Site Audit & Crawler Tools
Crawl your site to find technical issues. Most of what these tools flag doesn't matter, but some issues are critical.
Screaming Frog
The industry standard. Ugly interface, unmatched functionality. Been around forever, still the best desktop crawler. Free up to 500 URLs, which is enough for most sites.
Sitebulb has nicer reports, but Screaming Frog has more power under the hood. Learn the Frog first, consider Sitebulb if you need client-ready reports.
The Audit Trap
These tools will find hundreds of "issues" on any site. Missing alt text. Pages without meta descriptions. Non-canonical URLs. Most of it doesn't affect rankings. The tools don't distinguish between critical issues and noise.
Focus on indexation problems, crawl efficiency, JavaScript rendering, and site architecture. Ignore the red herrings. That's what separates useful technical SEO from busywork.
All Tools in This Category
screamingfrog.co.uk
Desktop crawler. Industry standard. Powerful, flexible, ugly. Free up to 500 URLs.
sitebulb.com
Desktop crawler with beautiful reports and actionable insights. Better UX than Screaming Frog.
lumar.io
Cloud-based enterprise crawler. Good for very large sites. Pricey for smaller operations.
oncrawl.com
Cloud crawler with strong log file analysis integration. Good for combining crawl data with server logs.
jetoctopus.com
Fast cloud crawler. Good GSC integration. Rising competitor to Lumar/OnCrawl.
ahrefs.com/site-audit
Cloud crawler included with Ahrefs. Good enough for most, but less powerful than dedicated crawlers.
ryte.com
German-based technical SEO platform. Good for European markets. Solid but not exceptional.
seoptimer.com
Simple site audit tool. Good for quick checks. White-label reports for agencies.
link-assistant.com
Part of SEO PowerSuite. Desktop crawler with decent features. Budget alternative to Screaming Frog.
netpeaksoftware.com
Desktop crawler. Affordable Screaming Frog alternative with similar functionality.
moz.com
Included with Moz Pro. Basic crawler. Better options exist for the same price or less.
visual-seo.com
Windows SEO crawler with visual analysis. Interactive site structure views.
Related Resources
See how search engines actually crawl your site.
Test page speed and Core Web Vitals.
Why most audit issues don't matter.
Help separating signal from noise.