Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to eRank (ad) and EverBee (ad). I earn a commission if you buy a plan through them, at no extra cost to you. It also covers AutoKeyWorder, which is my own product (ad, own product). Alura, Sale Samurai and Marmalead pay me nothing, and Etsy’s own tool is free.
When I checked my own Etsy shop’s Marketplace Insights on 13 September 2026, Etsy counted 1,200 searches for “cat mom gift” in the last 30 days. eRank, the best-known of the Etsy SEO tools, showed 148 for the same phrase. That 8x gap was the extreme. On the other 4 phrases I tested, Etsy’s count ran 2.3x to 3.2x above eRank’s on three and 15% below it on one. Part of any gap is setup: eRank’s help article says Etsy’s count is global, and I had eRank on its USA setting. All 5 phrases, both screenshots, and what the gaps do and don’t prove are in the section below.
The two “best Etsy SEO tools” roundups I found on page one of Google on 13 September, from Growing Your Craft and Merch Titans, compare the paid tools with each other. Neither mentions that Etsy now gives sellers its own search counts. So I put 5 phrases through both, using my own Etsy shop and eRank account, and copied every number off the screen. It changed my answer. Before, I’d have told you to start with eRank. Now I’d tell you eRank sorts the long list and Etsy’s free tool checks the finalists.
The short answer: use two free plans. eRank’s free plan sorts your phrase ideas, and Etsy’s free Marketplace Insights checks the finalists with 15 searches a week. Pay for eRank Basic at $5.99 a month (ad) when 5 eRank lookups a day aren’t enough, or Etsy Plus at $10 a month when 15 Etsy searches a week aren’t.
Best Etsy SEO Tools at a Glance
Prices and free limits are as of September 2026, read on each tool’s own pricing page on 13 September. I use Etsy’s tool and eRank Basic myself. I have not used EverBee, Alura, Sale Samurai or Marmalead, so for those four I’m reporting what their own pages say. If you don’t have a shop yet, start with how to sell on Etsy and come back here at the research step.
| Tool | Free plan | Cheapest paid | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy Marketplace Insights | 15 searches a week | Etsy Plus, $10 a month | Free check for your finalists |
| eRank | 5 lookups a day | Basic, $5.99 a month | Buy first, to sort long lists |
| EverBee | 10 keywords, no sales data | Growth, $299 a year | Only for picking a niche |
| Alura | 5 searches a day per tool | Basic, $7.99 a month | If you want marketing tools too |
| Sale Samurai | 20 keyword searches a month | $19.99 a month | Small free plan, not tested |
| Marmalead | None listed | $19 a month, or $300 once | If you hate subscriptions |
| AutoKeyWorder | 5 products in the browser tool | Starter, $6.99 a month | Writes the listing, no research |
The Etsy SEO tools on this list do two different jobs. Research tools answer “what should my tags be” (the Etsy tags guide shows how I turn the answer into 13 tags): Etsy Marketplace Insights shows Etsy’s own search count and a conversion rating, eRank ranks phrase ideas and shows a 15-month trend, EverBee estimates what competing listings sell, and Alura, Sale Samurai and Marmalead sell keyword research with extras on top. A listing tool answers “now write it”: AutoKeyWorder reads the product photo and writes the title, all 13 tags and the description. AutoKeyWorder doesn’t estimate demand, and none of the research tools write the finished listing for you. For most sellers, the cheapest working setup in September 2026 is Etsy’s free tool plus eRank’s free plan for research, and one listing writer for the typing.
Sort the long list in eRank first. eRank’s free plan gives you 5 lookups a day. Basic, the plan I pay for, raises it to 100 a day for $5.99 a month, and on Basic I get a 15-month trend line, the seasonal view Etsy’s 30-day tool can’t give you. Save Etsy’s 15 free searches a week for the finalists.
I Checked eRank Against Etsy’s Own Numbers
Etsy’s Marketplace Insights is in Shop Manager under Stats. It shows how often shoppers searched a phrase on Etsy in the last 30 days, how many listings match, and a conversion rating. eRank shows its own “Avg. Searches” figure for the same phrase. My Etsy shop sells digital bundles, so I picked phrases from that side of Etsy plus one gift phrase.
| Phrase | Etsy searches, last 30 days | eRank avg. searches | Etsy vs eRank | Etsy conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| digital planner | 43,100 | 19,025 | 2.3x higher | High |
| printable wall art | 21,300 | 8,523 | 2.5x higher | Very low |
| sticker sheet | 19,100 | 5,885 | 3.2x higher | Very low |
| svg bundle | 5,300 | 6,214 | 15% lower | Typical |
| cat mom gift | 1,200 | 148 | 8.1x higher | Typical |
Sources: my Etsy Shop Manager (window 14 August to 12 September 2026) and my eRank account, both read 13 September 2026.
Treat the size of those gaps with care, because the two figures are measured differently. Etsy’s count covers the last 30 days and, according to eRank’s help article, is global, while I had eRank on its USA setting and eRank averages over a longer period. That matters most for a seasonal phrase: eRank’s chart for “cat mom gift” peaks in December 2025, has a smaller bump in April 2026, and sits near zero from May, so a long average reads low in September. Only Etsy’s tool showed whether shoppers buy. It rated “printable wall art” and “sticker sheet” Very low, while eRank tagged “printable wall art” as Trending in Search.
The step after the research. AutoKeyWorder (ad, own product) is my Chrome extension that reads your listing photo with AI vision and fills the title, all 13 tags, the description, category and materials directly in Etsy’s listing editor, with nothing copied between tabs. AutoKeyWorder does no keyword research, so it comes after the tools on this page. It charges 2 credits per Etsy listing, and the install includes 50 free credits with no card, enough for 25 listings. The browser version writes a title and 13 tags from one photo, 5 products free with no signup.
Install AutoKeyWorder free, 50 credits Try 13 tags from one photo, no signup
eRank’s order mostly matched. When I checked the 10 possible pairs among my 5 phrases, eRank put 9 in the same order as Etsy. The one it swapped was “sticker sheet” and “svg bundle”, which Etsy counts 3.6x apart, while it got the closest Etsy pair, “printable wall art” and “sticker sheet”, right. Five phrases can’t tell you when eRank’s order is safe, so I treat it as a first sort and check the finalists in Etsy’s tool.
Fast risers show up late. When I checked my own Etsy account, “cat mom gift” had 1,200 searches in 30 days, with Etsy’s change figure at +61.3%. Day by day it climbed from about 20 searches in mid-August to 91 on 12 September. eRank’s monthly trend line for the phrase runs to August 2026 and sits near zero through the summer, so the September climb isn’t in it yet. That’s one phrase, and it may be lag rather than a miss.
Conversion is Etsy-only. A Very low rating doesn’t mean zero sales. But when I checked “printable wall art”, its 21,300 searches came with that Very low rating, and a phrase that rarely converts brings you views faster than orders. eRank can’t show you that, because only Etsy sees the checkout.
Two oddities showed up when I checked eRank. Its click-through rate was above 100% on 4 of my 5 phrases and hit 137% on “sticker sheet”, which can happen when one shopper opens several listings. And although I had eRank set to the USA, its country panel named Pakistan as the top searcher country for “digital planner” (26.7%), “printable wall art” (29.8%) and “svg bundle” (58.2%), with US searchers at 14.1% to 23.2%. eRank doesn’t document how the setting and the panel relate, so I read both as rough.
Etsy Marketplace Insights: The Free Tool Most Lists Skip
Etsy Marketplace Insights is Etsy’s own keyword tool for sellers, and it’s free. Open Shop Manager on a desktop browser, click Stats, then Marketplace Insights. Type a phrase and you get the number of Etsy searches and matching listings for the last 30 days, a daily chart, a conversion rating from High to Very low, and related searches buyers ran. Etsy’s help page, read 13 September 2026, sets the limit at 15 keyword searches a week for free, with each result available for 7 days. That makes Marketplace Insights the only Etsy SEO tool here with figures from Etsy itself rather than an estimate, and the only one with a keyword conversion rating.
Unlimited searches come with Etsy Plus, which costs $10 USD a month and also includes 15 listing credits and $5 of Etsy Ads credit each month. If you’d use those credits anyway, the searches are close to free.
What it’s bad at:
- You need a shop to see it. Marketplace Insights lives inside Shop Manager, so a seller still planning a first listing can’t open it.
- 15 a week goes fast. Check 13 tags and a title phrase for one listing, and you’ve used 14 of the week’s 15.
- 30 days is all you get, so it can’t show seasons. eRank’s chart puts the “cat mom gift” peak in December 2025. A September look at Etsy’s tool gives you no hint of that.
- There’s no country filter. eRank’s help article says the count is global, so a US-only shop can’t separate its buyers.
Use it for: the final check on phrases you’ve already shortlisted, especially the conversion rating.
eRank: The Paid Etsy Keyword Tool I’d Buy First
eRank’s core screen takes a phrase and returns average searches, clicks, click-through rate, competition and a 15-month trend. It also audits your listings for missing tags and title length. Prices from eRank’s pricing page, as of September 2026:
- Free: 5 keyword lookups and 5 listing audits a day, with no time limit
- Basic: $5.99 a month or $65.99 a year, with 100 lookups and 50 audits a day
- Pro: $9.99 a month or $94.99 a year, with 200 lookups and 200 audits a day
- Expert: $29.99 a month or $269.99 a year, with 500 of each a day
eRank does history well. That December 2025 spike on “cat mom gift” is the kind of thing you plan stock around, and Etsy’s own tool can’t show it.
What eRank can’t give you is Etsy’s own count. When I tested 5 phrases, its search figure sat below Etsy’s 30-day number on 4 of them, and I can’t tell you how much of that is eRank and how much is the different window and country. The click-through rates over 100% and the Pakistan-heavy country panel in the test above are why I read its numbers as a ranking between phrases, not a count. Etsy’s Marketplace Insights is where I check the finalists.
Use it for: sorting a long list of phrase ideas and seeing the season. If you’re choosing between eRank and EverBee specifically, I compared them in eRank vs EverBee.
EverBee: Only If You’re Choosing a Niche
EverBee (ad) is a Chrome extension that puts an estimated monthly sales figure and revenue next to every listing in an Etsy search. That’s its one real trick. I don’t use it myself, so this section is its pricing page and what it claims. Prices from EverBee’s pricing page, as of September 2026:
- Hobby: free, with 10 keywords and no sales data
- Growth: $299 a year, which works out at $24.99 a month
- Business: $69 a month billed yearly at $828, with unlimited shops
Every sales number is an estimate, and the free plan hides the sales data, which is the only reason to use EverBee. If you already have a product and need tags, this is the wrong tool.
Use it for: checking whether a niche has money in it before you make anything for it.
Alura, Sale Samurai and Marmalead: What Their Own Pages Say
I haven’t used these three, so I have no verdict on their data. Here’s what each one costs and includes, taken from their pricing pages as of September 2026.
Alura. Free plan: 5 searches a day per tool and 10 listings optimized. Basic is $7.99 a month for 50 daily searches per tool, 100 listings and 100 AI responses a month. Growth is $14.99 and Professional $29.99, which is unlimited. Annual billing saves up to 50%. Alura’s higher tiers add email, Pinterest pins and A/B tests, so compare those plans with the marketing tools you’d otherwise pay for, rather than eRank alone.
Sale Samurai. Free plan: 20 keyword searches and 10 listing analyses a month. Paid is $19.99 a month or $199.90 a year, with a 3-day trial. 20 searches a month is fewer than Etsy gives you free in two weeks.
Marmalead. $19 a month, $53 a quarter, $190 a year, or $300 once for lifetime access. Its pricing page lists no free plan. Against the monthly price, the lifetime deal pays for itself in 16 months, if you’re sure you’ll still be selling then.
Is There a Free Etsy SEO Tool That’s Actually Good?
Yes: Etsy’s own Marketplace Insights for 15 phrases a week, eRank’s free plan for 5 lookups a day, and the AutoKeyWorder browser tool for 5 products’ worth of tags, all without paying. The full zero-budget setup for digital sellers is in how to sell digital art on Etsy. How Etsy search uses those words once you have them is in my Etsy SEO guide.
What I Actually Do
Before this check, my keyword step was eRank alone: 5 to 10 phrase ideas, near matches off, sort by clicks, keep anything with sensible competition. I trusted the search column as a count.
Since 13 September I split it. eRank sorts the long list. The top few phrases go through Marketplace Insights, and anything rated Very low for conversion loses its spot in the first 5 words of the title. It can still be a tag, since views are cheap. Then AutoKeyWorder writes the 13 tags and the title from the photo in the listing editor, and I fix whatever reads wrong. I changed this the day I ran the test, so I can’t show you a sales result from it yet.
The same order works for AI t-shirt designs on Etsy. If you also sell on Redbubble, its tag rules are different enough that I covered them in Redbubble vs Etsy. Stock photo sellers have their own list in best stock photo keywording tools.
Which Etsy SEO Tool Should You Pay For?
Nothing at first. Use eRank’s free plan to sort phrase ideas and Etsy’s free Marketplace Insights to check the finalists. Then pay for the limit you hit first: eRank Basic at $5.99 a month if 5 lookups a day is the problem, or Etsy Plus at $10 a month if 15 Etsy searches a week is. For most new shops that’s eRank first, because you look up far more ideas than finalists. EverBee Growth only if you’re picking a niche from zero. Alura if you want your marketing tools on the same bill. Marmalead’s $300 lifetime plan if you’ll sell on Etsy for more than 16 months and hate subscriptions.
Whatever you buy, run the phrases that matter through Etsy’s own tool before they go in your title. On my 5 phrases, the conversion rating was the one figure eRank couldn’t give me.