CrawlSEO vs Screaming Frog SEO Spider
CrawlSEO
github.com
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
screamingfrog.co.ukSide by side
| Figure | CrawlSEO | Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 9 |
| Spec score · SEO tools | 8.1 (#73) | 9.5 (#1) |
| AI integrations | Its 10-tool MCP server works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Cursor. | AI crawling supports OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama and Anthropic prompts. |
| Backlink analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Intended users | The README describes CrawlSEO as open-source SEO monitoring for founders rather than SEO specialists. | The maker describes the tool as designed for experienced SEOs and says it is trusted by professional SEOs, agencies, and brands for technical SEO audits. |
| Security and privacy | The project is MIT licensed and self-hosted, and its README says the user's data stays theirs. | The privacy policy says software use may involve checks of username, licence key, IP address, anonymised machine ID, and timestamp, and that data is stored in secure data centres in the UK and US with access restricted to authorised personnel. |
| Self-hosting | The project supports Docker Compose or manual deployment and requires PostgreSQL and Node.js 20 or later for manual installation. | Every release can run locally, on a dedicated server or in the cloud, including remote concurrent crawls. |
| Site audit | Yes | Yes |
Plans
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.