Screaming Frog vs Sitebulb
Screaming Frog (SEO Spider desktop crawler) and Sitebulb (Desktop and cloud SEO crawler) on the same 24 capabilities, with a source for every cell and charts counted from the table.
Checked 21 October 2026 against each vendor's own public pages. Sources below.
Screaming Frog
SEO Spider desktop crawler
Paid licence $279 per user per year (1-4 licences)Runs on your machine
Sitebulb
Desktop and cloud SEO crawler
Paid subscription; Cloud from £95/month (FAQ)Local or cloud
Compatibility at a glance
Screaming Frog scores 92 on coverage and 75 on automation; Sitebulb scores 88 and 58. Both out of 100, counted from the table.
Out of 24 capabilities we compare for every tool.
18both have
4only Screaming Frog
0only Sitebulb
Market map
Coverage by group
Share of rows each tool covers in a group, 0–100, counted from the table below.
Side by side
yespartlynonot found in public docs
Where each one is stronger
Screaming Frog
- Mature, widely used crawler with a very large built-in issue list (over 300 as published).
- Built-in headless Chromium rendering with raw-versus-rendered HTML comparison.
- Direct API connections to Google Search Console, GA4, PageSpeed Insights, Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz inside the crawl.
- Axe-based accessibility checks and Schema.org/rich result validation.
- Saved crawl files, scheduling with auto-exports, and crawl comparison, with a free tier of 500 URLs.
Sitebulb
- Prioritized Hints (300+) explain each issue and why it matters, which suits client-facing audits.
- Customizable PDF reports and Data Studio / Google Sheets connectors for stakeholder reporting.
- Cloud edition supports team collaboration on shared crawl data and crawls up to 10 million URLs per audit.
- Built-in Search Console and GA4 integration, including URL Inspection data and orphan-page discovery.
- Site-wide Web Vitals and Lighthouse collection in the crawl, with findings grouped across pages.
Questions
Which is cheaper, Screaming Frog or Sitebulb?
Screaming Frog: Paid licence $279 per user per year (1-4 licences). Sitebulb: Paid subscription; Cloud from £95/month (FAQ). Prices as published on 21 October 2026; check the vendors' pricing pages before you buy.
Does Screaming Frog or Sitebulb run on my own machine?
Screaming Frog: crawls run on your own machine. Sitebulb: desktop crawls locally; Cloud runs in browser.
Can AI agents use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb?
MCP server — Screaming Frog: official MCP server since v24.0; paid licence only; Sitebulb: official read-only MCP for Claude/ChatGPT, Desktop and Cloud. API — Screaming Frog: no public REST API found; it consumes third-party APIs; Sitebulb: cloud: no API yet; webhooks and Data Studio connector.
How much does Screaming Frog SEO Spider cost?
The pricing page on the check date lists $279 per licence per year for 1-4 licences, with lower per-licence prices from 5 licences. A free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Licences are per user.
How much does Sitebulb cost?
It is a paid subscription with a 14-day free trial (equivalent to Pro desktop, no card). Desktop has Lite (10,000 URLs per audit) and Pro (500,000 URLs); Cloud requires 2+ users and starts from £95/month per the FAQ. Desktop prices were not readable on the pricing page; yearly plans save 15%.
How we compared
- Every cell comes from the vendor's own public pages (product, documentation, pricing, release notes, repository) on 21 October 2026.
- “Not found in public docs” means we could not confirm it from an official source, not that the feature is missing. Charts count it as 0.
- Prices and plans change. Check the vendor's pricing page before you buy.
- Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.
Sources
- SEO Spider product page
- Pricing and licence
- Issues list
- Release history
- User guide: General
- User guide: Configuration
- SEO Spider 24 announcement
- Sitebulb pricing
- Sitebulb features
- Sitebulb Hints
- Sitebulb MCP
- Sitebulb FAQ
- Sitebulb download
- Sitebulb about
- Performance audit
- Accessibility
- Content Extraction Settings
- Audit settings
- Keywords Report
Screaming Frog is a trademark of Screaming Frog Ltd. Sitebulb is a trademark of Sitebulb Limited. Names and icons identify the products compared; SpiderHead is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Screaming Frog Ltd or Sitebulb Limited. Owners can ask us to remove an icon via contact.