Google Search Console is Google's own free tool for monitoring exactly how a site performs in Search, and because the data comes directly from Google rather than a third-party estimate, it's the most authoritative source available for search performance data, no other tool can see what Google itself sees.
The Performance report breaks down clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position by query and page, which is the primary way to see what a site actually ranks for beyond just the terms it was deliberately targeting. Beyond performance, it reports indexing status page by page (and why a page might be excluded), flags manual actions and security issues directly from Google, lets a site submit sitemaps and request indexing for specific URLs, and surfaces Core Web Vitals field data. For any site doing SEO work seriously, Search Console isn't optional tooling, it's the direct feedback channel from the search engine itself, and most other SEO tools end up cross-referencing or supplementing what it already reports rather than replacing it.
