Comparisons
SEO Auditor vs. the rest
Honest side-by-side breakdowns of how SEO Auditor stacks up against the established paid tools. We tell you where they beat us — and where we beat them — so you can pick the right tool without buyer's regret.
vs. Screaming Frog
The classic desktop SEO crawler
- Their price
- £199/yr
- Their free tier
- 500-URL cap, no scheduling
- Our wedge
- No URL cap, no install, GEO checks built in
Best for: You need quick, GEO-aware audits without installing software.
Read the full breakdown →vs. SEMrush
All-in-one marketing platform
- Their price
- from $140/mo
- Their free tier
- 10 audits/day, gated
- Our wedge
- No signup; deeper JSON-LD + GEO depth
Best for: You want technical audit depth without paying for keyword/backlink data.
Read the full breakdown →vs. Ahrefs
Backlink intelligence leader
- Their price
- from $129/mo
- Their free tier
- Webmaster Tools (verified domains)
- Our wedge
- GEO-first, no project setup, free for any URL
Best for: You want technical + GEO audits without verifying domain ownership.
Read the full breakdown →vs. Sitebulb
Visualisation-rich desktop crawler
- Their price
- from $35/mo
- Their free tier
- 14-day trial only
- Our wedge
- Browser-based, shareable reports, GEO checks
Best for: You need shareable audit URLs without per-seat licensing.
Read the full breakdown →Feature matrix at a glance
Twelve key capabilities across the five tools. “Yes” means a first-class feature, “Partial” means it's present but limited, “No” means absent.
| Feature | SEO Auditor | Screaming Frog | SEMrush | Ahrefs | Sitebulb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Unlimited | 500 URLs | 10/day | Verified only | 14 days |
| No signup | Yes | Install | No | No | Trial |
| JSON-LD validation | Per-type | Yes | Basic | Basic | Yes |
| llms.txt check | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| AI-crawler accessibility | Yes | Partial | No | Partial | No |
| Island Test (GEO) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Shareable report URLs | Yes | CSV only | Yes | Yes | |
| Embeddable SVG badge | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Live streamed results | SSE | Batch | Batch | Batch | Batch |
| Backlink intelligence | No | No | Yes | Best in class | No |
| Keyword/rank tracking | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Open source | MIT | Closed | Closed | Closed | Closed |
Where we genuinely lose
We're not going to pretend a free tool is best at everything. Here's where you should reach for a paid platform instead:
- Backlink intelligence. Ahrefs and SEMrush spent years and millions building backlink databases. We can't replicate that. If link-building is your channel, pay them.
- Keyword research at scale. Search volume and keyword difficulty data comes from clickstream + SERP scraping at scale. Use SEMrush or Ahrefs.
- Enterprise-scale crawls. If you have a 100k-URL site, Screaming Frog on a beefy local machine will outperform any free-tier cloud.
- Internal-link visualisation. Sitebulb's graph view is genuinely best-in-class for understanding link equity flow.
Try it before you compare
Run a free audit and judge for yourself. 3-5 seconds for a single page, ~30 seconds for a 25-page site crawl.
Audit my site →