inemaSEO 5 — With Agents: Claude Code and Codex Doing the Repetitive Work|INEMA.CLUB-PRO

Lesson 7 · 16 min

Open vs. paid tools: what you can build for free and when to pay

A paid SEO tool sells data: search volume, competitor SERPs, backlinks, AI monitoring. For your own site, almost everything you need day to day comes from free sources: Search Console, Bing Webmaster, the server log, a local crawler, and the open Common Crawl graph. This lesson teaches you to tell the two apart and to decide when to pay.

Start the lesson
A carpenter weighs, at the workbench, organized hand tools on the wall against a large professional machine.

In this lesson you will

  1. 1Function by function: where the data comes from
  2. 2What doesn't exist for free (and isn't worth looking for)
  3. 3open-seo, DataForSEO, Firecrawl, and Apify: what each one sells
  4. 4Going deeper: the inemaseo-sistemas repository and course 7

Goal: build the free core by function and decide, given the honest limit of each one, when a paid tool pays for itself.

01From function to the decision to pay

Tap each block.

Click each block in the diagram to see what it does.

For your site, start free. Pay when a limit blocks a decision that is worth more than the price.

02What each path delivers

Click each step. Prices read from the vendors' pages on 10/19/2026: check the site before you decide.

1. The free core

Performance, official AI citation, technical audit, AI bots in the log, and approximate backlinks all come from free sources. For keywords, autocomplete, Google Trends (relative index), and the real queries from Search Console.

That is enough for the work in lessons 2 to 6.

03Your table of functions and the decision to pay

Copy it into a project file and fill it in. The agent can build the draft; you check the price on the site.

ferramentas.md: function, source, limit
| function | free source | honest limit | paid (if you need it) |
|---|---|---|---|
| site performance | Search Console (weekly export) | your site only; 16 months | — |
| AI citation (official) | Bing Webmaster: AI Performance (CSV) | no clicks; no API | paid AI monitor |
| technical audit | auditoria.sh / local crawler | no JS at scale | Screaming Frog |
| AI bots | server log | check the IP, user-agent can be spoofed | — |
| backlinks | Common Crawl (domain) + Search Console (Links) | no page or anchor; delay | DataForSEO / Ahrefs |
| keyword | autocomplete, Trends, Search Console | no exact volume | DataForSEO / Semrush |
| competitor SERP | — | scraping Google violates the terms | DataForSEO / Apify |
decisao-pago.md (template)
# Decision: <paid tool>
Date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
Decision that the data unlocks: <e.g.: choose between 3 topics with similar volume>
Free options already tried and the limit that blocked it: <...>
Price checked on the site on <date>: <amount and plan>
Key: in .env (outside the repo), used only for <purpose>
Reassess on: <date>
Result: <did you pay? was it worth it? what changed>
Simulation: illustrative example

Situation: a coffee shop with three topics for the month and no queries for them in Search Console yet.

  • Free tried: autocomplete and Trends show similar relative interest in all three.
  • Limit: without exact volume, you can't break the tie.
  • Decision: a one-off volume query on a paid provider, with the key in the .env and authorization for that purpose; reassess the following month.

04Practice: your tool map

Use the functions you really need on your site.

E1 · Table of functions

30 min

Copy ferramentas.md and keep only the functions you use. For each one, confirm that the free source works on your site (open the panel, run the script, download the CSV).

Done when: each row of the table has a free source you tested or a justified dash, and the limit written in your own words.

E2 · A paid decision

20 min

Pick the function where the free option blocks you the most and fill in decisao-pago.md, checking the price on the vendor's site.

Done when: the file has the decision the data unlocks, the price with the date you checked it, and the date to reassess, or the written conclusion that it is not worth paying right now.

05Test what you learned

The explanation appears after your answer.

Question 1 of 4

What does not exist for free from any source?skill

06To take with you

Free firstSearch Console, Bing Webmaster, logs, a local crawler and Common Crawl cover your site.
Honest limitExact volume, competitor SERP and full backlinks are paid.
Open is not freeopen-seo is MIT, but the data comes from DataForSEO.
2026 yardstickShare of voice from a paid tool is not an official score; the official citations are in Bing AI Performance.

Going further

inemaSEO systems: open tools for your siteCourse 7: Systems, build your own open Semrushopen-seo (MIT, on top of DataForSEO)Firecrawl: pricingApify: pricing
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