15 Free Tools Every Blogger Should Know in 2026
Free tools for writing, images, keyword research, analytics, site speed and scheduling, with what each free plan includes and its main limit.
7 October 2026 · 10 min read
In this guide
To have a good blog, you do not have to have a stack of subscriptions. There is a limited range of free tools which do the majority of the work: write cleanly, create pictures in a fast loading format, research what people are looking at and see what they read on your site, plan what will be published next.
Each tool mentioned below has a free plan that is handy on its own, but not a trial. On each of them you will find out what the free plan covers and a single sincere shortcoming. On 7 October 2026, we have performed the same on the individual pricing pages (or official help pages) of each tool which do not have a paid tier. Free plans are not consistent, and it is best to verify the associated page prior to relying on a limit. There are no affiliate links in this article.
At a glance
| Job | Tool | Free plan in brief |
|---|---|---|
| Writing | Google Docs | Unlimited storage space, full editor, 15GB shared. |
| Writing | Grammarly | Spelling, tone and grammar tests. |
| Writing | Hemingway Editor | Highlights and grade of readability. |
| Images | Canva | 5 GB storage, 1.6M+ templates. |
| Images | Squoosh | Shrink, resize and turn images. |
| Images | Pexels | Free photos and videos |
| Keywords | Google Search Console | Your own search queries and clicks |
| Keywords | Google Trends | Trend in search interest. |
| Keywords | Google Keyword Planner | Homework and search volume estimates Search results based on keywords. |
| Analytics | Google Analytics | Incoming links, visited pages and events. |
| Analytics | Microsoft Clarity | Heatmaps and recording of sessions. |
| Site speed | PageSpeed Insights | Actual speed and laboratory speed data. |
| Site speed | Cloudflare | CDN, DNS and free SSL to your domain. |
| Scheduling | Buffer | 3 social channels, 10 queued posts in it. |
| Scheduling | Notion | Editorial calendar and idea book. |
Writing and editing
1. Google Docs
Whom it targets: Anyone wishing to save themselves the draft which should be easily shared with an editor or client or co- author.
Free plan: Free at any Google Account. You can have the full editor with comment and suggestions, version history and voice typing, which is supported in the recent versions of Chrome, Edge and Firefox and is supported in many other languages including Hindi.
Limit: Your files use the 15 GB of free space as shared by Gmail and Google Photos. Assuming that you save the photos of your phone on the same account that you use, the extra space is consumed easily.
2. Grammarly
Who the target audience is: Bloggers writing in English as a second language, and anyone who wants to check his or her typography wherever she/he types.
Free version: Spelling and grammar corrections, a tone check and 100 AI prompts to write the text, as shown on the plans page of the Grammarly website. In India, the paid Plus option was priced at 392- per member/month billed yearly, or 1000 billed monthly.
Limit: Rewrite sentences and check plagiarism are paid services, and you will only be able to correct errors and not much on awkward sentences with the free version.
3. Hemingway Editor
Who it is addressed to: Writers with wordy sentences, and people who write to phone readers.
Free plan: The Hemingway home page editor is in your browser. Copy a draft and it displays a readability level and colour-codes issues: lengthy or complicated sentences, words have simpler counterparts, adverbs and passive voice.
Limitations: It identifies issues but does not correct them. Hemingway Editor Plus is required to fix and check grammar and cannot be used without AI, starting at $100 per year.
Images
4. Canva
Who they are aimed at: Bloggers that require featured images, Pinterest pins and social graphics, but without design software.
Free plan: Canva offers thousands of types and options of design, 1.6M design templates, 4.7M photos, videos, graphics and audio files as well as one brand kit with three colour options, 5 GB storage space on clouds and up to 20 utilization of its Artificial Intelligence system per month.
Limit: Background eraser, one-tap resize and social scheduling are all paid features. Canva Pro was listed at ₹4,000 a year for one person in India.
5. Squoosh
Who it is aimed at: Virtually anybody who loads the phone pictures or screenshots of a few megabytes.
Free version: Squoosh is a Google Chrome Labs, open source web app that is free. You can also scale an image, juxtapose both original and compressed images, and switch to other formats like WebP, AVIF and MozJPEG. Photos are not posted to the server but they are processed on your device (GitHub).
Limitations: The web application processes a single image at a time. It becomes sluggish, with 40 product photos.
6. Pexels
With whom it is dedicated: Bloggers in need of photos or short videos, who do not have money to buy stock images.
Free plan: The Pexels license mentions that you are free to use all the photos and videos and provide the photographer with credit, but you can edit images.
Restriction: The license does not eliminate restrictions: don't sell modified versions, don't make a thinly veiled implication that a person or brand featured in a photograph endorses you, and do not portray identifiable individuals in a negative light. On numerous other sites, popular images can also be found.
Keyword research
7. Google Search Console
Who it targets: All bloggers who have published sites. According to Google, it is a free service.
Free plan: The Performance report displays the searches your pages were found in, clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position and retains 16 months of data. To find questions that you can answer better in that post, you can actually do this by clicking a post then go to the are questions tab.
Limit: It will only reveal the search your site already shows and Google will not reveal rare queries in the name of safeguarding the privacy of searchers. There will be a new blog receiving very minimal.
8. Google Trends
Who it is aimed at: Bloggers intending to make seasonal or news-based posts, like festival recipes, notes to the exams or tax season explainers.
Free plan: Free, and no need to sign in. Search interest in a number of terms by region over time and by state in India and look at the related searches, in ascending order. A Breakout label indicates that a search has increased by over 5,000-percent, based on Google Trends help.
Limitations: Trends indicates relative interest on a scale of 0 to 100 (not the number of searches) and low volume words are depicted as 0 (Trends FAQ).
9. Google Keyword Planner
Who it aims at: Bloggers seeking coarse search volume measurements and keyword thoughts out of Google information.
Free plan: Free within Google Ads. The following points will be provided as a list: "discover new keywords" is a list of ideas based on several words or a web address, whereas Get search volume and forecasts is a list that is already created (Keyword Planner help).
Weakness: It is designed as advertisers. You require a Google Ads account, and the assistance page of Google mentions that you should complete the account creation, address, and billing details in an attempt to utilize the minimum features. The competition column does not indicate the way difficult a keyword is to rank, but rather the advertising rate that is displayed by the number of advertisers displaying advertisements based on the keyword.
Analytics
10. Google Analytics
Who it is meant to be: Bloggers who need to know the sources of visitors, their posts, and their clicks.
Free plan: Google claims that Analytics is free; Analytics 360 is the enterprise one. You receive reports on traffic sources, pages, devices and events, and it can be connected to Search Console.
Limit: It is time consuming to learn. Free properties retain the detailed data utilized in Explorations 2 or 14 months long, so configure set retention to 14 months when you install it. Standard reports aren't affected by this setting.
11. Microsoft Clarity
The intended audience: Bloggers wishing to view the usage of a page: on which part they are clicking, how far they are scrolling, and at which point do they get stuck.
Free plan: According to the pricing page of Clarity, it is free and unlimited in terms of traffic. That includes recording of sessions, click, scroll and area heatmaps, rage-Click and dead-Click insights, AI summaries and Google Analytics integration.
Limit: 30 days of recordings will be stored unless you label or mark them as a favourite (data retention). Microsoft claims it is free because the anonymous information assists Microsoft to choose the products to be used. As it logs the visitor sessions, specify it in your privacy policy.
Site speed
12. PageSpeed Insights
Who it is aimed at: anybody interested in knowing whether their site is slow to actual visitors, particularly those on mobile.
Free plan: Free with Google; simply input a URL on PageSpeed Insights. It presents real quality of user data on the Chrome UX Report over the past 28 days when your site is received by enough users and a Lighthouse lab analysis with certain recommendations. Google sets a good thresholds relative to Core Web Vitals Largest Contentful Paint: up to 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint: up to 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift: up to 0.1.
Limit: Small or new blogs may be lacking sufficient real-user information, which can only show the lab test, and the score can vary between tests. It has a list of problems, fix them instead of aiming to be a perfect 100.
13. Cloudflare
Who it aims: Self-hosted blogs on their own domain, like WordPress on a shared hosting, which requires a content delivery network (CDN) and a freeSSL.
Free plan Cloudflare has plans with the following on their plans page: DNS, a CDN, a set of Universal SSL certificate, unmetered DDoS protection and a free managed firewall ruleset at a cost of $0 a month. Cloudflare will market the free plan on personal and hobby websites that do not necessitate the use of a business-critical Internet service.
Limit: It is limited to implementing it by modifying the nameservers of your domain to have Cloudflares take control of them. Possibly miss one record in the transfer and you can lose your site or email. Image optimisation (lossless) requires a subscription and Automatic Platform Optimization WordPress costs $5 per month in the free plan. Also, test the existing presence of a CDN in your host.
Scheduling and planning
14. Buffer
Who to whom it applies: Bloggers who post each new post or review to multiple social media platforms.
Free plan: The pricing area of Buffer includes up to three channels, 10 posts per channels at once (but you can add more posts as they are published), 100 saved ideas, one user and the AI Assistant and basic insights. The channels supported are Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, X and YouTube.
Limit: Having 10 posts in a queue in any channel is enough to have a blog once a week and not to plan a month of daily posts. Paid plans start at $5 per channel per month, billed yearly.
15. Notion
Who it serves Bloggers: Bloggers who like to have an editorial calendar, list of ideas and post briefs in a single place.
Free plan: The pricing page of Notion includes unlimited pages and blocks, databases with custom properties, simple form and Web sites, Notion Calendar and a trial of Notion AI. A basic database that includes a publish-date column will serve as a content calendar.
Limitations: With two or more members, a free plan block is restricted. A total size (per upload) of files is limited to 5 MB, and page history is limited by 7 days.
Where to start
Don’t go out on all fifteen this week. Begin with Search Console and Google analytics or Clarity, use PageSpeed Insights to the homepage and one of your posts that are popular, and select one writing tool. Include the others once you encounter the issue that they resolve: bulky pictures, lacking social diary or nothing left to write.
Sources
- Google One plans (15 GB free storage) – https://one.google.com/about/plans
- Find what's changed in a file (version history) – Google Docs Editors Help – https://support.google.com/docs/answer/190843
- Type with your voice – Google Docs Editors Help – https://support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226
- Grammarly plans and pricing – https://www.grammarly.com/plans
- Hemingway Editor – https://hemingwayapp.com/
- Hemingway Editor Plus pricing – https://hemingwayapp.com/hemingway-editor-plus
- Canva pricing – https://www.canva.com/pricing/
- Squoosh – https://squoosh.app/
- Squoosh on GitHub (Google Chrome Labs) – https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/squoosh
- Pexels license – https://www.pexels.com/license/
- About Search Console – Search Console Help – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9128668
- Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup – Search Console Help – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553
- A deep dive into Search Console performance data filtering and limits – Google Search Central Blog – https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/10/performance-data-deep-dive
- FAQ about Google Trends data – Trends Help – https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4365533
- Related searches in Google Trends – Trends Help – https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4355000
- Use Keyword Planner – Google Ads Help – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7337243
- Google Analytics – Google Marketing Platform – https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/
- Data retention – Google Analytics Help – https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7667196
- Microsoft Clarity pricing – https://clarity.microsoft.com/pricing
- Clarity data retention – Microsoft Learn – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/clarity/data-retention
- About PageSpeed Insights – Google for Developers – https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about
- Cloudflare plans – https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/
- Change your nameservers (Full setup) – Cloudflare DNS docs – https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/zone-setups/full-setup/setup/
- Buffer pricing – https://buffer.com/pricing
- Notion pricing – https://www.notion.com/pricing