There’s no single winner, but the strongest free options all come from Google. This page belongs to our overview of tools for People Also Ask, and it earned its spot the PAA way: in our depth pass on 27 September 2026, Google surfaced “What is the best free tool for keyword research?” two layers below “people also ask keyword research”, under “What are the top 5 keyword research tools?”. Here is each free option, with what it’s good for and where it stops.
Google Keyword Planner
Google describes Keyword Planner as “a free resource to help advertisers build keyword lists for search campaigns”. Give it some words or a website and it suggests related keywords, with estimates of monthly searches and what it would cost to advertise on them.
Limits: it’s built for advertisers. To use it you complete your Google Ads account setup, including billing information, and create a campaign. Keywords with very low search volume, or ones Google treats as sensitive, can’t be looked up at all. Volumes often appear as broad ranges rather than exact numbers, a recurring question in Google’s own Ads community forum.
Google Search Console
If you have a site, this is the most trustworthy keyword data you’ll get, because it’s yours. The Performance report shows the queries that brought up your site in Google, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. The default view covers the past three months, and Search Console keeps 16 months of data.
Limits: you need a site you’ve verified, and it only shows queries you already appear for. It can’t tell you about topics you haven’t covered yet.
Google Trends
Trends shows how interest in a term rises and falls over time and across places. Google builds it from a sample of searches, divides each data point by total searches for that time and place, and scales the result from 0 to 100.
Limits: those are relative numbers, not search volumes. They tell you when and where a term is popular compared with everything else, not how many people search for it. Great for seasonality and for picking between two phrasings; not enough on its own to size a topic.
Google autocomplete
Start typing in Google and the predictions are a free keyword list. Google says they reflect real searches, shaped by the language and location of the query, trending interest, and your own past searches.
Limits: no numbers, and Google removes predictions that break its policies. Because your history counts, it helps to research while signed out. AnswerThePublic packages autocomplete data from search engines like Google into a report, and registered free users get 3 searches a day.
People Also Ask itself
The PAA box is free and hands you questions rather than bare keywords, usually with an answer and a source you’ll be competing with. In our harvest of three searches, all 149 questions came with an answer and 147 of them named a source.
Limits: it shows only a few questions until you open them (4 at the start in our test), and it drifts. For “people also ask”, only 6 of 50 questions were about PAA itself. You can open questions by hand, or use an extension such as PAA Box (our tool) to unpack the box and export a CSV that keeps each question’s parent. The method is in how to use People Also Ask for keyword research.
Which free tool is most recommended for keyword research?
Google Keyword Planner, if you go by Google’s own hints. When we pulled “What is the best free tool for keyword research?” in our depth pass, the first related search Google offered was “Google Keyword Planner”. That question’s own child in the box was “Which free tool is most recommended for keyword research?”, which is Google asking the same thing twice.
For SEO more broadly, Google’s PAA answer to “What is the best free SEO tool?” named Google Search Console, citing a thread on Reddit’s r/SEO. Our practical take: start with Search Console if your site already gets impressions, since it shows demand you’re partly meeting. Start with Keyword Planner if you’re starting from zero.
What about free versions of paid tools?
Many paid suites also offer free versions or free mini-tools, and people look for them: Google’s related searches for this question included “KWFinder” and “Semrush free keyword research tool”. Ahrefs, for one, offers a free Keyword Generator. These are handy for a quick look, but they are front doors to paid products, so expect caps on searches or results. The question tools work the same way: AnswerThePublic gives registered users 3 free searches a day, and AlsoAsked gives every visitor 3 free search credits a day.
The free options side by side
| Tool | What you get | Main limit |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword Planner | Keyword ideas and monthly search estimates | Needs a Google Ads account and campaign; volumes often shown as ranges |
| Search Console | Your real queries, clicks, impressions and position | Only queries you already appear for |
| Google Trends | Relative interest over time and by place | No absolute volume |
| Autocomplete | Predictions based on real searches | No numbers; shaped by your history |
| People Also Ask | Questions with Google’s answers and sources | Hidden behind clicks; drifts off topic |
A free workflow that holds up
- Collect questions and phrasings from autocomplete and the PAA box for your seed topic. Prune the drift.
- Check the keyword versions in Keyword Planner to see which have measurable demand.
- Run the finalists through Google Trends to catch seasonality before you schedule them.
- After you publish, watch Search Console for queries you didn’t plan for. Those are your next pages.