Open SEO Crawler vs Yoast SEO
Open SEO Crawler
github.comYoast SEO
yoast.comSide by side
| Figure | Open SEO Crawler | Yoast SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 5 |
| Spec score · SEO tools | 7.8 (#119) | 9.3 (#3) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Installation | Installers are documented for Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian, macOS 11 or newer on Intel and Apple Silicon, and Windows 10/11. | The free plugin can be installed through the WordPress dashboard, by uploading a ZIP file or through Yoast's automatic installer. |
| License | The project is released under the MIT license. | Yoast's WordPress plugins are released under the GPL open-source license; the distribution repository identifies Yoast SEO as GPLv3. |
Plans
Yoast SEO
- Yoast SEOFree
- Yoast SEO Premium$118.80 a year
- Yoast SEO FreeFree
- Yoast SEO Google Docs Add-on$5 a month
- Yoast SEO for Shopify$19 a month
In their own words
Open SEO Crawler
Open SEO Crawler is a free, self-hosted, open-source tool for auditing websites for technical SEO issues. It checks titles, meta descriptions, H1s, canonicals, structured data, redirects, HTTP errors, indexability, hreflang, mobile viewports, mixed content, images and security headers. It detects numerous CMS platforms, including Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Kajabi, Ghost, Drupal, HubSpot and Joomla, then applies crawl recommendations. Optional Playwright rendering supports JavaScript-heavy sites, while compare mode identifies content absent from raw HTML.
Bulk reports can be exported to XLSX, and sitemap export is available. Default settings allow 1,500 pages, five workers, a 0.4-second per-host delay and depth 10; the page cap can be changed to unlimited. The crawler runs locally without accounts, telemetry or API calls, though it contacts target sites and checks GitHub for updates when requested. Installers are documented for Linux, macOS 11 or newer, and Windows 10/11. The project uses the MIT license.