1,000 pages a week, rank tracking of 125 keywords and an AI writer. A free account allows three searches a day, enough to try it on your own site, and each tier is also sold as a one-time lifetime plan.

What you give up: rankings update weekly, backlink reports stop at 2,000 rows, and there are no white-label reports or API. Its Google Maps grid scan shows local rankings around your address but does not manage listings.

Moz Pro

Best for owners learning SEO as they go.

Moz Pro homepage
Full Moz Pro review

Moz Pro is the easiest to learn from. Starter, at $49 a month, covers one campaign and 50 tracked keywords with rank tracking by city and postcode, and Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO and Academy courses are unusually deep free learning material for beginners. Its Domain Authority score is a widely recognised metric.

What you give up: rankings and crawls update weekly, AI tracking starts on the $99 Standard plan, and listings management needs Moz Local, from $20 per location. Its free trial needs a card.

Mangools

Best for simple keyword research with AI answer tracking bundled.

Mangools homepage

Mangools is five simple tools sold together, keyword research first: KWFinder, a results checker, rank tracking, backlinks and site metrics, with AI answer tracking across eight engines bundled in. Basic is $61 a month, or $37.70 billed yearly, and a free plan of five lookups a day is enough to judge it.

What you give up: it describes no site audit crawler and no AI writer, rankings update weekly on Basic, and Basic allows one user. Map pack rankings are tracked, but listings are not managed.

Ahrefs

Best for checking your own site’s backlinks and keywords for free.

Ahrefs homepage
Full Ahrefs review

Ahrefs Free is the best free starting point here: for sites you verify, it shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords and gives limited Site Audit access at no cost. Pay for Lite, at $129 a month, only when you need its research on other sites, with 28.7 billion filtered keywords and 35 trillion live backlinks behind it.

What you give up on Lite: rankings update weekly, there is no trial, and local rankings are tracked by city and ZIP code without any listings management. Start free, and upgrade only for research on competitors.

SE Ranking

Best for local businesses that will grow into a full suite.

SE Ranking homepage
Full SE Ranking review

SE Ranking is the suite a local business grows into. Core, at $129 a month or $103.20 billed yearly, includes local SEO for three locations, listings across 100+ directories, daily tracking of 2,000 keywords across 10 projects, and 100 AI prompts tracked a day. Its trial of 14 days needs no card.

What you give up: it costs more than the budget tools, and its keyword database, at 5.5 billion, is smaller than Semrush’s or Ahrefs’. Extra seats start at $16 a month when you add people.

Semrush

Best for owners who want the deepest data and will pay for it.

Semrush homepage
Full Semrush review

Semrush has one of the two largest keyword databases here, over 27.3 billion keywords, and daily rank tracking of 500 keywords across five sites on its $139 SEO plan. Its free plan allows 10 reports a day, and its SEO, Starter and Pro+ plans have a trial of 7 days.

What you give up: it is the most expensive entry here, each extra user costs $45 a month, and local listings and reviews are a separate product, Semrush Local, at $30 to $60 per location. It suits a business that will use its research depth every week.

What would change our verdict

  • A price change on any entry plan, which would reorder this list because it is sorted by cost for one site.
  • Ubersuggest publishing its middle plan in US dollars, or Mangools confirming which plans new customers can buy directly.
  • Any tool adding local listings or review management to its entry plan, which matters most to the businesses reading this.

Questions people ask

What is the best free SEO tool for a small business?

For your own site, Ahrefs Free: it shows up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords for sites you verify. Google Search Console is free too and shows the searches you already appear for. For research on other sites, Semrush’s free plan allows 10 reports a day and Ubersuggest’s three searches a day.

How much should a small business spend on SEO tools?

On pricing pages read 29 September 2026, one person and one website costs $29 a month on Ubersuggest, $49 on Moz Starter, $61 on Mangools and $129 to $139 on the full suites. Most small businesses need rank tracking and a site audit before anything else, which the cheaper plans cover.

Do small businesses need local SEO tools?

If you sell in a place, yes: map-pack rankings and consistent listings decide much of your search traffic. SE Ranking includes local SEO for three locations in Core, Veritas from Growth, and Moz and Semrush sell it separately per location.

Can I do SEO for my business myself with these tools?

Yes. The tools find the keywords and the problems; the work is writing useful pages and fixing what the audit flags. Moz, Semrush and Ahrefs publish free courses, SE Ranking’s Academy is free with a plan or trial, and Ubersuggest includes a video course with its paid plans.

Each tool’s full review

Every feature, price, pro and con for each tool, each fact linked to the vendor page it came from, is on that tool’s own review page.

What we compared on5 questions that separate these tools
  • Cost for one site. The cheapest published plan that covers one person and one website, paid monthly, with the arithmetic shown.
  • The core toolkit. Keyword research, rank tracking and a site audit. A small business needs all three before anything else.
  • A free start. Whether you can try the tool on your own site before paying, and what the free tier actually allows.
  • Local search. Rankings in the map pack and by city, and help with listings and reviews, for businesses that sell in a place.
  • Time to a first result. Guided setup and learning material, because the owner is usually the one doing the work.
How the scores are calculatedThe arithmetic behind each score
ToolWeighted scoreCriteria scoredStrongest criterion
Mangools746 of 8Engine coverage at the entry price
SE Ranking717 of 8Refresh frequency
Semrush697 of 8Refresh frequency
Veritas
Our product
628 of 8What happens after a gap
Ahrefs587 of 8Refresh frequency
Moz Pro527 of 8SEO beyond AI answers
Ubersuggest476 of 8SEO beyond AI answers

Eight rules, each applied to the published facts in the reviews and weighted to a total out of 100. The rules and weights are set out in our methodology.

How we researched this pageMethod and the update log

How we researched this page

Every fact about another tool comes from that vendor’s own pages, or from a press report where we say so, listed under Sources with the date we read them. Where a vendor does not describe something, we say so rather than guess.

The scores and cost figures on this page are calculated, not assigned. Our full methodology sets out every rule, what each criterion is worth, and where our evidence runs out.

Disclosure. Veritas is our product. It appears on this page because it competes in this category, and we have tried to state its limits as plainly as anyone else’s. If anything here is wrong or out of date, write to support@getveritas.io and we will correct it and note the change in the log.

Update log

  1. 30 September 2026Published.

Sources

The pages behind this comparison, most recently read 29 September 2026. Each tool’s review dates its own sources.

The same jobs in Veritas, our product

Keyword researchSite auditBacklinksLocal SEOPlans and pricing

How this page was made. Veritas is our product. Every fact about another tool is checked against that vendor’s own pages, and scores and costs are calculated by our published rules.

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