Check Your Website vs Surfer
Surfer is for the person writing the page. We are for the person who needs the page to be readable by a machine.
The short version
Surfer guides a writer through improving content, with AI Search guidelines, live checklists, Content Audit refresh suggestions, Surfy and one-click optimisation. Their Audit shows an SEO Score and the Content Editor adds an AI Search score. Discovery is $59/month, Standard $119, Pro $219, Peace of Mind $359.
Check Your Website takes one public URL, with no keyword and no editor. We score nine areas — including whether AI can open your site at all, whether the page has a machine-readable version, and whether it holds answers that can be quoted — show the evidence behind each, and verify your change after you publish.
Worth knowing: Surfer's Audit score and their Content Editor AI Search score are two different measures. It is not a single technical readiness number.
Side by side
| Check Your Website | Surfer | |
|---|---|---|
| Core question | Can AI access, understand, trust and quote this page? | Is this content well optimised for search and AI? |
| What you submit | One exact public URL | A page plus a keyword or topic, inside an editor |
| Writing environment | None — we do not touch your content | Content Editor, a core part of the product |
| Crawler access and technical readiness | Yes — one of the nine areas | AI score sits in the editor; the live Audit is an SEO score |
| Content gaps and recommendations | Up to three competitor pages measured beside you | Yes, a core strength |
| One-click optimisation | No — you make the change | Yes, Surfy |
| Proof a change worked | Re-runs the one check that area depends on: fixed / improved / still failing, score before and after | Live audit sees the published page; the AI test is a separate view |
| Entry price | Free check, no signup | $59/month ($49/month annually); 7-day trial with a card |
What Surfer is genuinely good at
Surfer is one of the best content optimisation tools available, and the editor experience is the reason people stay. If your work is writing and improving pages against a topic, their guidelines, checklists and refresh suggestions will do more for you than a readiness score.
We are not competing for the writer's hour. We are competing for the ten minutes before it.
What we do differently
We check the page as a machine sees it, not as a writer edits it. Nine areas, starting with whether AI can open your site at all. Good content behind a blocked crawler, with no machine-readable version and nothing structured as a quotable answer, does not get used no matter how well it is written.
One number, one meaning. We give one score for AI readiness, deterministic, with the evidence behind every area. Not an SEO score in one place and an AI score in another.
No keyword, no editor, no setup. Paste a URL. Most people who own a website are not going to move their writing into a new tool to find out what is broken.
We split your work from a developer's. Half of what blocks a machine from reading a page lives in a template, not in the copy. We tell you which half is which.
Verification is the specific check. After you publish, we re-run the one check your change depended on and record fixed, improved or still failing, with the score before and after.
Which one should you pick
Pick Surfer if your job is producing and improving content, you work against topics, and you want an editor that guides you as you write.
Pick Check Your Website if you want to know whether a machine can reach, read, trust and quote your page — and you want proof that your fix landed.
They fit together well. Clear the machine-readability side with us; make the content compete with Surfer.
What we do not claim
We do not write, rewrite or optimise your content, and we do not do keyword research. We do not monitor brand mentions, we are not a ranking report, and we promise no rankings, traffic or citations.
Run a free check on one page
One URL, no keyword needed. No signup, no card, nothing to install.
Details about Surfer are taken from their public pages and pricing, last verified 4 September 2026, and may have changed since. We have not tested their paid product from the inside. We are not affiliated with Surfer; all trademarks belong to their respective owners.