I'm not a fan of keyword planner purely because of the way it groups keywords together. For example, there's no distinction in keyword planner for "wood photo frames" and "wooden photo frames" - it combines the volume at 3,600 searches a month (UK). Whereas Ahrefs breaks it down: "wooden photo frames" 900 "wood photo frames" 150 The SERP is slightly different for each term too. Just a recent example where a small title change can improve CTR, as you're matching the most searched for query. You can do the opposite with keyword mapping if something's too competitive and go for a less searched-for term. Keyword Planner doesn't give you that data at that level - it's a PPC tool at the end of the day. More on reddit.com

Google Keyword Planner in Google Ads is the best tool, and it’s free. Most of the paid tools tap into this API, so you end up getting the same data, just reskinned. I find that the volume estimates tend to be pretty off, since they average out the volume across 12 months and round out to an even number. CPC estimates are wonky as well - “top of page” estimates are often the minimum bid you need to be competitive. The best keyword research comes from running campaigns and looking at search term reports. That gives you real-world data with actual performance metrics tied to your account. More on reddit.com

Even i liked keywordtool.io when it comes to finding the long tail keywords, However, till date I personally love to use Google Search and keywords planner tool to get the best of kewyords for me

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Most keyword tools are highly unreliable and very inaccurate. Keyword Planner is for PPC and the competition scores have nothing to do with SEO. The popular ones like Keyword Revealer and KWFinder are based mostly on Moz metrics. This should tell you everything you need to know about them. SEMRush has a good keyword database but it's completion calculations are useless. AHREFS has the best backlinks database in the business and I assume that backlinks have a lot of weightage in their keyword competition calculations. But their competition scores aren't reliable either. Using these tools as an initial filter is okay but you can't rely on them for anything more than getting keyword ideas. How easy or hard a keyword is has to be determined manually by looking at the SERPS. There is no tool that can do this accurately. Especially for competitive niches. More on reddit.com