DebugBear vs Lighthouse Metrics (2026): which should you pick?

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 Lighthouse Metrics if

• Fits if you need to see how a page's Lighthouse score changes from region to region
• Makes sense if you audit now and then and want test runs that never expire

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need real-user data, as it only runs Lighthouse lab tests
• Pricey if you need the API, hourly monitors, webhooks or custom headers, all on Pro at $80 a month billed yearly
• Tight if you test from many regions, since each region uses one run
• Watch out: the pricing page doesn't say whether the free account's 25 runs ever renew
• Too light for a team on Indie, which has 1 team member

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.

Lighthouse Metrics

• Its pages describe Lighthouse lab tests only, with no real-user monitoring or Chrome UX Report data.
• API access, hourly monitors, webhooks and custom headers need the Pro plan, $80 a month billed annually.
• The pricing page does not say whether the free account's 25 test runs renew; more runs come from paid packs or a plan.

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.

Lighthouse Metrics

Global Lighthouse tests

Run one Lighthouse test from up to 16 regions at once, including US, Europe, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan and Australia. Each region counts as a run.

Scheduled monitors

Monitors re-test a page daily on every plan, and hourly on Pro. Each test is run several times to reduce variance.

Alerts

Monitors send email alerts on every plan, Slack alerts from the Startup plan and webhook alerts on Pro.

Test history

Past Lighthouse reports are kept so you can compare how a page has changed, for 3 to 12 months depending on the plan.

API for CI/CD

On the Pro plan, a REST endpoint starts Lighthouse checks for a URL and chosen regions, so tests can run from a build pipeline.

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.

Lighthouse Metrics

• Test Runs$10

  one-time for 50 test runs

  Packs of test runs for one-off audits: also 150 runs for $25 or 500 for $60. Purchased runs never expire.

• Indie$16

  per month, billed annually ($20 billed monthly)

  5 daily monitors, 100 on-demand tests a month, 1 team member, 3 months of data and email alerts.

• Startup$40

  per month, billed annually ($50 billed monthly)

  20 daily monitors, 300 on-demand tests a month, 5 team members, 6 months of data, and email and Slack alerts.

• Pro$80

  per month, billed annually ($100 billed monthly)

  50 daily and 5 hourly monitors, 1,000 on-demand tests, 15 team members, 12 months of data, webhooks, API access and custom headers.

• Enterprise$399

  per month and up

  Custom limits on monitors, on-demand tests and API use, quoted on request.

DebugBear

• Annual discount

  Save 20% with yearly billing

  DebugBear's pricing page marks yearly billing as a 20% saving over paying month to month.

Lighthouse Metrics

• Annual discount

  Two months free with annual billing

  The pricing page offers annual billing with 2 months free: Indie is $16 a month billed annually against $20 billed monthly.