DebugBear vs PageSpeed Insights (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 24, 2026, we pick PageSpeed Insights: it is third in our ranking of technical SEO tools, and it grades higher too, 3.2 against 2.2.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
PageSpeed Insights grades higher on value for money, the free plan and ease of use. They get the same grade on 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
PageSpeed Insights
Free Google speed test with real-user Core Web Vitals and Lighthouse
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 PageSpeed Insights if
- Fits if you want one page's Core Web Vitals the way Google measures them
- Works for developers adding speed checks to scripts through a free API
Look elsewhere if
- Too light for watching a whole site, as it tests one URL per run with no monitoring
- Skip it if your page has little traffic, since real-user data only shows for pages with enough Chrome visits
- Watch out: lab tests run from a Google data center in North America, Europe or Asia, and scores vary from run to run
- Tight if you keep reports, as a shared link holds its snapshot for only 30 days
- Not for you if you planned to get real-user data from its API, which Google plans to drop in favour of the CrUX API
How we grade them
| 2.2GPADebugBearFair | 3.2GPAPageSpeed InsightsVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | AFree, from Google, with real-user data, Lighthouse tests on mobile and desktop, shareable reports and an API. Nothing to buy. |
| 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. | AOpen to anyone in a browser with no account, and the API works with or without a free key. |
| 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. | CReal-user LCP, INP, CLS and FCP from CrUX, a Core Web Vitals pass or fail, and Lighthouse scores with audits and suggested fixes. The gaps it lists: one URL per run, no monitoring or history past a 30-day link, and no field data for pages with too few visits. |
| 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, and nothing to set up: type a URL and the report appears. Making sense of the audits takes some knowledge of how pages load. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API, Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Looker Studio, Netlify, Vercel and CircleCI. No desktop or phone app. | BWeb only, with a free v5 API that returns Lighthouse results as JSON. It draws on Lighthouse and the Chrome UX Report. |
| Best for | speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring | checking one page's speed the way Google does |
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 PageSpeed Insights. 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. PageSpeed Insights has no paid plan and scores 2.7.
PageSpeed Insights scores higher and starts $99 a month lower. Of the other technical SEO tools on the chart, 7 score higher than DebugBear for less, and none scores higher than PageSpeed Insights 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 | PageSpeed Insights | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free |
| Starts at | $99 per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year) | Free |
| Free plan | None | Open to anyone in a browser with no account: enter a URL for field data and a Lighthouse report. The API works with or without a free API key. |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card required | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | DebugBear Ltd | |
| Price read from | debugbear.com | pagespeed.web.dev |
| 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.
PageSpeed Insights
- Tests one URL per run, and a shared report link keeps its snapshot for only 30 days.
- Real-user data appears only for public pages with enough Chrome visits; otherwise only the lab test is shown.
- Lab tests run from a Google data center in North America, Europe or Asia, and scores vary from run to run.
- Google plans to drop real-user data from the API and points developers to the CrUX API instead.
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.
PageSpeed Insights
- Real-user data from CrUX
- Shows the 75th percentile of LCP, INP, CLS and FCP, plus TTFB, from real Chrome users over the past 28 days, with the share of good, middling and poor visits.
- Core Web Vitals assessment
- A pass or fail on LCP, INP and CLS for the page, falling back to the whole origin when the page alone has too little data.
- Lighthouse lab test
- Runs Lighthouse 13 on a simulated mid-range phone and on a desktop, scoring performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO from 0 to 100.
- Audits and suggestions
- Each category lists audits that explain what slows the page down or breaks best practice, and what to change.
- Shareable reports
- A link to a report keeps a snapshot of the results for up to 30 days.
- PageSpeed Insights API
- The v5 API returns Lighthouse results as JSON; an API key is recommended for frequent automated tests.
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.
PageSpeed Insights
Free$0
Real-user Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse lab tests on mobile and desktop, shareable reports and the API.
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.
PageSpeed Insights
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, DebugBear or PageSpeed Insights?
As of Oct 23, 2026, PageSpeed Insights is cheaper to start with: it is free, against $99 a month for DebugBear. DebugBear starts at $99 per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year), and PageSpeed Insights is free.
Which has a free plan, DebugBear or PageSpeed Insights?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only PageSpeed Insights 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.