Check Your Website vs Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog gives you everything and expects you to know what it means. We give you one page and tell you what to do.
The short version
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that checks HTTP, robots, schema, content and technical issues. The paid version adds JavaScript rendering, saved crawls, crawl comparison, and API connections for your own analysis. Free covers up to 500 URLs per crawl; paid is $279 per user per year — roughly $23.25/month, with no monthly subscription.
Check Your Website takes one public URL in a browser. Nine scored areas, the evidence behind each in plain language, a roadmap split into what you can publish yourself and what needs a developer, and a verify step after you publish.
On price, Screaming Frog is hard to beat. On usability for a non-specialist, it is not close.
Side by side
| Check Your Website | Screaming Frog SEO Spider | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | A website owner without SEO training | Technical SEO specialists and agencies |
| Where it runs | In your browser, nothing to install | A desktop application you download and configure |
| Scope | One exact public URL | Crawls up to 500 URLs free; unlimited when licensed |
| Output | Score across nine areas, evidence, and a next change | Raw technical data you interpret yourself |
| Plain-language explanation | Yes, for every area, about your page | Documentation and issue descriptions |
| Who decides what matters | We order the roadmap by how much score each change can win | You do — business priority is the specialist's call |
| Proof a change worked | Re-runs the one check that area depends on: fixed / improved / still failing, score before and after | Crawl comparison after changes |
| A single AI readiness measure | Yes, deterministic | No — it is a technical crawler, not a GEO readiness path |
| Price | Free check, no signup | Free up to 500 URLs; $279 per user per year |
What Screaming Frog is genuinely good at
It is one of the best pieces of software in this industry, and the free tier is extraordinarily generous. JavaScript rendering, crawl comparison, saved crawls, API integrations with GA, GSC and PageSpeed, and complete control over configuration. For a technical SEO, it is close to indispensable and the licence costs less per year than most tools cost per month.
If you know what you are doing, this is the cheapest serious substitute for a lot of what the GEO market sells.
What we do differently
We answer the question, rather than handing you the data. The Spider will tell you a page returns a certain status, or that a tag is missing. It will not tell you which of the forty things it found to do first, or what a machine currently reads off your page. That interpretation is the job it assumes you can do.
Nothing to install or configure. No download, no crawl settings, no memory and storage decisions. Paste a URL.
One readiness measure, built for AI. Nine areas that map to how an AI uses a page — access, subject, quotable answers, trustworthy proof, hidden page labels, a machine-readable version, link text, mobile page weight, scannable layout — as a single deterministic score.
A verify step, not a crawl diff. Comparing crawls shows what changed across the site. We re-run the one check your change depended on and record whether that change worked, with the score before and after.
Plain language throughout. Every finding explains what a machine reads off your page today and what it will read once you publish.
Which one should you pick
Pick Screaming Frog if you are technical, you want full control and raw data, and you know how to turn a crawl into a priority list. At $279 per year, it is excellent value.
Pick Check Your Website if you are not going to install a crawler, you want one page explained in plain language, and you want proof your fix worked.
What we do not claim
We are not a crawler and we do not replace one. We check one exact public URL per run, not your whole site. We do not monitor brand mentions, we are not a ranking report, and we promise no rankings, traffic or citations. Our loading-speed area records how heavy the page is on mobile; it is not a Lighthouse score.
Run a free check on one page
One URL. Nothing to download, nothing to configure.
Details about Screaming Frog are taken from their public pages and pricing, last verified 4 September 2026, and may have changed since. We are not affiliated with Screaming Frog; all trademarks belong to their respective owners.