Screaming Frog SEO Spider vs Website Crawler (2026): which should you pick?

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

Pick Website Crawler if

• Fits if your site needs a crawler for a few dollars a month
• Works for developers pulling crawl data into their own code through the API

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you stay free, as demo reports such as duplicates and Search Console show 5 URLs
• Watch out: page credits are shared by every project and expire at the end of each month
• Skip it if your site sits behind anti-bot tools, unless you add your own residential proxy
• Tight if you need JavaScript rendering, which the free plan doesn't include

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.

Website Crawler

• On the free plan, reports marked demo, such as duplicate content, cannibalization and Search Console data, show only 5 URLs.
• Page credits are shared by all projects in the account and expire at the end of each month.
• It cannot crawl sites behind anti-bot tools or blocked where it is hosted unless you add your own residential proxy.
• Refunds are offered within 14 days of buying a plan, on request by email with a reason.

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.

Website Crawler

Technical SEO reports

Finds broken links, redirect chains, canonical errors, duplicate titles and descriptions, heading gaps, missing alt text, thin content and hreflang problems.

JavaScript rendering

Paid plans can switch from the faster HTML crawler to a Chrome mode that runs each page's JavaScript before checking it, so single-page apps can be crawled.

Custom data extraction

Scrapes chosen data from pages with CSS selectors, XPath or a JavaScript snippet, exported as CSV, JSON or Markdown, with optional residential proxies.

Page speed and rendering

Paid plans add Core Web Vitals through a PageSpeed Insights key, console errors, render-blocking resources, CSS and JavaScript coverage, and screenshots.

Monitoring and scheduled crawls

Watches pages for changes and keeps up to 10 snapshots, alerts on downtime and SSL expiry, schedules crawls and compares two crawls side by side.

API and Search Console

An API with SDKs for Python, Go, JavaScript, Rust, PHP and Java starts crawls and returns the data as JSON; Search Console data can be filtered by keyword.

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.

Website Crawler

• Basic$0

  1,000 pages a month and 1 project with the HTML crawler, data extraction, API access and 3 page monitors. No card required.

• Starter$10

  per month for 2,000 pages, billed monthly

  3 projects and 2 users, JavaScript rendering, all reports, Core Web Vitals, white-label PDFs, 5-minute uptime checks and 20 page monitors.

• Growth$20

  per month for 10,000 pages, billed monthly

  10 projects and 4 users, 3-minute uptime checks, 100 page monitors and priority support.

• Scale$60

  per month for 50,000 pages, billed monthly

  50 projects and 10 users, 1-minute uptime checks, 500 page monitors and priority support.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Up to 1 million pages a month and 100 projects, unlimited team members and the fastest crawl speed. The page puts it at around $90 a month and up.

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.

Website Crawler

• Annual discount

  10% off with annual billing

  Website Crawler's pricing page shows a 10% discount on the annual plans, which are paid yearly and renew each year.