Alternatives to Screaming Frog
The desktop site crawler standard
Screaming Frog ranks #9 of 10 in SEO tools, with an Alt Score of 42. It is proprietary, freemium from £199/year and available on Windows, macOS and Linux. 10 of 10 checklist rows are verified against a public source.
SEO professionals, agencies, and in-house marketers who need to perform technical and on-page SEO audits of websites, from small sites to large enterprise domains.
A desktop crawler (Windows, macOS, Linux) that identifies broken links, server errors, and redirect chains, flags duplicate content and metadata issues (titles, descriptions, headings), and audits robots.txt, canonicals, hreflang, and structured data. It renders JavaScript to crawl dynamic sites (React, Angular, Vue), lets you extract custom data via XPath/CSS/regex, and integrates with Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights. A free version is capped at 500 URLs; a paid license removes the limit and unlocks the full feature set.
You enter a starting URL and the Spider crawls the site breadth-first, following links like a search engine bot, while collecting on-page and technical data for each URL it discovers. Results appear in a tabbed interface for filtering and review, and can be exported to spreadsheets or visualized as site architecture diagrams for reporting.
Where Screaming Frog stands out
Verified capabilities most alternatives don't have.
Why people leave Screaming Frog
Dashed reasons are sourced facts; the rest are opinions. Vendors can dispute.
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Ranked alternatives
Ordered by Alt Score. Click any score to see the breakdown.
Feature comparison
Rows come from the SEO tools checklist (14 rows). Human-verified cells only. ? means the value has not been verified.
| SEO tools checklist | Screaming Frog | Ahrefs | Moz | SE Ranking | Semrush | Serpstat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Every fact and feature listed for Screaming Frog is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
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Pricing model Freemium verified 2026-07-11
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free to download and use for crawling up to 500 URLs at a time.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/ -
License Proprietary verified 2026-07-11
For £199 a year you can buy a licence, which removes the 500 URL crawl limit.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/ -
Starts at £199/year verified 2026-07-11
For £199 a year you can buy a licence, which removes the 500 URL crawl limit.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/ -
Platforms Windows, macOS, Linux verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ -
Status active verified 2026-07-11
We're delighted to announce Screaming Frog SEO Spider version 22.0, codenamed internally as 'knee-deep'.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/blog/seo-spider-22/ -
Rank tracking No verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ -
Backlink index size No verified 2026-07-11
You can connect to the Majestic, Ahrefs or Moz APIs and pull in link data for URLs in a crawl though (like the number of LRD they have etc).
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/blog/11-little-known-features/ -
Keyword research No verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ -
Site audit crawler Yes verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ -
Content optimization Partial verified 2026-07-11
word count, readability, duplicate and near duplicate content, and spelling and grammar errors.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/tabs/ -
Local SEO No verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ -
API access No verified 2026-07-11
You can connect to the GA4 API and pull in data directly during a crawl.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/configuration/ -
Price per seat Yes verified 2026-07-11
Licences are per user. 2 users will require 2 individual licences.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/pricing/ -
Free tier / trial Yes verified 2026-07-11
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free to download and use for crawling up to 500 URLs at a time.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/ -
SERP features tracking No verified 2026-07-11
The industry leading website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux, trusted by thousands of SEOs and agencies worldwide for technical SEO site audits.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
FAQ
Yes. Serpstat and Ubersuggest have a free tier or are fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.