Screaming Frog alternatives: the honest list, and when a CLI fits better
For a bigger desktop crawl with visual reports, Sitebulb is the closest alternative. For a free, open-source crawler in the terminal, squirrelscan. For a hosted crawl on a schedule, Seobility or SE Ranking. For a single URL, AI crawler access and a check you can run in CI or an agent, Crawlwise. If you need a large crawl with JavaScript rendering for $279 a year, Screaming Frog is still the answer.
Key takeaways
- Screaming Frog costs $279 per licence per year and crawls 500 URLs free; most alternatives cost more for a big crawl, not less.
- Sitebulb is the closest desktop alternative; squirrelscan is the free open-source CLI one.
- Hosted crawlers such as Seobility and SE Ranking trade a monthly fee for schedules and history.
- A CLI audit fits when the check belongs in CI, a script or a coding agent rather than on a desk.
Most “Screaming Frog alternatives” lists are written to sell the tool at the top. This one starts with a concession: for a technical SEO who crawls large sites from a desk, Screaming Frog is very hard to beat. It costs $279 per licence per year, the free version crawls 500 URLs, and both render JavaScript. If that is your job, keep it. The rest of this page is for the cases where it is not the best fit.
Why people look for an alternative
- They want reports, not a spreadsheet. Screaming Frog shows you everything. Some people want the tool to say what matters first.
- They do not want to be at a desk. A desktop crawler needs a machine running. A hosted tool crawls on a schedule and keeps history.
- They want the check in a pipeline. An audit that runs on every pull request, or inside a coding agent, needs a command, not a window.
- They need to know about AI crawlers. Whether GPTBot or ClaudeBot can actually fetch a page is a different question from what a crawler found.
The alternatives, side by side
| Tool | Runs | Price to start | Crawl size | Renders JS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screaming Frog | Desktop, plus a command-line mode | Free to 500 URLs; $279 a year | No cap licensed | Yes |
| Sitebulb | Desktop, plus a cloud option | Lite $18 a month | 10,000 URLs Lite; 500,000 Pro | Yes |
| squirrelscan | Open-source CLI, local | Free; Pro cloud $19 a month | Whole site, locally | In the cloud |
| Seobility | Hosted | Free plan; paid from €59.90 a month | 100 pages free; 25,000 on Premium | Yes |
| SE Ranking | Hosted suite | Core $129 a month | 250,000 pages a month on Core | Not compared here |
| Lighthouse | Browser, CLI | Free | One URL per run | Yes |
| Crawlwise | Hosted, CLI, MCP, GitHub Action | Free 1 page a day; Starter $4.99 | Up to 10,000 pages on paid plans | No |
Sitebulb: the closest desktop alternative
Sitebulb is the tool to try if you like Screaming Frog’s model but want prioritised hints, crawl maps and reports you can hand a client. Lite audits 10,000 URLs, Pro 500,000 by default, JavaScript rendering is included, and both plans list MCP access. It is a subscription rather than a yearly licence.
squirrelscan: the free open-source CLI
squirrelscan is MIT licensed, crawls a whole site on your machine with no account, and runs 299+ rules across 21 categories. It also ships a local MCP server and a GitHub Action. If you wanted Screaming Frog in a terminal at no cost, this is the nearest thing. Read our squirrelscan comparison for where it beats us.
Seobility and SE Ranking: hosted crawls with history
Seobility has a free plan that crawls 100 pages of one project, paid plans from €59.90 a month, and can execute JavaScript during a crawl. SE Ranking’s Core plan is $129 a month and includes 250,000 crawled pages a month, plus rank tracking and AI search tracking. Both suit people who want crawls on a schedule and do not want to keep CSVs.
Keep the desktop crawler for exploring a site. Put the check that must never regress somewhere it runs without you.
Adnan Arodiya, Crawlwise
When a CLI fits better than a desktop crawler
Screaming Frog has a command-line mode too, so “CLI” alone is not the difference. The difference is where the audit lives. A desktop crawler is a place you go. A one-command audit is something a pipeline or an agent can call: on every pull request, after a deploy, or inside Claude Code while it edits your templates.
That is the job Crawlwise is built for. One command, no install:
npx crawlwise audit https://your-site.comIt audits one page a day free with no account; an API key on Pro ($14.99 a month) or above returns the full report. npx crawlwise ai-crawlers https://your-site.com is free and fetches the page as about 17 AI crawlers, reporting whether each got through. The GitHub Action Adnanarodiya/crawlwise-audit-action@v1 runs the same audit in CI, and the MCP server gives an agent 15 tools. Every finding cites its check, and anything not measured says so. The full list of checks is on the rules page.
Where Crawlwise is not the alternative
If you crawl 50,000 pages, need JavaScript rendering, log file analysis, custom extraction or a visual sitemap, Crawlwise is the wrong tool and our Screaming Frog comparison says so in detail. Many people keep Screaming Frog for the deep crawl and use a CLI audit for the pages that matter most, in the places a desktop app cannot reach.
To see every way to run it, from the terminal to an agent to CI, start at integrations.
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.
| Plan | Monthly | Credits | A good fit when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $4.99 | 10 | You look after one site and check it now and then |
| Pro | $14.99 | 40 | A few sites, plus the API and a handful of watched URLs |
| Studio | $49.99 | 150 | Client work that would burn through Pro mid-month |
| Agency | $99.99 | 400 | Many locations, reported under your own name |
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.
Sources
Vendor pages were read on 2026-10-09. Prices and plan limits change without notice, so check the original before you buy anything on the strength of a number here.
Crawlwise and Screaming Frog
Whole-site crawl size
- Crawlwise
- Up to 10,000 pages on the largest plan
- Screaming Frog
- No URL cap once licensed
JavaScript rendering
- Crawlwise
- No, server HTML only
- Screaming Frog
- Yes, built in
Log files, custom extraction, visual sitemaps
- Crawlwise
- Not what we built
- Screaming Frog
- Yes
Fetches pages as each AI crawler
- Crawlwise
- Yes, about 17, reported per crawler
- Screaming Frog
- No
Runs from one npx command, no install
- Crawlwise
- Yes
- Screaming Frog
- Desktop install; scheduling needs a licence
Keeps audit history for you
- Crawlwise
- Yes, on a plan
- Screaming Frog
- Your exports, kept by you
Try it on your URL
Run the checks on your live site
Free tools answer one question. A full audit scores the page, tests answer-engine crawlers, and saves to history on a plan.
- Live crawler probes
- Core Web Vitals
- One free full audit
Frequently asked questions
Meet the author
Adnan Arodiya
Crawlwise
Writes about what Crawlwise actually measures: on-page evidence, crawler access, and performance signals — with the limits stated up front.
