You can find similar websites free with nothing more than a search box and a bit of patience. The free routes work well for spotting the brands people compare. They fall short when you need numbers, such as how many searches two sites share or how much traffic each one gets. Here is what costs nothing, how far each method goes, and what the cheapest paid step looks like.

1. Google autocomplete

Type a site's name followed by "vs" and stop. The suggestions that drop down are pairings people have actually searched for; Google's help page says its predictions reflect real searches. Try the same name with "alternatives", "competitors" and "sites like" after it.

Good for: a first list of brands in under a minute. Stops at: predictions shift with location and time, and they say nothing about how close two sites really are.

2. Independent "alternatives" articles

Open five or six roundups for the site you started from and jot down every name. Keep the ones that turn up in at least three. Ignore any roundup written by one of the vendors on the list, since those pages exist to sell the author's own product.

Good for: the shortlist a typical buyer ends up with. Stops at: roundups go stale, and many copy each other.

3. Two-brand searches

Pick two sites you already know are alike. Put each name in quotes and search for both at once. Any page that mentions the pair is likely a comparison or gift guide, and the other names on those pages are the rest of the group.

Good for: finding the cluster a site belongs to, plus the pages worth being listed on. Stops at: it is slow, and you are reading pages one at a time.

4. Review directories and maps

Software directories sort products into categories, and map listings sort shops and services by type. Look up the site you care about and browse its category. For a local business this is often the best free source there is.

Good for: the way buyers actually browse. Stops at: category labels are broad, so expect some names that are not real rivals.

5. AI chat assistants

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini something like "what sites are similar to [name] for students?" Free tiers are enough. Ask more than once, and in more than one assistant. Names that appear every time are solid. Names that appear once are guesses.

Good for: a quick plain-language list with reasons. Stops at: answers vary between sessions and can mix in sites that have closed.

Many older guides tell you to type related: before a web address. Google's current page on search operators does not list it, so do not count on it.

Where free stops working

All five free methods tell you which sites resemble each other in the eyes of buyers. None tells you which domains are fighting for the same Google searches, or how much overlap there is. That answer needs keyword data, and keyword data costs money to collect.

The cheapest way we found to get it is a single lookup on seogeoaeo.ai. Its Competitor Finder takes any public domain and a Google country and returns up to 30 sites that share the most keywords with it. For each one you see how many keywords they share, how many the site ranks for in total, and estimated monthly visits. Sites where 5% or more of their keywords overlap are marked as close competitors, and huge general sites are set apart so they do not crowd the top.

One run costs 38 credits. The smallest plan is $29 a month for 2,000 credits, which covers about 52 lookups. Every tool shows its price before it runs, and a run that fails before producing a result gives the credits back. There is also a free preview on the home page, though it checks your own site's health rather than finding similar ones.

What paid lookups still miss

Keyword overlap only sees Google search. A shop that sells mostly in person, or a brand that lives on paid ads, will not appear. Visits are estimates. And seogeoaeo.ai runs one-off checks with no rank tracking, so if you want to follow positions daily, a larger suite with tracking is the better buy.

A sensible order

Start free: autocomplete, three roundups, one two-brand search. If you then need to know which of those sites really compete in search, spend one lookup on the seogeoaeo.ai Competitor Finder and compare its list with yours.