Tools I Use
The tools I actually use to run RankingHacks and a portfolio of affiliate sites.
These are the tools I actually use to run RankingHacks and a portfolio of affiliate sites. Real workflows, real pricing, honest opinions — including which ones I’d drop tomorrow if a better option showed up.
Most links on this page are affiliate links. Some aren’t, because the tool doesn’t have a program — I list those anyway when they earn the slot. The trend indicator next to each name is my read on momentum in 2026, not a vendor talking point.
Affiliate disclosure: links marked as affiliate pay me a commission if you sign up. The recommendation comes first; the link follows. I don’t list tools I don’t run myself.
How to read this page
Every tool gets a trend indicator based on what’s happening in its category right now:
- 🔥 On fire — explosive growth or category dominance in the last 3-6 months.
- 📈 Trending up — clear positive momentum, mostly positive sentiment.
- 🪨 Stable as a rock — mature, reliable, boring in the best way.
- ❓ Unclear — mixed signals, too new to call, or in transition.
- 📉 Trending down — losing share to better substitutes.
AI & Research
The work that used to take hours of manual research now happens through a layered AI stack. Claude is the writing and reasoning engine. Tavily handles structured web research inside cron jobs (see Context Density and LLM-Driven SEO for how I think about AI’s role in modern SEO).
Anthropic API (Claude) 🔥
The backbone of every workflow I run. Sonnet 4.6 handles drafting, code, and research; Opus 4.6 gets pulled in for the hard reasoning. Prompt caching cuts repeated-context cost by ~90%, which makes it economically viable to run Claude across daily cron jobs and long pipelines.
Pricing: $3 / $15 per million tokens (Sonnet 4.6). $15 / $75 (Opus 4.6). · Affiliate: None — Anthropic doesn’t run a public affiliate program.
OpenAI API 📈
Still in my stack for specific tasks where GPT-4o’s output style or o3’s reasoning is a better fit. Honest read: Anthropic has eaten a lot of my OpenAI usage in the last year, but I keep both because the price-per-task math sometimes flips.
Pricing: $2.50 / $10 per million tokens (GPT-4o). $2 / $8 (o3). · Affiliate: None.
Perplexity Pro 📈
My fast first-pass for content research and SERP-style queries with citations attached. After my own GEO audit (I scored RankingHacks 59/100), I noticed Perplexity already cites this site for niche AI-SEO queries — which is exactly the visibility loop I’m chasing. Worth the $20.
Pricing: $20/mo Pro · $200/mo Max · $10/mo Edu. · Affiliate: Yes — direct program, $10 flat per signup + 10% recurring.
Tavily Search & Extract 🔥
The search backend behind my daily cron-driven research pipelines. Cleaner output than SerpAPI, designed for LLM agent consumption. If you’re building automation that fetches and extracts web content for an LLM to read, Tavily is the default pick in 2026.
Pricing: Free tier: 1,000 credits/mo. PAYG: $0.008/credit. Project: ~$12-15/mo for 4,000 credits. · Affiliate: None confirmed.
SEO Content & Ranking
The content optimization layer. I rotate between these depending on the project’s budget — there’s no single winner. The relationship between SERP-optimization tools and LLM-driven ranking is shifting fast; what worked in 2023 needs revisiting now.
NEURONwriter 📈
My budget pick for SERP-driven content optimization. UI is dated, AI writing is mediocre, but the SERP analysis is genuinely good for the price. I covered the recent AI-focused feature update separately.
Pricing: $23 Bronze · $45 Silver · $69 Gold · $93 Platinum. 20% off annual. · Affiliate: Yes — direct, 30% recurring lifetime, 60-day cookie.
Surfer SEO 🪨
The polished option, with AI overview tracking across ChatGPT and Perplexity baked in. I use it when a project’s budget justifies the price; I don’t use it on RankingHacks itself. Solid product, but I’ve watched a lot of solo publishers churn out of Surfer toward NEURONwriter or Frase.
Pricing: $49 Discovery · $99 Standard · $182 Pro · $299 Peace of Mind. · Affiliate: Yes — via PartnerStack, 75-125% of first payment + 25% on annual.
Frase 📈
Content brief generator that earns its slot. Gives you a SERP-driven brief in under 60 seconds, which is the right input format for handing work to a writer (human or AI). The built-in AI writer is forgettable; that’s not what you’re paying for.
Pricing: $49 Starter · $129 Pro · $299 Scale. +$35/mo for unlimited AI writing. · Affiliate: Yes — direct, 30% recurring for 12 months.
LowFruits 🪨
Keyword tool that scores SERPs by weakness rather than difficulty. The original “blue dot = forum = easy” thesis got partly broken by Google’s Helpful Content updates, but it’s still a fast way to find low-competition queries on niche sites. Awesome Motive owns it now; product hasn’t degraded.
Pricing: $20.75/mo Standard (annual) · $62.45/mo Premium. PAYG from $25 / 2,000 credits. · Affiliate: Yes — 20% recurring up to 12 months.
SE Ranking 📈
Best Semrush alternative on price-to-feature ratio in 2026. Rank tracking, audits, AI-overview-and-ChatGPT visibility tracking, content tools — all in one platform at a fraction of Semrush’s enterprise pricing. Backlink data is weaker than Ahrefs, but for solo publishers and small agencies it’s the most legitimate full-stack pick.
Pricing: ~$65 Essential · $119 Pro · $259 Business. 20% off annual. · Affiliate: Yes — direct, 30% recurring lifetime, 120-day cookie.
Hosting & Infrastructure
Where the sites and the automation actually run. I’m a Hetzner-and-Cloudflare maximalist for everything I control directly. Managed hosting comes in for client projects and projects where uptime SLAs matter more than margin.
Hetzner 🔥
Every server I run lives here. The price-to-performance ratio isn’t close — German cloud and dedicated boxes at a fraction of AWS or DigitalOcean for equivalent specs. NVMe is fast, the network is reliable, and the AI/self-hosting boom is sending massive new traffic to them. Yes, the control panel for legacy products feels like 2014. I don’t care.
Pricing: CX22: €3.79/mo · CPX22: €7.99/mo · AX dedicated from €39-55 via auction. Prices increased across the board in April 2026. · Affiliate: Referral only — you get $20 credit, I get $10. No cash payouts.
Cloudflare 🔥
The edge layer for everything I publish — DNS, CDN, WAF, Workers, Pages, the whole package. The free tier alone outclasses most paid alternatives, and Workers + Pages have become a credible Vercel competitor for static and edge-rendered sites. I run image transformations, redirects, Browser Rendering, and a half-dozen Workers off it.
Pricing: Free tier handles most needs. Pro $20/mo per domain. Workers: 100K free requests/day, then $0.50/M. · Affiliate: None for solo creators (PowerUP partner program is reseller/MSP-only).
Sevalla ❓
Kinsta’s spun-off PaaS for static sites, app, and database hosting (separated from the WordPress side in February 2026). I host static-site experiments here; it’s clean, fast, and the free static tier is genuinely usable. The brand reset is recent, so the verdict is still forming — I’m watching it as a potential Cloudflare Pages alternative for projects that need application hosting too.
Pricing: Static: free (1 GB/site, 100 GB bandwidth, 600 build min). App and database hosting from $5/mo each. · Affiliate: Unconfirmed — Kinsta runs $50-500 affiliate; Sevalla terms not yet public.
Cloudways 📈
Managed cloud hosting on top of DigitalOcean, Vultr, AWS, or GCP. The right pick for client WordPress projects where you want managed-host convenience at half of Kinsta’s price. The DigitalOcean acquisition has accelerated feature velocity, especially the Smartfix and AI Copilot features.
Pricing: From ~$11-14/mo (DigitalOcean Standard). Pay-as-you-go. · Affiliate: Yes — Slab up to $125/sale OR Hybrid: $30 + 7% lifetime, 90-day cookie.
Newsletter & Publishing
The audience-ownership layer. I’m in the middle of overhauling my newsletter setup; both tools below earn their slot for different reasons.
Beehiiv 🔥
What I’m migrating my paid newsletter to. Paid subscriptions, ad network, recommendations engine, automations — built specifically for creators who plan to monetize the list. The default 2026 pick over Substack for anyone serious about revenue. Substack still wins for casual writers who just want to publish; Beehiiv wins everywhere else.
Pricing: Free up to 2,500 subs · Scale $43/mo (100K subs) · Max $96/mo. · Affiliate: Yes — direct, tiered 50%/55%/60% commissions for 12 months.
Listmonk 📈
Free, open-source, self-hosted newsletter platform. Single Go binary, runs on a $5 Hetzner box, sends through Amazon SES or Postmark for cents per thousand. If you have any technical comfort, this is how you stop paying $200/mo to Mailchimp for a list under 100K. I’ve run it for years across portfolio sites.
Pricing: Free — open source under AGPLv3. Real cost: $5-20 server + email-sending provider fees. · Affiliate: N/A — open source.
Image & Media
Image CDN and editing tools that serve a portfolio of media-heavy sites without breaking the bandwidth budget.
Sirv 🪨
Image CDN with on-the-fly transformations and zoom. I serve images on portfolio sites through Sirv because the pricing is transparent — bandwidth and storage, not Cloudinary’s confusing credit system. Smaller mindshare than Cloudinary or ImageKit; the trade-off is sane bills.
Pricing: Free: 0.5 GB storage / 2 GB bandwidth. Business: $19/mo (or $209/yr). Enterprise: $999+/mo. · Affiliate: Partner program is integrator-focused; commission terms aren’t public.
Photoroom 📈
Best-in-class background removal API. Third-party tests put it at 70.8% accuracy on fine edges (hair, fur, textiles) versus Remove.bg’s 41.7%. ~350ms median latency on the API. I use it for product image cleanup at scale; the consumer app is also genuinely good for one-offs.
Pricing: Free: 250 exports/mo. Pro ~$10/mo. Max ~$20/mo. API priced separately on credit basis. · Affiliate: Yes — via Awin, 20% commission, 30-day cookie.
Productivity & Automation
Where I build mini-apps and where the cron jobs that run my portfolio do their work. The combination of Cursor for editing and Claude Code for autonomous tasks has reshaped how I write code in 2026 — see the chunk-ranking paradigm for why this matters beyond just developer ergonomics.
n8n 🔥
Self-hosted, AI-native workflow automation. The most-buzzed automation tool of 2026 for good reason — node-based, free if you self-host, eats Make and Zapier’s lunch on technical workflows. The first month has a real learning curve and debugging is the universal pain point, but once it clicks, you stop reaching for one-off scripts.
Pricing: Self-hosted Community Edition: free. Cloud: €20 Starter · €50 Pro · €667 Business. · Affiliate: Yes — via PartnerStack, 30% recurring for 12 months.
Cursor 📈
Where I build mini-apps and tooling. Tab completion is still best-in-class, and the Composer/Agent modes are how I prototype faster than I can type. I run Cursor and Claude Code side by side — Cursor for editor work, Claude Code for autonomous multi-file tasks. Cursor’s pricing changes through 2026 caused real backlash, but the product still earns its slot.
Pricing: Free Hobby · $20 Pro · $60 Pro+ · $200 Ultra · $40/user Teams. · Affiliate: None — only refer-a-friend ($20 credit each).
What I tried and dropped
A short list of tools I either rotated out of or never found enough value in to keep paying for. No drama, no hot takes — just transparency:
- Mailchimp — left for Listmonk and self-hosted sending years ago. The pricing curve doesn’t pencil out past ~5K subs.
- Cloudinary — credit-based pricing made bills unpredictable. Sirv earns the slot.
- Zapier — n8n does more for less, especially self-hosted.
- Mangools — fine for keyword research, but SE Ranking covers more ground at a similar price.
- Kinsta — solid managed WordPress, but Cloudways gets the same job done at roughly half the cost on most projects.
Stack updates
This page is a living document. Tools come and go; I update it whenever something earns or loses its slot. For the reasoning behind the tools that aren’t here yet — particularly around parasite SEO and LLM ranking, traffic diversification, and affiliate-specific AI workflows — the rest of RankingHacks is where I write that up.
Questions, corrections, or a tool you think should be on this list? Reach out via the contact page or find me on the usual places listed in About.
Last updated: May 2026. Pricing accurate as of the date above; vendors change tiers regularly. Verify on the vendor’s pricing page before signing up.