Oncrawl vs Screaming Frog SEO Spider (2026): which should you pick?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Screaming Frog SEO Spider grades higher than Oncrawl: 2.4 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 17, 2026 and Oct 23, 2026 · graded Oct 17, 2026 and Oct 23, 2026 by ToolGPA
Oncrawl grades higher on features and platforms. Screaming Frog SEO Spider grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Desktop website crawler for technical SEO audits
Free plan · from $279/yr
Which one is for you
Pick Oncrawl if
- Fits if you run an e-commerce, media or listing site with millions of pages
- Works for teams that want crawl data and server logs read together
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a price before a demo, as none is published
- Skip it if you want to try it first, since the site offers no free plan or trial
- Tight if you render JavaScript or audit Core Web Vitals, at 3 or 5 tokens a URL against a monthly quota
- Watch out: deleted crawls still use their tokens, and advanced settings need a verified domain
Pick Screaming Frog SEO Spider if
- Fits if you're a technical SEO who audits large sites from your own computer
- Works for sites under 500 URLs, which the free version crawls with no time limit
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want keyword research, rank tracking or backlinks, as it only crawls
- Not for you if you'd rather not learn technical SEO terms, XPath or regex
- Tight if your computer is short on memory or storage, since crawl size depends on it, and there's no web or phone version
- Pricey if a team needs it: licences are $279 per user a year, so two people need two
- Watch out: the free version can't save crawls, render JavaScript, schedule audits or connect to Google data
How we grade them
| 2.0GPAOncrawlFair | 2.4GPAScreaming Frog SEO SpiderFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CNo price is published. Plans are sold after a demo, so you only learn the cost on a sales call. Each plan carries a monthly crawl quota in tokens, and fetched URLs still use tokens even if you delete the crawl. | BGraded against its alternatives. A licence is $279 a year per user, about $23.25 a month, with no crawl limit and JavaScript rendering. Only Sitebulb Lite is cheaper, and it stops at 10,000 URLs; Semrush and Ahrefs cost about five times as much. |
| Free plan and trial | FNothing free on record: no free plan, and the site offers no free trial. You start with a demo. | BA free version with no sign-up crawls up to 500 URLs with the core audits, for as long as you like, so small sites can live on it. It can't save crawls, change settings, render JavaScript or pull in Google data. |
| Features | BA JavaScript crawler with custom extraction and crawl comparison, unsampled log analysis from Cloudflare, AWS, Google Cloud or Azure, AI Search and Content Lenses, and Search Console, GA4 and Majestic data side by side. The listing shows no gap in the core job. | CIt does the crawling job fully: 300+ issues, JavaScript rendering, custom extraction, scheduling, crawl comparison and sitemaps. But that's one part of SEO, with no keyword research, rank tracking or backlink index. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. There are logs to connect, tokens to budget (1 per URL, 3 with JavaScript, 5 with Core Web Vitals) and a domain to verify before the advanced crawl settings open up. | CNo rating on record. Enter a URL and it crawls, but reading the results takes technical SEO knowledge, and custom extraction runs on XPath, CSS Path or regex. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb only. It connects to Search Console, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Piano, Majestic, Cloudflare, Looker Studio and Dataiku, with a REST API, its own query language and an MCP server. | CA program for Windows, Mac and Linux, linked to Google Analytics, Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, OpenAI, Gemini, Looker Studio and Sheets. Computers only, with no web or phone version. |
| Best for | crawl and log analysis on large sites | technical site audits on your own computer |
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: Oncrawl and Screaming Frog SEO Spider. How we grade
Where they differ
- Oncrawl also covers dashboards, AI search visibility, internal linking and log file analysis.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider also covers reports.
In commonSite audit
At a glance
| Oncrawl | Screaming Frog SEO Spider | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid | Free plan |
| Starts at | Not published | $279 per user / year |
| Free plan | None | Free version, no sign-up: crawls up to 500 URLs at a time with the core audits, but cannot save crawls, change the crawl configuration, render JavaScript or use integrations. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| macOS | ||
| Windows | ||
| Linux | ||
| Made by | Oncrawl | Screaming Frog Ltd |
| Price read from | Not confirmed | screamingfrog.co.uk |
| Checked | Oct 23, 2026 | Oct 17, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Oncrawl
- No prices are published; plans are sold after a demo, and no free trial is offered on the site.
- Each plan has a monthly crawl quota in tokens: 1 per URL crawled, 3 with JavaScript rendering, 5 with Core Web Vitals or accessibility audits.
- URLs fetched still use tokens even if the crawl is deleted afterwards.
- Advanced crawl settings need the domain to be verified as yours.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Licences are per user and last one year; two people need two licences.
- It is a desktop app, so crawl size depends on the computer's memory and storage.
- The free version cannot save crawls, render JavaScript, schedule audits or connect to Google data.
Key features
Oncrawl
- Crawler
- Crawls millions of URLs with JavaScript rendering, custom extraction, scheduled crawls, crawl-over-crawl comparison and alerts on regressions.
- Log Analyzer
- Ingests server logs from Cloudflare, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure or uploaded files, unsampled, to show how search and AI bots crawl each page.
- AI Search Lens
- Uses log data to count visits from the AI user bots of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Mistral and Gemini, and links them to depth, speed and other crawl metrics.
- Content Lens
- Uses AI to assess the quality and SEO readiness of content across a whole site, with prioritized recommendations.
- Ranking and traffic data
- Connects Search Console, GA4, Adobe Analytics, Piano and Majestic, and keeps Search Console history beyond Google's own retention limit.
- API, OQL and MCP
- A REST API and the Oncrawl Query Language export data and trigger crawls; an MCP server lets ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor query it.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Technical SEO audit
- Find broken links, server errors, redirect chains, missing or duplicate titles and descriptions, and directives such as noindex and canonicals.
- JavaScript rendering
- With a licence, render pages in a built-in Chromium to crawl sites built with frameworks such as React, Angular and Vue.
- Custom extraction and search
- Pull any data from page HTML with XPath, CSS Path or regex, and search source code across a whole crawl (licence only).
- Google and AI integrations
- Pull Google Analytics, Search Console and PageSpeed Insights data into a crawl, or run pages through OpenAI and Gemini (licence only).
- Scheduling and crawl comparison
- Schedule crawls with exports to Google Sheets or run them from the command line, and compare crawls or staging against production.
- Site visualisations and sitemaps
- See site structure as force-directed and tree diagrams, and generate XML and image sitemaps from a crawl.
Plans
Oncrawl
Pricing could not be confirmed. See oncrawl.com.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Free$0
Up to 500 URLs per crawl, broken links, redirects, metadata, duplicates, XML sitemaps and site visualisations.
Paid licence$279
per user / year, for 1 to 4 licences
No crawl limit beyond memory and storage, saved crawls, scheduling, JavaScript rendering, crawl comparison, integrations and support. £199 in pounds.
Ways to pay less
Oncrawl
No public discounts listed.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Other savings
Volume pricing from 5 licences
Buying 5 to 9 licences at once costs $265 each a year, 10 to 19 cost $249 each, and 20 or more cost $235 each, against $279 for 1 to 4.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Oncrawl or Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
As of Oct 23, 2026, Oncrawl has no price we could confirm, and Screaming Frog SEO Spider starts at $279 per user / year.
Which has a free plan, Oncrawl or Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a free plan. Oncrawl does not.
Which platforms do Oncrawl and Screaming Frog SEO Spider run on?
As of Oct 23, 2026, only Oncrawl lists a web app and only Screaming Frog SEO Spider 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.