Free local citation checkers, compared honestly
Four free ways to check your local business listings, what each one actually verifies, and where each falls short. One of these is ours, and it is not the one that scans the most directories.
Last updated 2026-08-17
Which one to use
- Want the widest scan? Use Moz's free listing check. It covers more directories than ours does. We would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
- Want a check with no email and no invented results? Use ours. 14 directories, verified individually, and honest about the ones it could not reach.
- Suspect your own data contradicts itself? Neither of the above will tell you. Use the NAP consistency checker, which compares your site, your schema, and your Google profile.
What each one actually checks
Moz free listing check
Broad directory scan with a score
The best-known free option and the one to use if you want breadth. It scans a considerably wider directory set than ours and returns a score plus the errors it found. It is a snapshot, not monitoring — continuous tracking is what the paid Moz Local plans are for.
- Strength
- Widest free coverage of the tools here
- Limitation
- One-off diagnostic, and it is a funnel into a paid product
LocalHero citation checker
14 directories, verified individually
Ours. It checks the 14 listings that carry most of the weight, confirms your Google profile through the Places API, and tells you plainly when a directory blocked the check instead of guessing. No email, no account, nothing stored.
- Strength
- No signup, and it does not invent results
- Limitation
- Fewer directories than Moz by design, so not the tool for a bulk audit
LocalHero NAP checker
Your site vs your schema vs your Google profile
A different job, and the one most people skip. Directory checkers look outward at listings; this compares the three sources you control against each other. A footer that disagrees with your own structured data is a contradiction inside a single page, and no directory scan will surface it.
- Strength
- Catches the internal contradictions directory tools cannot see
- Limitation
- Does not look at directories at all
Google Business Profile itself
The one listing that matters most
Free, authoritative, and frequently forgotten in favour of third-party tools. Whatever any checker reports, your profile is the source of truth for the listing that drives the most calls. Read it directly before trusting a score about it.
- Strength
- The authoritative record, straight from the source
- Limitation
- Tells you nothing about anywhere else
Why directory count is close to the least useful number
Every citation product leads with how many directories it touches, because it is the easiest number to make large. It is also the number least connected to whether your phone rings.
The value is heavily concentrated. Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp and Facebook carry the overwhelming majority of it. After the first ten or so listings, each additional directory contributes very little, and bulk submissions to low-quality directories actively cause the problem citations are supposed to solve: the same business described five slightly different ways, which is exactly the inconsistency that erodes Google's confidence in your data.
So a tool reporting on 50 directories is not five times more useful than one reporting on 14 accurately. What matters is whether the report is true. Which brings us to the part nobody advertises.
Some directories cannot be checked, and honest tools say so
Several directories refuse automated requests outright. Yellow Pages and Manta return an HTTP 403 to a normal Chrome user agent as readily as to a script. MapQuest returns an empty JavaScript shell. Yelp, Facebook, the BBB, Angi, Thumbtack, Nextdoor, Bing and Apple all behave similarly.
A checker therefore has three choices: guess, stay quiet, or admit it could not verify and hand you a link. Guessing is the worst option and the most common one, because a confident wrong answer looks better in a report than an honest gap. Ours marks those directories explicitly and gives you a pre-filled search link for each — about ten seconds of manual work per listing, and you end up knowing something true.
We are describing our own tool favourably here, so treat it as a claim to test rather than a fact to accept: run ours and any other, and compare what each says about a listing you can verify by hand.
What no free checker will tell you
Every tool here answers one question: does a listing exist and does it match. None of them answer the question that follows, which is whether your listings are the reason you are not ranking. Usually they are not.
We measured 1,122 Google Business Profiles across eight industries and four US metros. Profile completeness was high almost everywhere — the average profile had a website, a phone number and hours. What separated the businesses ranking in the top three from those at positions four to twenty was review count, by a median of more than two to one, and in plumbing by eleven to one.
So fix your citations, because inconsistent data does real damage. Then stop, because the next problem is almost certainly not another directory.
The order to fix things in
- 1
Make your own three sources agree
Your website text, your structured data, and your Google Business Profile. There is no point correcting fifty directories against a site that contradicts itself.
- 2
Claim what already exists before creating anything new
Most businesses already have auto-generated listings holding details scraped from somewhere years ago. Correcting those beats adding more.
- 3
Get the first ten right and stop
Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp, Facebook, your industry bodies, and your local chamber. That is the bulk of the value.
- 4
Move on to reviews
Once the data is consistent, citations stop being the constraint. Review velocity is what separates the top three from everyone else.
The long version: citation building for local SEO and why NAP consistency matters. If you would rather not do it yourself, we offer citation building as a service.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Moz Local?+
Moz Local is a paid product, but Moz publishes a separate free listing check that scores your business against a directory set and shows you errors it finds. It is a one-off diagnostic rather than ongoing monitoring, which is what the paid plans provide. If a free scan is all you need, it is a reasonable place to start and we link to it below rather than pretending it does not exist.
Which free citation checker covers the most directories?+
Of the well-known free tools, Moz's covers considerably more directories than ours does. Ours checks 14 deliberately. Directory count is the metric these tools are marketed on and it is close to the least useful one, for the reason set out above: the value concentrates in the first handful of listings and drops away sharply after that.
Do I need to give an email address to use these tools?+
Ours requires nothing. No email, no account, and nothing is stored — the check runs and the result is returned to your browser. Most free tools from paid platforms exist to start a trial, so expect to hand over an email address somewhere in the flow. Check each vendor before you start if that matters to you.
Why does a checker say a listing is missing when it exists?+
Because several directories refuse automated requests. Yellow Pages and Manta return an HTTP 403 to an ordinary browser as readily as to a script, and MapQuest returns an empty JavaScript shell. A tool has three options: guess, stay silent, or tell you it could not check and hand you a link. Guessing produces confident wrong answers, which is the worst of the three, and it is common.
What should I do after running a citation check?+
Fix your own sources before touching directories. Make sure your website, your structured data, and your Google Business Profile agree with each other, because pushing inconsistent data outward just multiplies the problem. Then claim and correct the listings that already exist before creating new ones — most businesses already have auto-generated listings holding stale details.
Disclosure and method
- Two of the four tools listed are ours. We have said so at every mention rather than only in the small print.
- No competitor pricing appears on this page. Prices change and we would rather send you to the source than quote a figure that goes stale. Links go to each vendor.
- Where a competitor is stronger than us, it says so. Moz's free check covers more directories than ours and we have not buried that.
- Claims about which directories block automated checks come from running them ourselves, and are reproducible: request them with an ordinary browser user agent and watch for the 403.
- Last updated 2026-08-17. Reviewed quarterly.