“Free rank tracker” can mean four different things: a free plan you keep, a trial that ends, a desktop app that forgets your results, or Google’s own data. We signed up for four of them on one day, pointed each one at the same small website, and wrote down how many keywords $0 really buys. This guide covers only the free side: caps, defaults and the moment each tool asks you to pay.
Why Free Rank Trackers Need a Closer Look
Ubersuggest’s free account tracks 25 keywords per project with “weekly desktop-only ranking updates,” according to its help center. That one line shows the real trade. The keyword count is only the first limit; update frequency, devices and locations shrink a free plan just as much.
Why does that matter before you sign up? Because the first weeks of ranking history are the ones you can’t get back. Pick a free tracker that drops your mobile rankings or your city, and you lose that history even if the keyword cap looked generous.
So we looked at every limit, not just the headline number. Three of the tools below are free plans you can stay on. One is a trial. The rest come from Google, a desktop software maker and two other vendors, and we read their documentation instead of testing them.
Key Takeaways
Mangools gave us the most free tracking you can keep: one domain with 50 keyword slots, per our October 21, 2026 test log. Semrush stops at 10 keywords and Ubersuggest at 25, and SE Ranking has no free plan, only a 14-day trial without a card. Google Search Console has no keyword cap, but it reports an average from real searches, not a daily check.
Quick Answer: Which Free Rank Tracker Tracks the Most Keywords
Among free plans you can keep, Mangools tracks the most keywords at 50 slots on one domain, ahead of Ubersuggest’s 25 and Semrush’s 10, per our October 21, 2026 test log. If you only need a short trial, SE Ranking’s 14 days with 750 keywords beat all of them. And if you want no cap at all, use Google Search Console on your own site.
| Free option | Type | Keywords for $0 | Catch | Where to start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mangools SERPWatcher | Free plan | 50 slots on 1 domain | Each device or location uses its own slot | Mangools |
| Ubersuggest | Free plan | 25 per project, 1 project | Weekly, desktop only | Ubersuggest help |
| Semrush Position Tracking | Free account | 10 on 1 website | One location and device per campaign | Semrush KB |
| Seobility Basic | Free plan | 10 on 1 project | We did not test it | Seobility pricing |
| SE Ranking | 14-day trial, no card | 750 | Ends after 14 days | SE Ranking plans |
| Google Search Console | Free service | No keyword cap | Averages, a few days late, your own site only | Search Console Help |
| SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker | Free desktop app | Checks without saving | Results are not saved | SEO PowerSuite pricing |
Which one should you pick? For most small sites, Mangools plus Search Console. Mangools gives you a fixed list that it checks for you, and Search Console fills in every query you didn’t think to add. If you want the full setup walkthrough of the four trackers we used, including paid plans and price per keyword, see our same-day setup of Semrush, SE Ranking, Mangools and Ubersuggest.
How We Checked Each Free Plan
We set up rank tracking in Semrush, Ubersuggest, Mangools and SE Ranking on October 21, 2026, on a small marketing site our team runs, with one work account and no credit card. Each tool tracked the same English keyword, set to the United States and desktop wherever the setup let us choose.
The task was short on purpose:
- Sign up for the free plan, or the no-card trial where no free plan exists.
- Create a project or tracking campaign for the site.
- Add one keyword and start tracking.
- Write down the keyword cap and every other limit the app showed.
Why one keyword? It was enough to see every setup screen and every cap counter, while spending as little of each free allowance as possible.
Here’s the honest part. None of the four trackers had returned a ranking when we wrote our log, so this guide never rates accuracy or speed. It covers what we saw on the setup screens, plus each vendor’s documentation, which we reread on October 24, 2026. Search Console, SEO PowerSuite, Seobility and Wincher appear only through their own pages; we did not sign up for them in this round.
One note on money: Indie Stack Lab may add affiliate links to some tools later. When a link is an affiliate link, it is labeled. That did not change what we set up or wrote down.
Free Plan vs Free Trial: Why the Difference Matters
A free plan keeps working at $0; a free trial turns into a bill or a locked account. Ubersuggest’s help center, for example, says its 7-day trial needs “valid payment information” and that billing “starts automatically after the trial ends” unless you cancel (Ubersuggest help).
The two often sit on the same screen, so it’s easy to pick the wrong one. Here is what the signup paths looked like:
- Semrush. After the signup survey, the plan page said: “This is your best plan match — Pro+ $299/mo … 7 days free, then $299/mo.” The big button was “Get free trial.” The free account sat behind the smaller “Skip trial” button, which we pressed. If you’d rather start the trial, read what to cancel before Semrush’s 7-day trial starts billing first.
- Ubersuggest. Registration landed us on the free account right away. The dashboard then showed “Free trial available — Start a 7-Day Trial.” We left it alone. Per the help center, that trial runs on monthly plans only and is “available once per account only.”
- Mangools. Signup led to an email confirmation, not a plan picker. Mangools’ FAQ says its free plan “is completely free” and needs no credit card (Mangools FAQ). The only nudge was a 10% discount countdown banner on every app page, which matches the FAQ’s note about a “time-limited early-bird discount” after registration.
- SE Ranking. No free plan. The signup page offered “Start 14-Day Free Trial” with “No credit card required.”
- Wincher. Its pricing FAQ says it does “not offer a public free plan,” with a 7-day free trial instead (Wincher pricing). We did not test it.
So which matters more for rank tracking? The free plan, by far. Ranking data only becomes useful after weeks of history. A 7-day or 14-day trial gives you a setup tour and a few data points, then the history either costs money or stops growing. Use a trial to learn a tool, and a free plan to build your trend line.
Semrush Free Account: 10 Tracked Keywords
A free Semrush account tracks 10 keywords on 1 website, and multitargeting is “Not available” without a paid SEO Toolkit, according to Semrush’s Position Tracking guide. Our keyword step showed the same cap: “Keyword limit 1/10” after we added one keyword.
What does a free campaign look like? We picked Google, Desktop, United States and English. The engine list also offered ChatGPT and Gemini. After we pressed Start Tracking, the campaign read “Keywords: 1 — Gathering keywords data: 0/1,” and that was the last status we saw. For every option on that setup screen, see our walkthrough of Semrush Position Tracking on a free account.
Three free-account rules matter more than the keyword count:
- One location, one device. Without multitargeting, each campaign tracks one target. Semrush says that after setup “it’s impossible to change the original location or device type,” and that replacing the campaign loses “all ranking history for your current target” (Semrush KB). Choose desktop or mobile, and the country, before your first keyword.
- Daily data, then weekly. Semrush’s free-account guide says the free plan’s report “will populate with daily data” (Semrush blog). Its knowledge base adds that daily results are kept for 60 days, then shown as weekly points for 140 weeks (Semrush KB).
- Deleting means starting over. Without an SEO Toolkit subscription, you can’t delete a Position Tracking campaign “without deleting the entire project,” and that also removes the project’s Site Audit and other campaigns.
What about the ChatGPT and Gemini entries in the menu? Don’t read them as free AI rank tracking. Semrush’s Prompt Tracking guide says prompts in ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode need an AI Visibility Toolkit or Semrush One subscription. The toolkit costs $99 per month and “does not offer a free trial,” per its own page. We tracked Google only.
Inside the app, each free limit showed up only in the tool that enforced it. Our in-app subscription page listed paid plans from Starter at $199/month and no free-plan summary at all.
Ubersuggest Free: 25 Tracked Keywords and 3 Searches a Day
Ubersuggest’s free account tracks up to 25 keywords in 1 project and 1 location, with weekly desktop-only updates, according to its free account guide. Our Rank Tracking page agreed: “Keywords Tracked / Plan Limit 1/25.”
The same help page says the free account “has no time limit,” so the 25 keywords don’t expire. Here is what else shapes free tracking:
- Weekly updates on every plan. Ubersuggest says rankings “are now updated weekly by default for all plans” and that “Daily updates are no longer available” (Ubersuggest help). Upgrading won’t buy daily data here.
- Desktop only. The same article states that free accounts “cannot track mobile keyword rankings.”
- Three searches a day. Research is capped at 3 searches or reports per day. After one keyword lookup, our screen read “2 out of 3 free daily searches available.”
- No shortcut from research. The free guide says you can’t add keywords “directly to rank tracking or keyword lists” from the keyword reports. You type them into the project instead.
Setup was the part that bit us. Rank tracking lives inside a project, and the project picked its language and location from the country we were browsing from, not the United States. It suggested 12 local-language keywords, which we unselected before adding our English one. We didn’t change the market, and the tracker kept it: “Update in progress,” then “No data for this period.”
What’s the lesson? Fix the language and location in project setup before you add anything. With only 1 location on the free plan, a wrong market leaves you no second slot to fix it with. Our record of how Ubersuggest’s free plan handled a real project has the full setup.
One more warning if you try the paid trial later. Ubersuggest’s data help page says that if you downgrade, “you’ll lose the detailed data collected during your paid subscription” (Ubersuggest help). Trial history doesn’t carry over to the free plan.
Mangools Free: One Domain and Daily Lookup Limits
Mangools’ free plan gave us 1 tracked domain in SERPWatcher with 50 keyword slots: after one keyword, the counter read “1 entered (1 spent = 1 location, 1 device) | 49 left,” per our October 21, 2026 test log. That is the most room of any free plan we used.
Read that counter twice, because it explains the real cap. One keyword in one location on one device costs one slot. Track the same keyword on desktop and mobile, and it costs two. Add a second country, and it costs four. So 50 slots can mean 50 desktop keywords, or 25 keywords on both devices.
How did setup go? Mangools has no Google sign-in. We registered with an email and a password, solved a reCAPTCHA and confirmed the account by email. SERPWatcher’s New Tracking form asked for the domain, a location and a device, and we chose the United States and Desktop. Then it suggested keywords: “We’ve found 2 keywords [our site] already ranks for!” After Start tracking, the app said “Your ranks will be ready in about 15 minutes” and set up a weekly ranking email every Monday.
The other free limits are daily lookups, shown in the account menu:
- 5 keyword lookups, 5 SERP lookups and 5 site lookups, each resetting after 24 hours.
- “Tracked domains 1 / ∞” between the free and paid plans.
- A one-time “API & MCP welcome bonus” of 100 keyword and 100 SERP lookups.
Why do the SERP lookups matter for rank tracking? They’re the free way to see a whole results page for a keyword on demand, next to the scheduled tracking. Five a day covers a quick check of your top terms.
What about update frequency? Mangools’ pricing page lists it for paid plans only: weekly on Basic and Premium, daily on Agency. If you need daily movement, the free plan isn’t the place to look, and neither are the two cheaper paid plans. For the rest of the free plan, read our walkthrough of SERPWatcher and the other Mangools tools on a free account.
SE Ranking: No Free Plan, but a 14-Day No-Card Trial
SE Ranking has no free plan; its 14-day trial includes “up to 10 projects, 750 tracked keywords per day, 20 AI prompts per day,” according to its pricing FAQ. Our own trial billing page showed a smaller project count: “Websites: 1 / 5 — Keywords: 1 / 750.”
Why include a trial in a free guide? Because “rank tracker free trial” is how many people meet SE Ranking, and the trial is the biggest no-cost allowance on this page. Its help center lists more trial limits: Google top 100 tracking, 3 months of historical data and 5 added competitors (SE Ranking help).
Setup had two surprises. First, the project location defaulted to the country we were browsing from, and we switched it to the United States by hand. Second, the keyword step wouldn’t launch without an AI prompt: “You need to enter some prompts to track results within the platform.” We added one and launched with “1 of 750 remaining keywords limits will be used.”
What happens on day 15? The same help page is direct: “To continue working with the platform after the 14-day trial, you will need to subscribe to the service.” The public pricing page lists Core at $129/month, or $103.20/month billed annually, with 2,000 keywords tracked daily. For the rest of the trial, see our notes from SE Ranking’s trial on a small site, and for the plans after day 14, see how SE Ranking’s paid tiers compare after the trial.
So how should a $0 site use it? As a one-time tool, not a tracker. Load your full keyword list, check the AI widgets, export what you learn, and let it end. And if you ever downgrade from a bigger plan, SE Ranking’s help center warns that an account over the new limits gets blocked until you “remove the excess items.”
Google Search Console: The Free Option Without a Keyword Cap
Google Search Console is “a free service offered by Google,” and its Performance report shows the average position of your site for every query that earned an impression, with no keyword list to fill (Search Console Help). That makes it the only “google rank tracker free” option without a cap.
So why isn’t it the only tool you need? Because it isn’t a tracker in the usual sense. Google’s documentation sets three limits:
- It runs a few days behind. Collected data “should be available in 2-3 days,” per About Search Console data.
- Tables stop at 1,000 rows. The same page says some rows may be left out, and the Search Console API shows a larger selection.
- History lasts 16 months. Google Analytics Help notes that “Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months” (Google Analytics Help). Export anything you want to keep longer.
There’s also a scope limit. Search Console covers only sites you verify, and only queries where you already appeared. It can’t watch a keyword you don’t rank for yet, and it can’t watch a competitor. That is the gap a free tracker fills.
Our pairing advice is simple. Put your 10 to 50 money keywords in a free tracker, and use Search Console for everything else. If the two disagree, that’s expected: one is a fixed daily or weekly sample, the other an average of real searches. To pull those numbers step by step, see how to check keyword rankings in Google Search Console. New to the tool? Start with our beginner’s guide to Search Console for SEO, and for a one-off check, our guide to checking your website’s Google rankings compares the methods.
Desktop Free Versions: SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker
SEO PowerSuite’s free version is listed as “FREE FOREVER” and lets you “Work on 1 project (no saving)” and “Check rankings (no saving),” according to its pricing page. That is the “rank tracker free download” most searchers find. We read the vendor pages only and did not install it.
How is a desktop rank tracker different? It runs on your own computer, on Windows, Mac or Linux, and checks rankings when you run it. The product page promises “Unlimited desktop and mobile position tracking” and “Local rankings in over 597 search engines” (SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker). The free version’s catch is in that pricing line: you can check, but you can’t save the project or its results.
What does the free version suit, then? A one-off bulk check. You can paste a long keyword list, run it once and read the positions, which no web-based free plan on this page allows. The free version also lists 1 competitor per project and Google AI Overviews tracking.
What it doesn’t give you is history. Without saving, every run starts from zero, so there’s no trend line. Saved tracking starts with Professional at $349 billed every year, which lists unlimited projects and keywords and 1-year historical data. For a long one-time list, try the free download; for ongoing tracking, use one of the web free plans.
More Free Options: Seobility, Map Tracking and Seven-Day Trials
Seobility’s free Basic account lists 1 website project and 10 tracked keywords, “free, unlimited time,” with no credit card, according to its pricing page. We didn’t sign up for it, so the details here come from that page alone.
Is 10 keywords on Seobility worth it? It ties with Semrush on the count. The same free account adds 5 daily tool credits, a limited website audit of 100 pages per crawl and 3 tracked AI prompts. Its paid plans list daily desktop updates and mobile updates every three days. Check the update frequency inside your account after signup, because that table on the pricing page covers the paid plans.
What about local rankings for free? Semrush’s free-account guide lists a Map Rank Tracker with “50 free credits per month” that tracks your Google Maps ranking as a heatmap (Semrush blog). That’s useful for a single shop. For city and ZIP code tracking beyond that, read our guide to local rank tracking by city and ZIP code.
Some dedicated trackers have no free plan at all. Wincher, for example, offers only its 7-day trial. Treat offers like that as trials, not as free rank trackers.
Free Limits Side by Side and When to Upgrade
Across the free plans we set up, the keyword cap ran from 10 (Semrush) to 50 slots (Mangools), and only Semrush’s documentation promises daily updates on a free account, per our test log and each vendor’s pages. The table puts every free limit on one screen.
| Semrush Free | Ubersuggest Free | Mangools Free | SE Ranking trial | Search Console | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan | 14-day trial | Free service |
| Keywords we saw | 10 | 25 | 50 slots (49 left after one) | 750 | No keyword list |
| Sites | 1 website | 1 project | 1 tracked domain | 5 websites in-app | Every site you verify |
| Locations and devices | One target per campaign | 1 location, desktop only | Each pair uses a slot | Chosen per project | All countries and devices |
| Update frequency | Daily (Semrush blog) | Weekly | Paid plans: weekly below Agency | Daily | 2-3 day delay |
| Signup in our test | Google, then “Skip trial” | Email, password, email confirmation | Google, at least 1 AI prompt | Site verification (not tested) | |
| Time limit | None listed | None | None listed | 14 days | 16 months of history |
Two rows decide most choices. “Locations and devices” matters if you sell on mobile or in more than one country, because every free plan here either fixes one target or charges a slot for each. “Update frequency” matters if you publish often and want to see the effect within days.
When should you stop using free rank trackers? Watch for three signs:
- You need more than one site. Every free plan above covers a single website or domain.
- You need mobile and desktop together for more than 25 keywords. Mangools’ slot rule halves the list, and Ubersuggest’s free plan drops mobile entirely.
- You need ranking history for a client report. Free plans keep history, but none of them save branded reports, and SEO PowerSuite’s free version saves nothing at all.
When you reach that point, compare paid plans by price per tracked keyword and update frequency. Our rank tracker software comparison with price per keyword does that math for each entry plan. If rank tracking is only one of your free SEO jobs, our roundup of free SEO marketing tools covers keyword research, audits and backlinks on the same free plans.
Set Up a Free Rank Tracker This Week
The fastest path is one free plan plus Search Console: in our setup, Mangools went from signup to “Your ranks will be ready in about 15 minutes” on the same day, with no card. Search Console then covers every query you missed.
A short checklist before your first keyword:
- Pick the country and device first. Semrush fixes them at setup, and Ubersuggest’s free plan gives you one location.
- Write your list before you sign up. Start with 10 to 25 keywords tied to leads or sales, plus your brand name.
- Count device slots on Mangools. One keyword on two devices uses two of your 50.
- Skip the trial button unless you mean it. Semrush’s default path leads to a $299/month Pro+ trial.
- Export your data every month. Free plans keep limited history, and Search Console stops at 16 months.
What will you track first? Choose the keyword you would act on if it dropped next week, and start there.
References
- Semrush Knowledge Base: What is Position Tracking?
- Semrush Knowledge Base: How do I change the device and location in Position Tracking?
- Semrush Knowledge Base: How often does Semrush update its Position Tracking data?
- Semrush: What Can You Do with a Free Semrush Account?
- Semrush Knowledge Base: Prompt Tracking on Semrush
- Semrush Knowledge Base: AI Visibility Toolkit
- Ubersuggest Help: Free Account Key Features and Limits
- Ubersuggest Help: Rank Tracking Desktop and Mobile Results
- Ubersuggest Help: How to Start a Free Trial with Ubersuggest
- Ubersuggest Help: Can I Get my Data Back?
- Mangools: Frequently asked questions
- Mangools: Plans and Pricing
- SE Ranking: Subscription plans
- SE Ranking Help: Account and project settings FAQ
- Google Search Console Help: About Search Console
- Google Search Console Help: About Search Console data
- Google Analytics Help: Queries report
- SEO PowerSuite: Plans and pricing
- SEO PowerSuite: Rank Tracker
- Seobility: Plans and Pricing
- Wincher: Pricing