Screaming Frog SEO Spider vs Xenu's Link Sleuth (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 Xenu's Link Sleuth if

• Fits if you're on Windows and want a broken link list without signing up for anything
• Works for checking HTML files on your own disk or an intranet before they go live

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you use a Mac or Linux, as it's Windows only and the author won't port it
• Watch out: the current release, 1.3.8, dates from September 2010, with only a beta build offered beside it
• Not for you if your site builds its links with JavaScript, as those pages show no outgoing links
• Too light for an SEO audit, as there are no on-page, speed or structured data checks
• Tight if pages sit behind a login form, which needs a separate test build, or you need robots.txt respected, which isn't planned

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.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

• It runs only on Windows; the author will not make Mac or Linux versions, though users report it working under Wine.
• The last full release, 1.3.8, is from September 2010, and robots.txt support is not on the author's plans.
• Pages built only with JavaScript show no outgoing links, and logging in through a web form needs a separate test build.
• It checks links only: there are no on-page SEO, speed or structured data checks.

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.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

Broken link checking

Checks ordinary links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, image maps, style sheets, scripts and Java applets, and can re-check the broken ones.

Redirect detection

Reports URLs that redirect, alongside the broken ones, in a list that can be sorted by different columns while the crawl runs.

Reports and site map

Produces a report at any point in a crawl, which can also be sent by email, plus a site map of the pages it found.

Local and intranet checks

Checks HTML files on your own disk or an intranet before they are uploaded, without needing a local web server.

Orphan file search

Looks for files on the server that no page links to; the passwords entered for this are not kept after the program closes.

Configurable crawl speed

Fetches pages in parallel with 30 threads by default, adjustable from 1 to 100; the author says crawls have passed a million URLs.

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.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

• Free$0

  The full link checker for Windows, with no paid edition. A 64-bit beta build is offered for very large sites.

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.

Xenu's Link Sleuth

No public discounts listed.