Free Screaming Frog alternative: cloud SEO audit vs Netpeak Spider and Sitebulb (2026)
Screaming Frog is an excellent crawler, but a $279 yearly licence does not pay off for everyone. We compare it with Netpeak Spider, Sitebulb and the cloud-based PromoPilot SEO Audit: where a $5 pay-per-audit cloud crawl wins, where desktop crawlers are clearly stronger, and what a year of audits costs in three typical scenarios. Prices checked in October 2026.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the default crawler for technical SEO, and for good reason. But it is a desktop program with a yearly licence, and not everyone needs that. If you audit a few sites a year, work on a Mac or a Chromebook, need to check a site you do not own, or want a ready report for a client, a cloud audit can be the cheaper and simpler option. This is an honest comparison of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Netpeak Spider, Sitebulb and our own PromoPilot SEO Audit: where the cloud wins, where desktop crawlers are clearly stronger, and how the yearly cost works out in three typical scenarios. Competitor prices were checked on their official pages in October 2026.
The short answer
If you crawl sites every week, need custom extraction, log files or crawls of hundreds of thousands of URLs, keep Screaming Frog. A $279 yearly licence is good value for that kind of work, and nothing in this article changes it. If you audit occasionally, a pay-per-audit cloud crawler costs less and needs no installation. Here is the comparison at a glance.
| PromoPilot SEO Audit | Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Netpeak Spider | Sitebulb | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Cloud, nothing to install | Desktop: Windows, macOS, Linux | Desktop: Windows, macOS | Desktop or Cloud |
| Price | $5 per audit up to 5,000 pages, $25 up to 50,000. One-off, no subscription | $279 a year (£199), volume discounts from 5 licences | Pro $20 a month, $193 a year or $496 lifetime | Cloud from £95 a month; Desktop Lite and Pro (prices did not load when we checked) |
| Free version | Express audit of 100 pages, up to 30 runs a day, free account, no card | 500 URLs | 500 URLs, 5 threads; 3-day trial of Pro | 14-day trial |
| Size limit | 50,000 pages per audit | No fixed limit (your RAM and disk) | No fixed limit, up to 200 threads | Lite 10,000 URLs, Pro 500,000 (up to 2 million) |
| JavaScript rendering | Automatic only, when the site needs it (up to 1,000 rendered pages) | Yes, configurable | Yes, Chromium | Yes |
| Scheduled crawls | Only automatic monitoring every 30 days | Yes | No data on the official page | Pro and Cloud |
| Compare with previous crawl | Yes | Yes | No data on the official page | Pro |
| AI | Written AI report included in the price, in English, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian | Crawl with OpenAI and Gemini using your own API keys | No data on the official page | MCP support listed |
| Export | CSV and printable PDF; no XLSX, no API | Many formats | CSV, XLSX, PDF, Google Sheets | Yes |
| Audit a site you do not own | Yes, no verification | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Two things stand out. First, on free volume we are not the leader: Screaming Frog and Netpeak Spider both crawl 500 URLs for free, five times our 100. Second, on the price of a single full audit we are hard to beat: one $5 audit versus a $279 yearly licence. The rest of the article is about which of those two facts matters for your work.
Why people look for a Screaming Frog alternative
Nobody switches away from Screaming Frog because it crawls badly. The reasons are practical, and they are worth naming, because they decide which alternative actually fits.
- Irregular audits. A site owner who audits before a redesign and once or twice a year after that pays for a licence that sits unused for months.
- No suitable computer. Desktop crawlers need a machine that stays on for the whole crawl, with enough memory for large sites. A cloud crawler keeps working when you close the laptop, and you can start it from a phone.
- A report, not a spreadsheet. The SEO Spider gives you excellent raw data. Turning it into a document a client or a developer will read is a separate job.
- Another language. Freelancers in Poland, Ukraine and other markets often need a report in the client's language.
- Signals beyond the crawl. Questions like "how many of these pages are in Google's index?" or "does any AI search engine cite this site?" are not answered by crawling the site itself.
If none of these apply to you, you probably do not need an alternative.
Where a cloud audit is genuinely better
It runs on our server, not on your computer
PromoPilot SEO Audit is a cloud crawler. You enter a domain, the crawl runs on our server, and you can close the browser and come back later. It works the same from Windows, macOS, a Chromebook or a phone, and a 50,000-page crawl does not eat your laptop's memory.
$5 for a site up to 5,000 pages, $25 up to 50,000
There is no subscription. You pay from a prepaid balance for a specific audit, and the price depends only on the size of the site. If fewer pages turn out to be reachable than the tier you paid for, the difference down to the lower tier is refunded. For someone who audits a handful of sites a year, this is the main argument.
Audit a competitor or a prospect before the contract
You do not need access to the site or ownership verification to crawl it. That matters for agencies and freelancers who want to show a prospect what is wrong before they are hired. Free tools tied to your own verified properties, such as Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, cannot do this. If you connect Google Search Console for your own sites, the audit also shows which problem pages actually get traffic.
A written report with real URLs from the crawl
Every full audit includes an AI-written report in English, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian. It explains each problem in plain language and gives concrete example URLs from your site, so it can go to a client or a developer as is. It is part of the audit price; you do not need your own API key. The free express audit does not include it.
Compare a new crawl with the previous one
After fixes, run the audit again and see what was fixed, what is new and what is still there, page by page. Automatic monitoring re-crawls the site with a free express audit every 30 days and emails you the changes.
Index count, Core Web Vitals and AI visibility
Besides the 65 issue types the crawler checks in six categories (indexing, meta tags, content, speed, links and security), the audit adds the number of pages Google shows for a site: query, Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed for a sample of pages, whether Perplexity cites the site for queries in its niche, whether llms.txt exists, and whether robots.txt blocks AI crawlers. Schema.org validation, hreflang, orphan pages, click depth and broken internal and external links are part of the crawl itself.
There is also a practical detail that matters on modern hosting. When a firewall or a bot-protection service blocks the crawler, the audit switches between user agents (Googlebot desktop and smartphone, Bingbot, Chrome desktop and mobile) and re-requests the blocked URLs through an unblocking proxy, up to 300 requests per audit.
Where Screaming Frog and other desktop crawlers win
This section is the reason to trust the rest. A technical SEO who uses the SEO Spider every day will miss these things in our audit, and we would rather say so up front.
If several of these are on your daily checklist, the honest recommendation is a desktop crawler. A cloud audit then works best as a second tool: for sites you cannot crawl from your machine, quick checks of prospects, or reports in another language.
Netpeak Spider and Sitebulb in the same picture
Netpeak Spider is a desktop crawler for Windows and macOS from a Ukrainian company. The free version crawls 500 URLs with 5 threads, and Pro costs $20 a month, $193 a year or $496 for a lifetime licence, with up to 200 threads, Chromium rendering and export to CSV, XLSX, PDF and Google Sheets. At $20 a month it is cheaper than our audit as soon as you run more than four full audits a month. We cover it in more detail in a separate Russian and Ukrainian article.
Sitebulb sells a desktop version (Lite with 10,000 URLs, Pro with 500,000 and up to 2 million) and Sitebulb Cloud from £95 a month, with a 14-day trial. It is known for visualisations and for explaining issues with prioritised hints. Desktop prices did not load on its pricing page when we checked, so we do not quote them.
Netpeak Spider is the closest like-for-like replacement for the SEO Spider on price. Sitebulb is the strongest if you care about how findings are explained and visualised. Neither changes the basic split: desktop for daily, deep work; cloud pay-per-audit for occasional work and sites you cannot crawl locally.
What the year actually costs: three scenarios
The price question comes down to how many full audits you run per year. Dividing a $279 Screaming Frog licence by a $5 audit gives a break-even of about 56 audits of sites up to 5,000 pages. For larger sites at $25 per audit the break-even drops to about 11 audits a year.
| Scenario | PromoPilot SEO Audit | Screaming Frog | Netpeak Spider Pro | Better value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner of 2 small sites, quarterly audits (8 a year) | 8 × $5 = $40 | $279 a year | $193 a year | Cloud, per audit |
| Freelancer, 2 client audits a month, sites under 5,000 pages (24 a year) | 24 × $5 = $120 | $279 a year | $193 a year | Cloud, per audit |
| Agency, 10 audits a month (120 a year) | 120 × $5 = $600 | $279 a year per licence | $193 a year | Desktop licence |
| One 20,000-page shop, monthly audits | 12 × $25 = $300 | $279 a year | $193 a year | Desktop licence, if your computer handles the crawl |
The agency row is not a typo. If audits are a steady part of your business, a desktop licence is cheaper, and we recommend it. Where pay-per-audit wins is irregular work: the costs above are for full audits only, and quick checks with the free 100-page express audit cost nothing.
One more cost that the table does not show: time. With a desktop crawler you still need to turn the export into a report. Our full audit includes a written AI report, and a printable PDF version, in the price. Whether that saves you an hour or nothing at all depends on how you work.
What the free express audit shows, and what it does not
The express audit is the honest free tier, not a teaser of five pages. It crawls up to 100 pages of any site, and you can run it up to 30 times a day with a free PromoPilot account (sign in with Google or email, no card). It shows:
- the Health Score from 0 to 100, calculated from errors, warnings and notices per crawled page;
- the main issues found on those pages, grouped by category;
- the site profile, such as the detected CMS and the estimated size of the site.
What it does not include: some details are blurred, there is no export, no AI report, and it never goes past 100 pages. The express crawl also tells you how big the site is, so you see the exact price of the full audit before you pay. If you only want to check a single URL with no account at all, the free one-page SEO checker in our free tools does that.
Who should choose what
| You are | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Technical SEO, daily crawling, custom extraction | Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Flexibility, list mode, extraction, no size limit, mature ecosystem |
| Agency with a steady flow of audits | Screaming Frog or Netpeak Spider licence | Fixed yearly cost beats per-audit pricing after roughly 40–56 audits a year |
| Consultant who sells audits as a report | Sitebulb, or a desktop crawler plus a cloud audit | Visualisations and prioritised hints; a cloud report for clients in other languages |
| Site owner with 1–5 sites | PromoPilot SEO Audit | $5 per audit, nothing to install, written report, monitoring every 30 days |
| Freelancer checking prospects | PromoPilot SEO Audit (free express) | Any site, no verification, up to 30 free runs a day |
| Owner of one site, free only | Ahrefs Webmaster Tools plus our express audit | 5,000 pages a month free on a verified site; express for sites you cannot verify |
| Mac or Chromebook user, large site | A cloud crawler | No local memory limits; the crawl continues when the laptop is closed |
How to run the free express audit
Enter the domain
Open the SEO Audit page and enter the site address. Sign in with Google or email; no card is needed.
Wait for the 100-page crawl
The crawl runs on our server. You can close the tab and return later. If the site is a JavaScript application, rendering switches on automatically.
Read the Health Score and the main issues
Start with errors that affect indexing. Our guide to what to fix first after an SEO audit explains how to prioritise.
Decide on the full audit
You see the exact price for the whole site before paying: $5 up to 5,000 pages, $25 up to 50,000. The full audit unlocks all details, the AI report, CSV export and the comparison with later crawls.
Whichever crawler you use, the audit is only the first step. Fixing issues on pages that sit just outside the top 10 usually pays off fastest; here is how to find those pages in Search Console. And if you are comparing subscription-free tools more broadly, see our overview of pay-as-you-go SEO tools.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free alternative to Screaming Frog?
Yes, with limits. PromoPilot SEO Audit runs a free express audit of 100 pages in the cloud, up to 30 times a day, for any site and without installation. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools crawls 5,000 pages a month free on sites you verify. Screaming Frog and Netpeak Spider themselves crawl 500 URLs free on the desktop.
How much does Screaming Frog cost in 2026?
In October 2026 the official pricing page lists the SEO Spider at 279 dollars or 199 pounds per licence per year, with discounts from five licences. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Prices change, so check the official page before buying.
Is there an online version of Screaming Frog?
The SEO Spider is desktop software for Windows, macOS and Linux. Cloud crawlers such as PromoPilot SEO Audit, Sitebulb Cloud and the site audit tools inside Ahrefs or Semrush run on a server instead, so there is nothing to install and the crawl keeps going when your computer is off.
Can a cloud audit render JavaScript like Screaming Frog?
PromoPilot SEO Audit renders JavaScript automatically when a site's pages are almost empty without scripts, for up to 1,000 pages per full audit. Unlike Screaming Frog, you cannot switch rendering on manually for every site, so for detailed JavaScript SEO work a desktop crawler is more flexible.
When is Screaming Frog cheaper than paying per audit?
At 5 dollars per audit of a site up to 5,000 pages, a 279-dollar yearly licence pays off after about 56 audits a year. For sites up to 50,000 pages at 25 dollars per audit, it pays off after about 11 audits. Agencies with a steady flow of audits usually save with a licence.
Do I need to verify the site to audit it?
No. PromoPilot SEO Audit crawls any public site without verification, so you can check a competitor or a prospect. Connecting Google Search Console is optional and adds traffic data for your own sites.
Sources: official pages of Screaming Frog SEO Spider (pricing), Netpeak Spider (pricing), Sitebulb (pricing) and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, checked in October 2026. PromoPilot features and prices as of October 2026. Competitor prices change; check their sites before buying. This comparison is written by PromoPilot and is not sponsored by any of the tools mentioned.
