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

The free version of SEMrush is pretty good. More on reddit.com

So I am going to apologize early for this being a longer answer but here it goes anyways. I have started just yesterday a 3 step process for keyword research. It is all completely 100% free. Now please understand that this method seems to be interesting for me and I am going to be watching how my final content appears with GSC. Step #1: goto keywordsheeter.com (not an affiliate link) and type in your seed keyword. This tool basically scrapes Google Search bar and instantly comes back with hundreds of potential keywords to use. Step #2: goto google keyword planner. You will need to setup an Adwords account if you do not already have one. Once inside the keyword planner, copy and paste about 250 of the potential keywords from keyword sheeter. Make sure that you have United States selected before you search those keywords. From those results organize them in a way that the results will display to you the searches with a minimum of 100 monthly searches. Step #3: Goto ahrefs. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page where it says Free SEO tools and click on Check Keyword Difficulty. If you are running a new blog then you are going to want to get the results that come up with an Easy rating of 0 - 9. Step #4: Start creating your content for those keywords. The entire process takes around an hour to an hour and a half. The reason being is because ahrefs keyword difficulty gives you a rating for organic traffic volume. Where as keyword planner is all about ad placement volume. Again I have just started this process for my new content so I cannot give you any kind of results that I have personally seen. It just seems like a more fun way for me to do keyword research. I sincerely hope this helps you. More on reddit.com

It's here: anotherkeywordtool.com It's a pet project I use myself daily on my phone, to quickly check out ideas and niches I don't know that much about. For me it's about the search volumes and device distribution. Would be super curious what others think about it! More on reddit.com