The best open-source SEO Research tools, curated: 19 in the registry, including FreeCrawl, OpenSEO, SerpBear. Every tool is open-source; each entry lists license, self-hostability, and links.
FreeCrawl· tool, 2026-10-13 FreeCrawl is an MIT-licensed, cross-platform desktop website crawler for SEO audits — a free, fully-local alternative to Screaming Frog that runs on your machine with no telemetry and no cloud. Built in TypeScript; still pre-1.0.
OpenSEO· tool, 2026-10-09 Self-hostable, open-source alternative to Semrush/Ahrefs (MIT): keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks, and site audits, with a first-class MCP + AI-skills surface. Bring your own DataForSEO key; no forced subscription. Docker/Cloudflare self-host, or a $10/month hosted plan.
SerpBear· tool, 2026-09-28 SerpBear is free, open-source rank tracker software (MIT, self-hosted): monitor daily Google keyword rankings for unlimited domains and keywords, with a Google Search Console integration for real impressions/visits and a Google keyword ranking API for reporting tools. Keyword research uses Google Ads search-volume data. No per-keyword SaaS fee.
CiteRank: a proprietary weekly tracker for whether AI answer engines cite or omit your site· news, 2026-09-25 CiteRank is a proprietary SaaS that tests weekly whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews cite, name or omit your site versus competitors (AEO/GEO). It offers a free single-question check, then paid plans at $5, $12 and $19 per month via Stripe. There is no open-source repository — it is not open-source and no license attaches.
Elmo· tool, 2026-09-25 Elmo is an MIT-licensed, self-hostable platform that tracks how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and Google AI Overviews cite or omit your brand — an AEO/GEO citation monitor positioned against Profound, Peec and Otterly. It is established, not a fresh drop: ~13 months old, 362 stars. It is open-core: the self-hostable MIT core is real and active, and a paid Elmo Cloud ($29/mo) and white-label exist alongside it.
jev-seo· tool, 2026-09-24 jev-seo is an MIT-licensed Rust CLI plus MCP server that runs roughly 50-rule SEO/GEO audits, performs live crawls, computes GEO scores, detects rank drift and enforces CI gates. It is free and self-hostable, and because it exposes an MCP server it can also be driven by agents. It positions as an OSS alternative to paid SEO/GEO auditors with direct GTM utility.
Bloomiro ships an MCP server that pipes your SEO and AI-visibility data into Codex, Claude and Cursor· news, 2026-09-12 Bloomiro launched an MCP server connecting coding agents to live project SEO data: Google Search Console, AI-mention checks, community citation sources, competitor gaps, page scans and prioritized tasks, queryable from Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT or VS Code. Proprietary: MCP access is bundled with Builder/Growth subscriptions, saved-data reads free, fresh analyses on credits; 3-day trial. Not open source.
BrightBean Studio· tool, 2026-09-03 Unified inbox+sentiment; influencer discovery has NO OSS
crowd.dev· tool, 2026-09-03 Community CDP; Orbit/Common Room alt; LF-owned
Fediwall· tool, 2026-09-03 Only UGC-curation dashboard; Fediverse-only
googlemaps (google-maps-services-python)· tool, 2026-09-03 ~5000 stars; complements google-maps-scraper (unofficial fallback); Official Google Maps Platform Python client (Geocoding, Places, Directions, Distance Matrix). Auth via API key. Sanctioned; no ToS risk; billed per request.
Media Cloud· tool, 2026-09-03 Large-scale news monitoring; research-grade
osmnx· tool, 2026-09-03 ~5800 stars; complements python-overpy (raw Overpass), yelpapi; Open-data OSM tooling over the public Overpass/Nominatim APIs. Open protocol/open data (ODbL) — no ToS/ban risk; respect Overpass usage policy.
SEOnaut· tool, 2026-09-03 Web-app dashboard; forkable to SaaS
SiteOne Crawler· tool, 2026-09-03 Rust; CI gates; backlink slice has NO OSS (data moat)
trackthenews· tool, 2026-09-03 Media monitoring; PR distribution/journalist-DB has NO OSS
advertools· tool, 2026-08-25 Python productivity toolkit for online marketing: SEO crawling, SERP analysis, keyword/SEM tools, robots.txt & sitemap parsing, log-file and search-marketing analysis.
GPT Researcher· tool, 2026-08-25 Autonomous research agent that produces cited, multi-source reports from web and local documents — useful for market, competitor, and category research and content briefs. MCP integration included.