Google's SEO tools are free.
So why pay for more?

What Google gives you for free

Google Search Console shows the searches your site appears for, with clicks, impressions and average position. It tells you which pages Google has indexed and flags some of the problems it finds. It keeps 16 months of data.

PageSpeed Insights tests one web address at a time for speed and Core Web Vitals, on mobile and desktop, and suggests what to improve on that page.

Google Analytics 4 shows what visitors do once they arrive: where they came from, which pages they read and whether they got in touch or bought something.

All three are accurate, because they are Google's own data. Whatever else you use, set them up. UtilitySEO reads from Search Console and GA4 itself, so we are not asking you to give them up.

What they leave you to do by hand

Test every page. PageSpeed Insights checks one address at a time. On a site with a few hundred pages, that is a few hundred tests, and you still have to write the results down somewhere.

Join the dots. Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and GA4 are three separate reports. None of them puts the problems in one list or tells you which one to fix first.

Keep your history. Search Console drops anything older than 16 months. If you want to compare this year with two years ago, you have to export and store the data yourself.

Work out the fix. Search Console can tell you a page is "Crawled, currently not indexed". It does not tell you what to change on that page.

Check AI answers. None of Google's free tools tell you whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity mention your business when people ask about what you sell.

What UtilitySEO adds

The audit crawls every page on your site, up to 2,000. It renders JavaScript the way a browser does and runs 100+ checks on each page, on mobile and desktop.

Then it adds what your Search Console, GA4 and PageSpeed data say, and gives you one list of fixes in order of importance. Each issue has a plain English guide to fixing it, and you can add it to your to-do list. If you would rather work in a spreadsheet, export the whole audit as a CSV. PDF reports are there too, white-label on Enterprise.

We also keep your Search Console data beyond Google's 16 month limit, check every week whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity mention you, and show what changed since your last scan. Re-scan any time to check a fix worked.

You do not have to set it up alone. We help you connect Search Console and Analytics and set up your first project, for free. Email support@utilityseo.com or use the chat on this site.

When the free tools are enough

Honestly, a lot of small sites do not need paid SEO software. If your site has a handful of pages, you rarely change it, and you are happy to check Search Console once a month, the free tools will do. Spend the money on your business instead.

The same goes if you only want a speed check on one page. PageSpeed Insights does that well, and it is free.

Paying starts to make sense when:

• your site has more pages than you can test one by one
• more than one person edits the site, so things break without anyone noticing
• you want to know what to fix first, not just what is wrong
• you want to know whether AI assistants mention you
• you need a report for a client or your boss

The big SEO suites are built for teams with an SEO department, and they are priced that way. UtilitySEO keeps the premium features a small business actually uses and takes less of your marketing budget: £48 a month on Entrepreneur, with free onboarding help.

The easiest way to decide is to run the free scan on your own site. It needs no signup. If it finds nothing worth fixing, you have your answer.