When someone wants to know how many visits a website receives from search engines, the first thing they discover is that serious numbers are almost never free. The useful question isn’t “which tool do I use,” but “how much am I willing to pay for a piece of data that, deep down, will always be an estimate.”
What you can measure for free and what you can’t
There’s a distinction many overlook: measuring your own traffic and estimating someone else’s are two different things. For your domain, Google Search Console is the most reliable source and costs nothing: it shows clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position. Google Analytics 4 adds sessions, sources, and behavior. The limit is obvious: you don’t see your competitors’ traffic.
For third-party domains, free options exist, but with clear ceilings:
- Limited credits: tools like Semrush or Ahrefs offer trials or free versions with restricted monthly queries.
- Browser extensions: they usually show monthly estimates without a keyword breakdown and fail on low-traffic sites.
- Public lookalikes: they give a range of total visits, not the detail an audit needs.
The mistake people make with free figures
A common case: comparing the estimated traffic of two competitors using different tools and drawing strategic conclusions. Each provider builds its model with its own data panels (extensions, ad clicks, user samples), so two figures for the same domain can differ by 40% or more. According to official documentation from the main providers, their volumes are estimates, not measurements.
Another frequent mistake: taking the traffic of a site with fewer than 300 monthly visits at face value. There, statistical models lose accuracy and free tools simply show zeros or absurd ranges.
When the paid plan is justified
Paid versions bring three things free access doesn’t: data history, keyword breakdown, and export to cross-reference with your own metrics. If you manage SEO for a client or analyze a niche with dozens of competitors, those free credits run out in the first research session.
That said, not everyone needs to pay. A local business that just wants to know whether its website is growing can get by with Search Console and a spreadsheet. Paying 100 euros a month to review your own domain is throwing money away.
A practical combination that works
Search Console for your own site, a paid tool for occasional competitive analysis (one month, not an annual subscription), and the history you build yourself month by month. That personal record ends up being more valuable than any third-party estimate, because no one has better real data on your website than you do.
Limitations worth accepting
No tool sees a third party’s real organic traffic. Not even paid ones. What they offer are useful approximations for spotting trends, not accounting figures. If you need certainty about a third-party domain, the only legitimate way is for its owner to give you access to their data. Any promise of “exact traffic” is, quite simply, false.