DebugBear vs GTmetrix (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, GTmetrix grades higher than DebugBear: 2.8 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
GTmetrix grades higher on value for money and ease of use. They get the same grade on the free plan, features and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
DebugBear
Page speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring with lab tests and RUM
GTmetrix
Page speed testing with Lighthouse reports, monitoring and an API
Which one is for you
Pick DebugBear if
- Fits if you need lab, real-user and CrUX speed data for a site in one account
- Works for developers who want slow-page fixes as prompts for Claude Code or Cursor
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you have one small site, at $99 a month on yearly billing with no free plan
- Tight if you run several sites, as Startup covers 1 project and Team at $249 has 5
- Watch out: extra real-user page views, tests and projects are added for an extra monthly fee
- Not for you if you need SSO or invoice payment, which are Enterprise only at a custom price
Pick GTmetrix if
- Fits if you want a Lighthouse report with a load video for a page now and then
- Works for developers who want to start speed tests from their own code through the API
Look elsewhere if
- Tight if you watch many pages, as Lite monitors 1 and Core 3, and hourly checks start on Advanced at $24.99 a month
- Pricey if a team shares it, as seats start on Expert at $49.99 a month yearly, and white-label PDFs are Enterprise only at a quoted price
- Tight if you stay on Basic or Lite: Basic runs 2 API tests at a time against 8 for most PRO users, and Lite gets the API only as a 10-credit trial
- Watch out: API tests spend credits, a video costs 0.9 more, and credits refill daily only up to the plan's allowance
- Watch out: API reports are kept 1 month unless you pay credits for up to 24, and refunds become account credit after 14 days
How we grade them
| 2.2GPADebugBearFair | 2.8GPAGTmetrixGood | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CStartup is $99 a month billed yearly ($1,188 a year) for 4,000 lab tests, 100,000 real-user page views and 1 project, in this category's dearer quarter. Team is $249 and Corporate / Agency $699. | ALite is $4.99 a month billed yearly ($5.99 monthly), under 60% of the cheaper quarter of technical SEO tools ($7.20). It has 50 tests a month and 1 monitored page; API credits start on Core at $9.99 and hourly checks on Advanced at $24.99. |
| Free plan and trial | CNo free plan, but the 14-day trial needs no card. After it, plans start at $99 a month on yearly billing. | CA free Basic account. Through the API it runs 2 tests at once against 8 for most PRO users, with a lower rate limit. Its other limits aren't on record. |
| Features | CLighthouse lab tests including logged-in pages and user flows, real user Core Web Vitals with INP attribution, CrUX tracking against competitors, waterfalls, speed experiments, alerts and uptime checks. It does speed monitoring fully, but that's a smaller job. | CLighthouse reports, a choice of locations, browsers and simulated devices, connection throttling, load videos, PDF exports, scheduled monitoring with alerts and a REST API. It does page speed testing fully, but that's a smaller job, and there's no real user data on record. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. You set up projects, pages and test schedules, then read waterfalls across three kinds of data. | BNo rating on record. Tests run on GTmetrix's own site, with nothing to install or connect before the first report. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API, Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Looker Studio, Netlify, Vercel and CircleCI. No desktop or phone app. | BWeb, with a REST API, an OpenAPI specification and a GTmetrix for WordPress plugin. No desktop or phone app. |
| Best for | speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring | one-off Lighthouse speed reports |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: DebugBear and GTmetrix. How we grade
Price against what you get
DebugBear starts at $99 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. GTmetrix starts at $4.99 a month and scores 2.7.
GTmetrix scores higher and starts $94.01 a month lower. Of the other technical SEO tools on the chart, 7 score higher than DebugBear for less, and none scores higher than GTmetrix for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- DebugBear also covers dashboards.
At a glance
| DebugBear | GTmetrix | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free plan |
| Starts at | $99 per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year) | $4.99 per month, billed yearly ($5.99 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | None | Free Basic account; the API docs give it 2 tests at a time and a lower API rate limit than PRO. Other limits could not be read. |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card required | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | DebugBear Ltd | GTmetrix |
| Price read from | debugbear.com | gtmetrix.com |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 23, 2026 |
Worth knowing
DebugBear
- There is no free plan; after the 14-day trial, plans start at $99 a month on yearly billing.
- Startup covers 1 project and 10 users; more projects need Team (5) or Corporate / Agency (100).
- Extra RUM page views, synthetic tests and projects can be added to a plan for an extra monthly fee.
- Single sign-on, invoice payment and custom data retention come only with the custom-priced Enterprise plan.
GTmetrix
- Team seats start only on Expert ($49.99 a month billed yearly), and hourly monitoring on Advanced; refunds are promised for 14 days, after that only account credit.
- API tests run on credits: a Lighthouse report costs 1 credit, a video 0.9 more, and credits refill daily only up to the plan's allowance.
- Through the API, Basic accounts can run 2 tests at once, against 8 for most PRO users.
- API reports are kept 1 month unless longer retention, up to 24 months, is paid for in extra credits.
Key features
DebugBear
- Synthetic monitoring
- Scheduled and on-demand Lighthouse lab tests from test locations around the world, including pages behind a login and multi-step user flows.
- Real user monitoring
- Measures Core Web Vitals for real visitors and shows which page elements and scripts cause slow interactions that hurt INP.
- Google CrUX data
- Tracks Chrome User Experience Report data over time and compares your site's real-visitor speed with competitors.
- Waterfalls and recommendations
- Request waterfalls tied to CPU and rendering activity, automatic fix suggestions, and ready-made prompts for coding agents such as Claude Code or Cursor.
- Page speed experiments
- Try an optimization on a test run to see its effect before deploying the change to the live site.
- Alerts, comparisons and exports
- Automatic alerts on regressions, before-and-after comparisons, chart annotations, video exports and PDF or CSV reports. Data is kept for 24 months.
GTmetrix
- Lighthouse speed reports
- Each test produces a Lighthouse report, with older PageSpeed and YSlow reports or a metrics-only report also available through the API.
- Locations, browsers and devices
- Choose the test location and browser, simulate phones and tablets by screen size and pixel ratio, and throttle the connection speed.
- Videos and PDF reports
- Record a video and filmstrip of the page loading, and export a summary or full PDF of the report.
- Page monitoring and alerts
- Monitored pages are retested on a schedule, grouped with tags, and can raise performance alerts when chosen metrics cross set conditions.
- REST API
- Start tests, fetch reports and manage monitored pages from your own code, with an OpenAPI specification and a GTmetrix for WordPress plugin.
Plans
DebugBear
Startup$99
per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year)
4,000 synthetic tests (about 125 pages tested daily), 100,000 RUM page views, 10 uptime monitors, 1 project and 10 users.
Team$249
per month, billed yearly ($2,988 a year)
10,000 synthetic tests (about 320 pages daily), 500,000 RUM page views, 50 uptime monitors, 5 projects and 50 users.
Corporate / Agency$699
per month, billed yearly ($8,388 a year)
50,000 synthetic tests (about 1,600 pages daily), 2 million RUM page views, 100 monitors, 100 projects and unlimited users.
EnterpriseCustom
Custom quotes with invoice payment, single sign-on, security forms, custom contracts and data retention, training and Slack support.
GTmetrix
Lite$4.99
per month, billed yearly ($5.99 billed monthly)
50 on-demand tests a month, 1 monitored page, 5 test locations, 1 month of history. API and MCP only as a 10-credit trial; no hourly monitoring.
Core$9.99
per month, billed yearly ($11.99 billed monthly)
150 tests a month, 3 monitored pages, 10 locations, 10 API credits a day and 6 months of history. No hourly monitoring or team seats.
Advanced$24.99
per month, billed yearly ($29.99 billed monthly)
Unlimited on-demand tests under a fair-use rule, 10 monitored pages with hourly checks, 28 locations and 50 API credits a day.
Expert$49.99
per month, billed yearly ($59.99 billed monthly)
50 monitored pages, 100 API credits a day, 12 months of history and 5 team seats. Enterprise adds white-label PDFs at a quoted price.
Ways to pay less
DebugBear
- Annual discount
Save 20% with yearly billing
DebugBear's pricing page marks yearly billing as a 20% saving over paying month to month.
GTmetrix
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, DebugBear or GTmetrix?
As of Oct 23, 2026, GTmetrix is cheaper to start with: $4.99 a month, against $99 a month for DebugBear. DebugBear starts at $99 per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year), and GTmetrix starts at $4.99 per month, billed yearly ($5.99 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, DebugBear or GTmetrix?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only GTmetrix has a free plan. DebugBear does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.