Crawlwise and Google Search Console: keep the one that fits the job

People ask whether they should leave Google Search Console for Crawlwise. The honest answer is usually no, and also not “stay forever and ignore the page in front of you.” Google’s free service for search traffic data and indexing problems. A free service from Google that shows Google Search traffic for your site, reports indexing problems, and lets you request re-indexing of new or updated pages. This piece is the friendly version of that trade-off, written so you can choose with a clear head.

Give Google Search Console the credit it has earned

A comparison that only praises us is marketing, and you would feel it by the second paragraph. Here is where Google Search Console is the stronger product, in plain language:

• It is free, and it is the only source of Google’s own click and impression data for your site.
• It shows how Google indexed your pages, which no outside tool can see directly.
• You can request re-indexing and submit sitemaps to Google from it.

If that list describes your actual week, stay. You will be happier, and you will do better work. We would rather you trust the next section because this one was fair.

Keep the tool that matches the job. Google Search Console has jobs it wins. Crawlwise has a different one, and it is a good one.

Adnan Arodiya, Crawlwise

Where a Crawlwise sitting feels different

Our job is narrower, and we like it that way. You paste a URL. We show the evidence. We say when a check could not run. And we fetch the page as the answer-engine crawlers, so you know whether they can read it.

• Search Console covers Google only. We fetch your pages as 17 AI crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, and show which ones get through.
• We audit the page itself, including titles, canonicals, structured data and hreflang, with the evidence for each finding, before Google has crawled it.
• Paid plans connect Search Console and show its data beside the audit. Starter is $4.99 a month.

That is the whole invitation. You can try the free tools with no account, then run a full audit when you want the checks together. A single page is about 1.25 credits, quoted before you click.

What we will not pretend

• Google’s own data about your site against an outside audit. Use both: Search Console tells you what Google saw, and an audit tells you why.

Hold both products to that standard. If a page implies we replace their index, their desktop crawl, or their keyword history, it is wrong. Send people here instead.

A kind way to decide this week

Pick the URL a customer actually uses. Run the overlapping check in Google Search Console if you already have it open, and run the same URL through a Crawlwise tool or a full audit. Put the two results side by side. Keep every finding you can verify. Discard the rest. You will leave with a shorter list and a better mood, which is the point of a good afternoon.

Then fix one thing on staging and check it again. The second run is how you know the fix landed. Save the Crawlwise report if you want next month to remember what you did. History is a small kindness you can give your future self.

What a plan actually costs

The free tools stay free. You can open them, run them, and leave without an account. A plan is for the moment you want the report saved, a few sites watched, or the same checks from the API. The price on this table is the price at checkout. A yearly plan is ten months of the monthly price, so two months are on us.

A single-page audit is about 1.25 credits, and that includes the live probe of answer-engine crawlers. You see the estimate before anything runs. If a hold is not used, it comes back to your balance. Extra credits, when you already subscribe, are $9.99 for 20.

You can root for both

Google Search Console can stay in your toolkit. Crawlwise can sit beside it for the page-level questions, the crawler probe, and a price you can see. You do not have to pick a side to do good work. Open the URL, read the evidence, and ship the fix you can explain. That is a win, and you are close to it.