DebugBear vs Unlighthouse (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Unlighthouse grades higher than DebugBear: 2.6 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
DebugBear grades higher on ease of use and platforms. Unlighthouse grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on features.
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
Unlighthouse
Free open-source tool that runs Lighthouse on every page of a site
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 Unlighthouse if
- Fits if you want Lighthouse scores for a whole site rather than one page
- Works for adding a Lighthouse score budget to a CI pipeline
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you don't use a terminal, as it needs Node.js and Chrome and has no hosted version
- Not for you if you need real-user data, as results are Lighthouse lab scores only
- Watch out: version 1 is still in beta, and Docker support is community-maintained and experimental
How we grade them
| 2.2GPADebugBearFair | 2.6GPAUnlighthouseGood | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 and MIT licensed, funded by community sponsors. It runs on your own computer or CI, so there's no server to rent for a scan. |
| 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. | AEverything is free: the CLI, the CI runner and the dashboard, with no account and no limits 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. | CSite-wide Lighthouse scans with URL discovery, mobile and desktop results, saved scans, CI budgets with JSON, CSV or HTML reports, and MCP in the v1 beta. It does that job fully, but it's Lighthouse lab scores only, with no real-user data. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. You set up projects, pages and test schedules, then read waterfalls across three kinds of data. | DA command-line tool that needs Node.js and Chrome installed. One command starts a scan and the dashboard opens in your browser, but there's no way to use it without a terminal. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, with an API, Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Looker Studio, Netlify, Vercel and CircleCI. No desktop or phone app. | CRuns on Mac, Windows and Linux, with Nuxt, Vite, webpack, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI and Puppeteer. A program for computers only, with no hosted version. |
| Best for | speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring | Lighthouse scores for every page of a site |
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 Unlighthouse. 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. Unlighthouse has no paid plan and scores 1.7.
DebugBear scores higher, and starts $99 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other technical SEO tools on the chart, 7 score higher than DebugBear for less, and none scores higher than Unlighthouse 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
- Unlighthouse is open source, according to its own site.
- DebugBear also covers dashboards.
- Unlighthouse also covers site audit.
At a glance
| DebugBear | Unlighthouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free |
| Starts at | $99 per month, billed yearly ($1,188 a year) | Free |
| Free plan | None | Free and open source under the MIT license, funded by community sponsors. Runs on your own machine or CI with Node.js and Chrome. |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card required | None listed |
| Web | ||
| macOS | ||
| Windows | ||
| Linux | ||
| Made by | DebugBear Ltd | Harlan Wilton |
| Price read from | debugbear.com | unlighthouse.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.
Unlighthouse
- It runs on your own computer or CI and needs Node.js and Chrome; there is no hosted version.
- Results are Lighthouse lab scores only, with no real-user monitoring.
- Docker support is described as community-maintained and experimental.
- Version 1 is still in beta.
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.
Unlighthouse
- Site-wide Lighthouse scans
- Runs Lighthouse on every discovered page using a pool of Chrome instances in parallel, with mobile and desktop results kept separately.
- URL discovery
- Finds pages through robots.txt and sitemap.xml, your framework's route files, or by crawling links from the homepage; URLs can also be listed by hand.
- Dashboard and scan history
- Results appear in a real-time dashboard in your browser, and saved scans can be reopened without scanning again.
- CI budgets and reports
- The unlighthouse-ci command fails a build when any page scores below a budget and exports JSON, CSV or a static HTML report.
- MCP for AI agents
- In the v1 beta, an AI agent can connect over MCP to run scans and read the results.
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.
Unlighthouse
Open source$0
The full CLI, CI runner and dashboard, MIT licensed and run on your own machine.
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.
Unlighthouse
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, DebugBear or Unlighthouse?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Unlighthouse 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 Unlighthouse is free.
Which has a free plan, DebugBear or Unlighthouse?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only Unlighthouse has a free plan. DebugBear does not, though it has a free trial.
Which platforms do DebugBear and Unlighthouse run on?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only DebugBear lists a web app and only Unlighthouse lists macOS, Windows and Linux apps. A platform missing from a listing is one its maker's pages did not mention.
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.