Alfa vs Axe DevTools

Alfa is a free, open accessibility testing engine for websites built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It checks pages against accessibility standards such as WCAG, using included rules or pluggable rules in the ACT Rules Format. Developers can add custom rules and filter results by conformance level or WCAG version. Audit output follows the Evaluation and Report Language schema as JSON-LD, and the command-line interface can audit a single page and save results as JSON. Scraper and crawler tools create page representations and discover pages across a site or subdomain. Ready-made integrations cover frameworks and test tools including Angular, React, Vue, Cypress, Jest, Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, and WebdriverIO. Alfa is distributed as separate npm packages under the MIT license. It runs in ECMAScript 2022-compatible JavaScript environments, including recent Node.js and browser versions. Building from source requires Node.js 20 or later and Yarn. The project says most integrations are experimental and may change; older environments may be targetable from source but are not explicitly supported.

Axe DevTools is an accessibility testing product with automated scans, manual review tools, and remediation guidance. Its stated standard coverage is WCAG 2.2, and the product lists mobile testing, API access, and CI/CD integration. The free browser extension costs nothing and checks one page at a time. The Pro extension adds AI-enhanced features, Intelligent Guided Testing, user flow analysis, Jira integration, and advanced reporting and sharing; no price is listed for it. The Axe DevTools for Web Bundle includes a browser extension, CI/CD and API integrations, linting, business intelligence reporting and monitoring, and on-premises and private-cloud options; its price is also not listed. The pricing model is freemium. The maker, Axe DevTools, was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, United States. The listed platform is API, alongside the browser extension. Plan descriptions distinguish single-page checks in the free extension from broader testing and workflow capabilities in the other plans.