Google Search Console vs Bing Webmaster Tools sounds like a comparison with an obvious winner, and for traffic data it is: Google carries the traffic, so Search Console matters more. But I run both consoles on my own site and on client sites, and the comparison pages ranking for this query are wrong about the two facts that decide when Bing’s console is actually useful. Most still say Bing keeps six months of data. It keeps 24 now, eight more than Google. And most still describe manual URL submission as Bing’s headline feature, when Microsoft itself demoted it last November. Here is the current state of both, with the version dates that the recycled comparisons miss.
What does Bing Webmaster Tools show that Search Console does not?
Four things I actually use. Exact query strings: Bing reports the real keywords, while Search Console anonymises and groups a share of them. Competitor backlinks: Bing’s link tools let you look at domains you do not own, which Search Console has never done. Site Scan: an on-demand crawl audit that flags on-page issues without waiting for a crawler to stumble on them. And since February 2026, an AI search performance tab in beta that shows Copilot citations, which is more per-surface AI detail than Search Console’s generative AI report gives.
Search Console’s side of the ledger: the index coverage detail is far deeper, URL Inspection shows you Google’s actual rendered view of a page, and its data reflects the search engine that sends nearly all your clicks. Nothing in Bing’s console replaces any of that.
How many URLs can you submit to Bing per day vs Google?
The numbers are not close, but both need footnotes. Bing’s URL Submission allows up to 10,000 URLs per day per site. The footnote: the quota is adaptive, granted based on verified age and impressions, and a site typically needs around 180 days of verification before the full allowance opens up. The bigger footnote, dated November 2025: Microsoft updated its own announcement post to recommend IndexNow as the primary submission method, which makes the manual quota a legacy path. IndexNow takes up to 10,000 URLs per API call and shares them with every participating engine.
Google publishes no number at all. The recrawl documentation says only that “there’s a quota” for individual URL submissions, and the roughly ten to twelve requests a day people cite is observed behavior, not a documented limit; I measured what the button really allows in Search Console request indexing limits. There is no Google equivalent of IndexNow for normal pages, which is exactly why indexing services keep selling workarounds.
Is Bing Webmaster Tools data more up to date than Search Console?
On history, Bing simply wins now. Bing Webmaster Tools moved from six months of performance data to 16 in October 2024, then to 24 months in August 2025, with country and device filters and keyword trendlines added at the same time. Search Console has been fixed at 16 months since 2018, and the workarounds for keeping more are the same ones I described in the Search Console 16-month data limit: export or lose it. If you want a two-year seasonal comparison out of the box, the console that gives it to you is Microsoft’s.
On freshness, both consoles run about two days behind for performance data, and neither deserves the “real time” label the comparison posts hand out.
Do I need Bing Webmaster Tools if ChatGPT uses Bing?
This is the reason half my clients finally verified a Bing property, and the claim needs updating. ChatGPT’s browsing still retrieves from Bing’s index, but OpenAI now also runs its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and blends its own retrieval signals. Being indexed in Bing is necessary for the Bing-backed path and no longer sufficient on its own; if ChatGPT cannot see your site, the checklist in why ChatGPT cannot see my website covers both layers. Verifying a Bing property is still the only free way to see whether Bing has your pages indexed at all, and with the Copilot citations tab, the only way to see one AI surface’s usage of you directly.
My working split, having both open every week: Search Console is where indexing problems get diagnosed, because Google’s index is the one that pays. Bing Webmaster Tools is where I get exact queries, competitor link checks, a second crawler’s opinion on site health, and two years of history. Run both; they are free, and they disagree in useful ways.
Sources
- Bing Webmaster Blog, submit up to 10,000 URLs per day, including the November 2025 update recommending IndexNow as primary
- IndexNow, documentation, for the per-call limits and participating engines
- Search Engine Land, Bing Webmaster Tools now with 24 months of data, August 2025
- Google Search Central, ask Google to recrawl your URLs, for the undocumented quota wording
- Bing Webmaster Blog, Bing Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console, a comparison, Microsoft’s own feature comparison
- My own use of both consoles across my sites and client sites for the workflow split described