Long Tail Pro vs AnswerThePublic: Long-Tail Keywords or Customer Questions, Which Tool Does a Startup Need?
Founders on a small budget usually win in search with specific phrases, not big head terms. For years, two tools stood for two ways of finding them. Long Tail Pro was a keyword finder: it listed long-tail phrases with search volumes and a score for how hard each one was to rank for. AnswerThePublic, now part of Neil Patel's NP Digital, shows the questions, comparisons and phrases people type around a topic, which makes it a content-ideas tool. We checked both on their official websites in October 2026. AnswerThePublic has new plans and AI features; longtailpro.com no longer shows Long Tail Pro at all.
Quick answer: you can no longer buy Long Tail Pro. Its website went offline in March 2024 and the domain now shows an unrelated firm. Choose AnswerThePublic if you need to know what customers ask, for blog topics, FAQ sections and product pages: a free account gives 3 searches a day, and paid plans started at €120 a year on a limited-time offer when we checked. For what Long Tail Pro did, long-tail keywords with a difficulty score, use KWFinder by Mangools (free plan with 5 lookups a day, Basic €37.70 a month billed yearly). Many startups use both: questions from AnswerThePublic, numbers from KWFinder.
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Long Tail Pro vs AnswerThePublic at a Glance
Sources: answerthepublic.com (home and pricing) and mangools.com (pricing, KWFinder), checked 31 October 2026, and the Internet Archive copy of longtailpro.com. Both live sites showed euro prices to our European visitor.
The Tools Compared
AnswerThePublic: See the Questions Your Customers Type
AnswerThePublic takes one keyword, or now a website address, and returns the searches built around it, grouped into questions, prepositions, comparisons and alphabetical lists. It still shows them as its well-known visual wheels, with lists and an XLSX export for spreadsheets. The homepage now promises to show what people search "from Google to ChatGPT", across Google, YouTube, Amazon, ChatGPT and more. AnswerThePublic says its estimates come from multiple data providers, similar to those other SEO tools use, and paid plans add search volume and CPC for each result.
- Free: registering for free gives 3 searches a day, more keyword data and a history of your searches, with no credit card.
- Starter, €120 a year (€10 a month billed yearly): 1 user, 100 searches a month, 1,000 AI prompt suggestions a month, search volume and CPC, 1 search listening alert and 1 keyword list.
- Growth, €594 a year (€49.50 a month): up to 3 users, 200 searches a month, 2,000 prompt suggestions, 5 alerts, unlimited keyword lists, data compared over time and priority support.
- Business, €1,194 a year (€99.50 a month): up to 10 users, 300 searches a month, 3,000 prompt suggestions and 20 alerts.
- The offer: these yearly prices were marked as a limited-time offer, 50% off compared with monthly billing and due to end on 8 November 2026; the crossed-out yearly prices were €160, €792 and €1,592. The page says the offer price renews every year until you cancel. Monthly prices sit behind a toggle, so we do not quote them. Check the AnswerThePublic pricing page before you buy.
- Trial and refunds: AnswerThePublic offers a one-time 7-day free trial for monthly subscriptions; all other purchases are final and non-refundable.
What is new: every paid plan now includes AI prompt suggestions and a set number of AI prompt responses with sentiment, to see how topics come up in AI answers, plus Content Studio, an AI writer that drafts articles from your research, schedules them and publishes to WordPress (up to 6, 35 or 80 articles a month, marked as a limited-time bonus). Search listening sends weekly email digests of new questions around a topic, which is handy for spotting new worries or trends in your market.
Best for: founders and content writers who need to know what customers actually ask, to plan blog posts, FAQ sections, landing-page copy and even customer interviews. It does not replace a keyword tool with a difficulty score, which is where Long Tail Pro used to fit.
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Long Tail Pro: What Happened to It?
Long Tail Pro was a keyword tool built around one idea: find long-tail keywords a small site can rank for, scored with its own Keyword Competitiveness (KC) metric. In its last archived version it also listed SERP analysis, rank tracking, backlink analysis and a site audit, with the "full toolkit" advertised at $59 a month (Internet Archive copy, February 2024). Today it is gone:
- March 2024: the Internet Archive starts recording server errors (Cloudflare error 522) instead of the Long Tail Pro homepage.
- From May 2025: longtailpro.com shows the website of an unrelated firm.
- 31 October 2026: we checked again. longtailpro.com still shows that firm, the www address redirects to the firm's own domain, the old pricing page returns "page not found" and the app.longtailpro.com login address does not respond.
We found no official shutdown notice and could not confirm who owns the product today. There is no working way to sign up, pay or log in, so Long Tail Pro is not an option for a startup in 2027. Old advice for it, such as our Long Tail Pro tips, now works best as a checklist for any long-tail tool. If an old subscription is still being charged to your card, ask your card provider to stop the payment.
KWFinder: The Closest Replacement for Long Tail Pro
KWFinder by Mangools is the tool most like Long Tail Pro. Its homepage headline is "Find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty", and you can search by keyword or by a competitor's domain, in any location and language. Each result shows search volume with its history, CPC and Mangools' keyword difficulty (KD) score, next to the current top results, so you can see whether small sites rank. KWFinder is sold only in a bundle with SERPChecker, SERPWatcher (rank tracking), LinkMiner (backlinks), SiteProfiler and AI Search Watcher.
- Free plan: a free account with no credit card gives 5 lookups per 24 hours, with 15 related and 5 competitor keywords per lookup.
- Basic, €37.70 a month billed yearly (€452.40 a year, €732.00 crossed out for monthly billing): 100 keyword lookups per 24 hours and 200 tracked keywords updated weekly.
- Premium (€52.70) and Agency (€97.70) a month, billed yearly: 500 or 1,200 lookups per 24 hours and 700 or 1,500 tracked keywords (daily updates only on Agency).
- Also: API and MCP access on every plan and a full refund within 48 hours of payment. Mangools says its search volumes usually lag about one month behind. See the Mangools pricing page.
Best for: founders who want a short list of long-tail keywords they can actually win, which is the job Long Tail Pro used to do. We compare it with other tools in SE Ranking vs Mangools and KWFinder vs Wincher.
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Question Research vs Long-Tail Keyword Research: Feature by Feature
Finding ideas
AnswerThePublic is stronger at showing how people phrase a need: dozens of questions and comparisons from one seed word, sorted by type. KWFinder gives fewer, more structured ideas, each with numbers attached. If you do not yet know what to write about, start with AnswerThePublic; if you have a topic list and need to pick the winnable phrases, use KWFinder.
Search volume and difficulty
This was Long Tail Pro's core, and today it is KWFinder's. KWFinder shows volume history and a KD score for every phrase. AnswerThePublic's paid plans add volume and CPC, but its pricing page lists no difficulty score, so you still need a keyword tool to judge whether a page can rank.
Watching your market
AnswerThePublic's search listening alerts email you new questions every week, a cheap way to follow what customers worry about. KWFinder's sister tool SERPWatcher tracks your own rankings for 200 keywords weekly on Basic. They answer different questions: "what are people asking now?" versus "where do my pages rank?" For dedicated rank trackers see Keyword Tool vs Rank Tracker.
Price and limits
On the yearly view, AnswerThePublic Starter (€120 a year on offer) costs less than KWFinder Basic (€452.40 a year), but it counts searches per month (100), while Mangools Basic allows 100 lookups every 24 hours. Both have free options good enough to test on your own niche before you pay. Remember that AnswerThePublic's yearly plans are non-refundable, while Mangools refunds within 48 hours.
Discontinued and Changed Since the Old Version of This Guide
- Long Tail Pro: no longer available (website offline since March 2024, domain now used by an unrelated firm). The old article quoted it "from $37/month"; we removed it as an option and added KWFinder as the closest replacement.
- AnswerThePublic's price: the old article said paid plans start "as low as $5/month". When we checked, the cheapest plan was Starter at €120 a year (€10 a month) on a limited-time offer, with €160 a year crossed out.
- New in AnswerThePublic: website-URL searches, AI prompt suggestions and responses, Content Studio for AI articles and data from YouTube, Amazon and ChatGPT as well as Google.
- Removed: two statistics we could not trace to a source ("56% of startups" using Long Tail Pro and "41% of marketers" preferring AnswerThePublic), links to third-party review sites and a generic "common mistakes" list.
The same Long Tail Pro change from other sides: Ahrefs vs Long Tail Pro, Semrush vs Long Tail Pro, SE Ranking vs Long Tail Pro and Moz vs Long Tail Pro.
AnswerThePublic or a Long Tail Pro Replacement: Which Should You Choose?
- You have no budget yet: AnswerThePublic's 3 free searches a day, KWFinder's 5 free lookups and Google's own data. See Keyword Tool vs Keyword Planner and our free keyword research tools.
- You need blog topics and FAQ questions: AnswerThePublic. It shows what people ask in their own words.
- You need long-tail keywords you can rank for: KWFinder Basic, the closest thing to what Long Tail Pro used to be.
- You publish every week: both. Questions from AnswerThePublic, volume and difficulty from KWFinder; on the yearly view that was about €572 a year together when we checked (our sum of €120 and €452.40).
- You want one all-in-one SEO suite instead: see Ahrefs vs Semrush.
- You also like Neil Patel's other tool: Ubersuggest vs Keywords Everywhere compares it with a browser extension.
How to Combine Question Research and Long-Tail Keywords
- Collect questions. Type the problem your product solves into AnswerThePublic, in the words a customer would use, and save the questions that match what you sell.
- Check the numbers. Run the best questions and phrases through KWFinder to see search volume and difficulty. Our 10 steps to find long-tail keywords go deeper.
- Group into topics. Put close questions on one page instead of writing a page per phrase. Our long-tail SEO guide explains how to group them.
- Write and answer. Answer the main question early and use the other questions as an FAQ section, which also helps AI assistants quote you.
- Watch and refresh. Track the page's rankings, and add new questions from search listening alerts when they appear.
How Founders Use Keyword and Question Research
Question research is also cheap customer research. The questions people type show their fears, their budget and the words they use, which helps with your landing page and your sales calls. If nobody searches for the problem you solve, validate your startup idea with real customers before you build. For more free idea tools, see our free content ideas generators and free blog ideas generators.
Ideas only pay off when you publish. The F/MS AI SEO Tool turns your keywords and questions into articles written to rank on Google and to be cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity, with human editors checking them, and the AI SEO blog explains how it works. Comparing other keyword tools? Read Keyword Tool vs Keyworddit.
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FAQ: Long Tail Pro vs AnswerThePublic
Is Long Tail Pro still available?
No. According to the Internet Archive its website stopped working in March 2024, and on 31 October 2026 longtailpro.com showed an unrelated firm. There is no way to sign up or log in.
What is the main difference between Long Tail Pro and AnswerThePublic?
Long Tail Pro was a keyword finder with search volumes and a competitiveness score. AnswerThePublic shows the questions and phrases people search around a topic, so it is a content-ideas tool rather than a keyword-difficulty tool.
What is the best Long Tail Pro alternative?
KWFinder by Mangools is the closest like-for-like tool: long-tail keywords with a difficulty score, a free plan with 5 lookups a day and Basic from €37.70 a month billed yearly.
Is AnswerThePublic free?
Partly. A free account with no credit card gives 3 searches a day. Paid plans add more searches, search volume and CPC, alerts and AI features.
How much does AnswerThePublic cost?
When we checked in October 2026, the yearly view showed Starter at €120 a year, Growth at €594 and Business at €1,194 on a limited-time offer due to end on 8 November 2026; the crossed-out yearly prices were €160, €792 and €1,592.
Can I get a refund from AnswerThePublic?
AnswerThePublic offers a one-time 7-day free trial on monthly subscriptions. It says all other purchases are final and non-refundable, so test the free searches first.
Who owns AnswerThePublic?
AnswerThePublic is part of NP Digital, the agency co-founded by Neil Patel, which also runs Ubersuggest.
Where can I submit a guest post about my startup?
You can publish a guest post in one of the Fe/male Switch startup blogs, which rank in Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Get a quality backlink.
Can I use AnswerThePublic and KWFinder together?
Yes, and it is a good routine: collect questions in AnswerThePublic, then check their volume and difficulty in KWFinder before you write.
Are question keywords still worth targeting in 2027?
Yes. Specific questions have less competition, match clear intent and are the same questions people now ask AI assistants, so pages that answer them clearly can win in both.
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
