Which tool is best for an SEO audit?

Screaming Frog is the standard tool for the crawl portion of an SEO audit, mapping every page, broken link, and duplicate tag on a site, with a free tier covering up to 500 URLs.

Ahrefs and Semrush add competitive context a pure crawler cannot, showing which keywords competitors rank for that your site does not, which turns a technical audit into a strategic one.

Google Search Console remains essential alongside either, since it is the only source for exactly which keywords Google already associates with your site and how each page performs in real search results.

The gaps these tools surface are what an automated SEO platform is built to close with new content.