Comparisons · Screaming Frog
SEO Auditor vs. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the desktop SEO crawler that power-users have relied on for over a decade. It runs locally, ships with deep customisation, and has shaped the technical SEO toolkit. The free tier caps at 500 URLs and the paid version costs £199 per year per machine. Here is the honest comparison.
Pricing at a glance
SEO Auditor
- Free$0 foreverUnlimited audits, no signup
Screaming Frog
- Free£0 500 URL cap
- Paid£199 per machine / yearRemoves URL cap
Where each tool wins
Where SEO Auditor wins
- Free for any number of pages — no 500-URL cap, no per-machine licensing
- Browser-based, zero install — works on any OS without admin rights
- GEO/AEO checks (llms.txt, AI-crawler accessibility, Island Test) built into the core
- JSON-LD validation includes required + recommended fields per schema.org type
- Live SSE-streamed results — see each check complete as the crawl runs
- Shareable report URLs with 7-day TTL — send the link to your client
- Embeddable SVG score badge for READMEs and about pages
Where Screaming Frog wins
- Far deeper crawl customisation: custom extraction, regex match, XPath rules
- JavaScript rendering tuning at a level no free tool can match
- Direct integrations with Google Search Console, Analytics, and PageSpeed
- Decade of feature maturity built around SEO professional workflows
- Better suited to very large sites (10k+ URLs) thanks to local CPU/RAM
- Robust scheduled-crawl mode for ongoing monitoring
When to pick which
Pick SEO Auditor when…
- You want a one-off audit before a client kickoff call
- You need to check if AI search engines can read your site
- You're publishing a portfolio piece and want a public badge
- You're a small team without a per-seat budget for SEO tools
Pick Screaming Frog when…
- You're a dedicated SEO professional auditing 10+ client sites a month
- You need custom extraction (e.g. pulling product prices from every page)
- You're crawling enterprise-scale sites where local CPU beats free cloud
- You want one tool that combines crawl + Search Console + PageSpeed data
Our honest recommendation
Use SEO Auditor for the day-to-day audit, especially if you care about AI search visibility and want a shareable report URL. Use Screaming Frog when you need deep custom extraction or are crawling enterprise-scale client sites professionally.
Want to try Screaming Frog? Visit Screaming Frog ↗ (affiliate link — same price for you, helps keep this tool free).
Frequently asked
Can SEO Auditor replace Screaming Frog for client work?
For 80% of small-to-mid-sized client audits, yes. For enterprise SEO consulting that demands custom extraction and JS-rendering tuning, Screaming Frog is still the right tool. We're honest about that.
Does Screaming Frog do GEO/AEO checks?
Not at the depth we do. It can read robots.txt for AI crawlers, but it doesn't check for llms.txt presence, doesn't run the Island Test on paragraph extractability, and doesn't compare bot vs. browser content. Those are first-class checks in SEO Auditor.
What if I have a site with 5,000 pages?
Our site crawl samples up to 25 pages from your sitemap by default — enough to catch templating issues that repeat across pages. For genuine site-wide enumeration of 5k+ pages, Screaming Frog or a paid cloud crawler will serve you better.
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