Best Free Website Analyzers and SEO Audit Tools in 2026: 10 Compared and Scored

#How we picked and scored these tools

We started with 12 popular free analyzers and checked each one's free offering on its official site in September 2026. Ten held up. Two didn't, and we explain why further down. Every limit below comes from the vendor's own pricing or help pages, so check the date: free tiers change often.

Each tool gets a score from 1 to 5 on six criteria, weighted to a total out of 100.

A 1 means we couldn't confirm the capability on the free tier. We scored the free tier only, not paid plans.

#The quick comparison

#The scores

Bing topping the list surprised us. It's the only free tool that pairs a site crawler with first-party search data and first-party AI citation data. That doesn't mean Bing matters more than Google for your traffic: for most sites Google is the bigger source, so Search Console is still step one in the stack below.

#The 10 best free website analyzers, reviewed

The reviews are in the order we'd set them up, not score order.

#1. Google Search Console

• Best for: seeing your site the way Google sees it: what's indexed, what isn't and why, and which queries bring clicks.
• What's free: everything. Google describes it as "a free service" for monitoring and troubleshooting your presence in Google Search. The catch is setup: you verify ownership with an HTML file, a DNS record at your domain provider, Google Analytics or Tag Manager.
• Key checks: the Performance report (clicks, impressions, CTR, position, up to 16 months), Page indexing, URL Inspection with a live test and "Request indexing", Sitemaps, Core Web Vitals from real Chrome users, rich result reports, Links, Manual actions and a robots.txt report.
• Strengths: first-party data nobody else has. It tells you why a page isn't indexed, not just that it isn't.
• Weaknesses: it doesn't audit your titles, meta descriptions or social tags. Rare "anonymized" queries are hidden, the interface exports 1,000 rows at most, and AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is blended into the Web totals. Low-traffic sites often see "No data available" in Core Web Vitals.
• Use it if: you have a website. Skip it if: never.

If your pages aren't showing up at all, start with our guide to why a new website isn't showing up on Google.

#2. PageSpeed Insights

• Best for: speed and Core Web Vitals on a single URL.
• What's free: everything, at pagespeed.web.dev, with no account.
• Key checks: real-user field data from the Chrome UX Report over the previous 28 days (LCP, INP, CLS and FCP), plus a Lighthouse lab test covering Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO. Google's "good" thresholds are LCP up to 2,500 ms, INP up to 200 ms and CLS up to 0.1.
• Strengths: the field data comes from the same real-user source as Search Console's Core Web Vitals report, and the lab test lists specific opportunities.
• Weaknesses: one URL per run. New sites often have no field data yet, so you only get the lab score.
• Use it if: you want to know whether real visitors wait too long. Skip it if: you want a site audit. It isn't one.

#3. Bing Webmaster Tools

• Best for: a second search engine's data, plus the only free, first-party view of AI citations.
• What's free: everything. You can import your verified sites from Search Console instead of verifying again.
• Key checks: Search Performance with up to 16 months of data, URL Inspection, IndexNow submission, keyword research, backlinks for your site and competitors, and Site Scan, an on-demand crawler for issues like broken links, duplicate tags and missing metadata. Site Scan runs against a monthly page quota shown in the tool.
• The AI part: the AI Performance report entered public preview on February 10, 2026. It shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and select partner experiences, which pages get cited, and the grounding queries behind them. On June 16, 2026 Bing began rolling out Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare in preview.
• Weaknesses: the AI data covers Microsoft surfaces, not ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Preview features can change.
• Use it if: you set up Search Console. It takes one import. Skip it if: you'll never open a second dashboard.

#4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free version)

• Best for: a complete crawl of a small site from your desktop.
• What's free: crawls of up to 500 URLs. You can't save crawls, change the crawl configuration, render JavaScript, validate structured data, use custom extraction or connect Search Console, Analytics or PageSpeed Insights. A licence costs £199 a year (as shown on its pricing page in September 2026).
• Key checks: broken links, errors and redirects, page titles and meta data, meta robots and directives, hreflang, exact duplicate pages, plus XML sitemap generation and site visualisations.
• Strengths: you see every URL and every status code. For a sub-500-page site that's a real audit.
• Weaknesses: it's a desktop app with a dense interface. If your site builds its content with JavaScript, the free version only reads the raw HTML.
• Use it if: you're technical and your site is under 500 URLs. Skip it if: you want a hosted report or scheduled crawls, which are paid.

#5. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

• Best for: a free, recurring cloud audit of sites you own.
• What's free: unlimited verified projects, Site Audit with 5,000 crawl credits a month per project, Site Explorer for your own site with 1,000 backlinks and keywords visible at once, and Web Analytics up to 1 million events a month per project.
• Key checks: Ahrefs says Site Audit finds, prioritizes and helps fix 170+ technical and on-page SEO issues.
• Strengths: the deepest free crawler on this list, it runs in the cloud, and you get backlink data from Ahrefs' index for your own site.
• Weaknesses: you must verify each site, and we couldn't confirm AI-readiness checks on the free tier.
• Use it if: your site has grown past 500 URLs, or you want an audit that re-runs without you. Skip it if: you need competitor research. That's the paid product (see Verdy vs Ahrefs for where each fits).

#6. Verdy

• Best for: launch-stage sites that want to know what to fix first, including whether AI assistants can read them.
• What's free: the full audit as often as you like, with every finding listed by title and severity. The audit asks for a free sign-in. The quick tools need no signup: an AI-readiness check, a meta and social tag audit and an llms.txt starter generator. The evidence and exact fix for each finding, generated files and a printable report are in the Fix pack, $30 one time (as shown on verdy.site in September 2026).
• Key checks: it reads your homepage and crawls about a dozen pages for indexability, titles and meta descriptions, headings, canonicals, sitemap, robots.txt, JSON-LD, Open Graph and X cards, speed via PageSpeed Insights, AI crawler access for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and others, and llms.txt. You can connect Search Console read-only to see real queries, clicks and impressions.
• Strengths: the AI-readiness checks most free tools skip, in the same report as the SEO basics. The free launch console then ranks about 150 places to launch and get listed, so the audit leads to a next step.
• Weaknesses: not a large-site crawler. No backlink index, keyword volume data or rank tracking.
• Use it if: you just launched or are about to. Skip it if: you're auditing a 1,000-page site or doing keyword research.

For the background on AI crawlers, read can AI crawlers read your website?

#7. Lighthouse

• Best for: developers testing a page in Chrome or in CI.
• What's free: everything. It's open source and runs in Chrome DevTools, from the command line or as a Node module. It also powers the lab half of PageSpeed Insights.
• Key checks: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO. There's also a new, experimental Agentic browsing category that needs Chrome 150 or later. It includes an llms.txt audit (which only flags server errors, and marks a missing file as not applicable) plus accessibility checks for agents.
• Strengths: repeatable, scriptable and precise about what's slow.
• Weaknesses: lab data from one simulated load of one page. The SEO category covers basics only.
• Use it if: you ship code. Skip it if: you're non-technical. Use PageSpeed Insights instead.

#8. Seobility (free Basic plan)

• Best for: a small site you want monitored with light rank tracking.
• What's free: 1 project, 100 pages per crawl, 10 tracked keywords, 5 daily tool credits and 3 tracked AI prompts, with no card and no time limit. The audit is labeled "limited". Paid plans start at €59.90 a month for Premium.
• Strengths: a genuine free-forever plan with rankings and an audit in one place.
• Weaknesses: 100 pages is small, and the pricing table marks AI visibility tracking as "coming soon".
• Use it if: you run a small business site and want one simple dashboard. Skip it if: your site is past 100 pages.

#9. Semrush (free account)

• Best for: trying one of the big paid suites before buying.
• What's free: 1 demo project, 10 reports a day across its tools and a limited set of AI Visibility features, with no card. Site Audit is capped at 100 pages a month and 100 pages per audit.
• Key checks: Site Audit runs 140+ checks and now has an AI Search category. But Semrush lists "AI-ready Site Audit" as missing even from its entry paid SEO plan, so don't expect it free.
• Strengths: excellent keyword and competitor data, if 10 reports a day is enough.
• Weaknesses: 100 pages a month is a sample, and the daily allowance goes fast.
• Use it if: you're evaluating Semrush. Skip it if: you want your main audit tool to be free.

#10. Ubersuggest (free account)

• Best for: occasional keyword ideas alongside a basic weekly audit.
• What's free: 3 searches or reports a day, 1 project, a site audit of up to 150 pages weekly, 25 tracked keywords with weekly desktop-only updates, 100 backlinks per site and 40 Chrome extension searches a day. No time limit.
• Strengths: simple, and keyword research and an audit live in one account.
• Weaknesses: free users can't recrawl on demand, so you can't confirm a fix until the next weekly cycle.
• Use it if: you blog and want a few keyword ideas a day. Skip it if: you're fixing issues and need to check them.

#Tools we looked at and left out

Sitechecker. Its on-page checker and Chrome extension are free with no signup, but they check one page. The full product is a 14-day trial, and a one-time audit of up to 50,000 URLs costs $5 in credits. Useful, but not a free site analyzer.

SEOptimer. We couldn't load its pricing page to confirm current free limits in September 2026, so we left it out rather than guess.

#The free stack we'd actually use

If we launched a site tomorrow and had $0, this is the setup, in order:

1. Google Search Console. Verify with a DNS record, submit your sitemap and request indexing for your homepage.
2. Bing Webmaster Tools. Import from Search Console. Watch AI Performance once you have content worth citing.
3. PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and your main template (pricing, product or post). Fix anything outside the "good" thresholds.
4. One crawler. Screaming Frog's free version if you're under 500 URLs and comfortable with a desktop app. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools if you want scheduled crawls or you're bigger.
5. Verdy for the checks the others don't make: AI crawler access, llms.txt, structured data and social previews, ranked by severity. Then use its launch console to decide where to get listed.

That covers Google's data, Bing's data, real-user speed, a full crawl and AI readiness for $0. Pay for tools only when a specific gap costs you money.

#Which free analyzer should you use?

#Common mistakes with free SEO audit tools

• Chasing a perfect lab score. A 100 in Lighthouse doesn't mean real visitors are happy. Field data in PageSpeed Insights or Search Console is what reflects them.
• Treating a tool's "SEO score" as a Google metric. Each vendor has its own formula. Fix the issues, ignore the number.
• Auditing 100 pages of a 2,000-page site and calling it clean. Free caps are real. Know which pages the tool actually crawled.
• Thinking llms.txt is the whole AI story. Google says you don't need special AI text files or special schema to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. AI crawler access, indexing and clear content matter more. Our guide on getting recommended by ChatGPT covers the rest.

#FAQ

#What is the best free website analyzer?

There isn't one tool that covers everything. Google Search Console is the one you can't skip because it's Google's own data. Pair it with Bing Webmaster Tools, PageSpeed Insights, one crawler and Verdy for AI readiness, and you have a complete free setup.

#Is Google Search Console enough on its own?

For indexing and search performance, it's the best source there is. It doesn't check your titles, meta descriptions, social tags or AI crawler access, and it can't crawl your site on demand. Most sites need at least one crawler alongside it. We compare the gaps in Verdy vs Google Search Console.

#What is the Screaming Frog free limit?

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs per crawl. It can't save crawls, render JavaScript, validate structured data or connect to Search Console, Analytics or PageSpeed Insights. A licence removes those limits for £199 a year as of September 2026.

#Can a free tool check whether ChatGPT can read my website?

Yes. Verdy's free AI-readiness check looks at whether your robots.txt allows AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, and whether you have an llms.txt file. For real citation data, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows citations in Microsoft Copilot, but no free tool shows ChatGPT citations directly.

#Are free SEO audit tools accurate?

They're accurate about what they measure, but they measure different things. A crawler reports what it found on the pages it crawled, while Search Console reports what Google actually indexed. When they disagree, trust Search Console for Google.

#How often should I run a free SEO audit?

Run one before launch, right after launch, and after any redesign, migration or CMS change. Past that, a monthly check is plenty for most small sites. Search Console alerts you to new indexing problems between audits.

#Do I need an llms.txt file?

It's optional. Chrome's Lighthouse docs call it an emerging convention and say that without it, agents may spend more time crawling to understand your site. Google says you don't need special AI text files to appear in AI Overviews. It's cheap to add, but make sure AI crawlers aren't blocked first.

#Final recommendation

Set up Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools today. They're free, first-party, and nothing replaces them. Add PageSpeed Insights for your key pages and one crawler sized to your site: Screaming Frog under 500 URLs, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools above that.

Then close the gap none of them cover: whether AI assistants can read you, and what to fix first. That's where a free Verdy audit fits. Don't use it for large crawls or keyword research.