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Compare anything, side by side
Pick up to 4 seo crawlers and we'll lay out their specifications side by side. Apples to apples only — once you pick the first item, the picker locks to its category so you don't end up comparing Selenium with OWASP Top 10.
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Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog
Commercial
Free Tier
Desktop SEO crawler for technical site audits.
Visit website ↗
×
Ahrefs
Ahrefs
Commercial
Cloud / SaaS
Enterprise
All-in-one SEO toolset including site audit.
Visit website ↗Side-by-side
Specification comparison
Schema: Tools. Missing values are marked "Not available yet" — those are next on our research list.
Rating key:
Positive / Free / Fast
Limited / Moderate
Difficult / Steep
Informational
| Attribute | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing |
Free
(500 URL limit); Licence £259/yr
|
Lite
$129/mo; Standard $249/mo; Advanced $449/mo
|
| Free tier / OSS |
Yes
— 500 URLs free forever
|
Free
Webmaster Tools (limited)
|
| License | Commercial |
Commercial
(SaaS)
|
| Testing type | SEO / Site Audit | SEO / Site Audit |
| Languages / SDKs | N/A (desktop app with Python/API access) | N/A (web-based) |
| Supported platforms | Windows, macOS, Ubuntu | Web (SaaS); browser extensions for Chrome/Firefox |
| Parallel testing | N/A | N/A |
| Speed |
Fast
— desktop multithreaded crawler
|
N/A |
| Key integrations | Google Analytics, Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Ahrefs | Google Search Console, WordPress, Looker Studio |
| Learning curve |
Easy
to moderate
|
Easy |
| Community / Support |
Very
large — industry standard SEO tool
|
Very
large; Ahrefs Academy + blog
|
| Maintained by | Screaming Frog Ltd | Ahrefs Pte. Ltd. |
| First released | 2010 | 2011 |
| Latest version | See website | See website |
| Best suited for | SEO professionals & QA teams auditing site structure | SEO teams needing backlink analysis + site audit in one tool |
| Official site | www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ ↗ | ahrefs.com ↗ |
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