SiteOne Crawler vs Unlighthouse (2026): which should you pick?

Pick SiteOne Crawler if

• Fits if you want a whole-site audit report without paying for a licence
• Works for developers adding a site quality gate to a CI pipeline

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you want crawls run in the cloud, as it runs only on your own computer or server
• Watch out: single-page apps are crawled only in the optional browser mode, which renders them in Chromium
• Not for you if you want AI help with no bill elsewhere, as the assistant uses your own API key or a local model
• Tight if you want reports emailed, which needs an SMTP server of your own
• Watch out: the desktop app comes from the project's own links, not yet the Mac App Store or Microsoft Store

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

SiteOne Crawler

• It runs on your own computer or server; there is no hosted crawler, and emailed reports need your own SMTP server.
• The AI assistant uses your own API key or local model, so any LLM charges come from that provider.
• Pages built by JavaScript are crawled only in the optional browser mode, which renders them in Chromium.
• The desktop app is downloaded from the project's links; its page says it is not yet in the Mac App Store or Microsoft Store.

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.

SiteOne Crawler

Audit report and quality score

Each crawl ends in a self-contained HTML report with a 0 to 10 score, weighted 25% security and 20% each for performance, SEO and accessibility.

Site-wide checks

Covers SEO and OpenGraph tags, headings, redirects and 404s, security headers, SSL/TLS certificates, caching headers, content types and DNS.

JavaScript rendering and screenshots

An optional browser mode renders each page in Chromium so single-page apps are crawled, and can capture every page as an image, GIF or MP4.

CI/CD quality gate

The --ci option fails a build when scores fall below set thresholds, with JUnit XML output and annotations for GitHub Actions.

Offline clone and Markdown export

Saves a static mirror of a whole site, assets included, or converts its pages to Markdown and an llms.txt file.

Optional AI assistant

With your own key for OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini, or a local model, adds per-page SEO rewrites, spelling checks and a site summary.

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.

SiteOne Crawler

• Free$0

  The desktop app and command-line crawler, run on your own computer, with free hosted links for sharing reports.

Unlighthouse

• Open source$0

  The full CLI, CI runner and dashboard, MIT licensed and run on your own machine.