crawler.sh vs Screaming Frog SEO Spider
crawler.sh
crawler.sh
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
screamingfrog.co.ukSide by side
| Figure | crawler.sh | Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8.25/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 9 |
| Spec score · SEO tools | 7.8 (#124) | 9.5 (#1) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The documentation describes an MCP server for connecting crawler.sh output to tools and lists Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenCode, and Zed as clients. | It connects to Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights APIs, and lists link metrics integrations for Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz APIs. |
| JavaScript rendering | A built-in JavaScript engine renders React, Vue, Next, and similar single-page apps without headless Chrome. | Integrated headless Chromium renders JavaScript sites and frameworks including Angular, React and Vue. |
| Site audit | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Support is offered by email, with typical replies within one business day; the maker says it does not offer live chat, phone support, ticket SLAs, or dedicated account managers. | Paid users receive technical support, while official self-help includes a user guide, tutorials, FAQ and issue library. |
Plans
crawler.sh
- FreeFree
- CLI Pro$99 a year
- Desktop Pro$99 a year
- FreeFree
- CLI Pro$99 a year
- Desktop Pro$99 a year
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- FreeFree
- Paid licencePrice not published
- Free VersionFree
- Free VersionFree
- Paid licence (20+)$235 a year
- Paid licence (10–19)$249 a year
- Paid licence (5–9)$265 a year
- Paid licence (1–4)$279 a year
- Paid Version$279 a year
In their own words
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls websites to audit more than 300 SEO issues and support improvements to search performance and user experience. It finds broken links and server errors, checks redirects, and flags page titles and meta descriptions that are missing, duplicated, or too long. For JavaScript-heavy sites, it can render pages with its integrated Chromium WRS, including sites using Angular, React, and Vue.js. Data extraction supports CSS Path, XPath, regular expressions, and custom JavaScript. The crawler connects to Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights APIs, with link-metrics integrations for Majestic, Ahrefs, and Moz. Crawls can be scheduled, automated from the command line, exported to destinations such as Google Sheets, and compared across runs or between staging and production. The free version costs nothing and allows 500 URLs per crawl; saving crawls, configuration, and advanced features are restricted. The paid version costs $279 a year per licence, with unlimited crawl size subject to allocated memory and storage. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.