Best Technical SEO Crawlers: 11 Compared by Site Size

Screaming Frog crawls 500 URLs for free. JetOctopus's cheapest plan costs $4,188 a year. Both are called technical SEO crawlers.

Most "best crawler" lists rank tools by features. Few tell you what you pay per page crawled, or which plan renders JavaScript.

We checked 11 technical SEO crawlers on their own pricing and help pages on 6 November 2026. We compared them by job and site size, in US dollars.

You'll see URL limits, JS rendering, scheduling, log files and the price per 10,000 crawled pages. We didn't run test crawls for this article.

Technical SEO crawlers at a glance

*Year one = 12 months on monthly billing, USD, before tax, from vendor pages checked 6 November 2026. Yearly-billing totals in brackets. Screaming Frog sells yearly licences only.

Desktop or Cloud: Decide This First

A desktop crawler runs on your computer. You pay per user, often per year, and crawl as many URLs as your hardware can hold.

A cloud crawler runs on the vendor's servers. You pay for a monthly page allowance, and it can re-crawl on a schedule while your laptop is closed.

• Pick desktop if one person audits sites hands-on and wants every setting.
• Pick cloud if you need scheduled re-crawls, shared reports or more pages than one machine can handle.
• Pick enterprise cloud if you crawl millions of URLs and need log files joined to crawl data.

Onely's guide to SEO crawlers, published on 30 October 2026, makes the same split. Its author is blunt about the top end:

How We Compared the Crawlers

• Prices and limits come from each vendor's own pricing or help pages, checked on 6 November 2026, in US dollars, before tax.
• Year one = 12 months on monthly billing. Yearly billing is shown separately.
• We compared listed limits and features. We didn't run test crawls or measure speed or accuracy.
• Tools count pages differently. Some count every URL; others count only HTML pages that return 200. Compare like with like.

Free and Low-Cost Crawlers

1. seotools.pro Website Audit: free first, then scheduled cloud audits

Full disclosure: this is our own tool. We've kept to what our Website Audit and pricing pages list on 6 November 2026.

• No account: your homepage in about a second, then 20 pages.
• Free account: 500 pages per audit, 1,000 pages a month, manual re-crawls.
• Lite ($24 a month, $20 billed yearly): 5,000 pages per audit, 50,000 a month, weekly automatic re-crawls.
• Pro ($49, $41 yearly): 25,000 pages per audit, 250,000 a month, daily re-crawls.
• Business ($99, $83 yearly): 100,000 pages per audit, 1,000,000 a month.

The audit runs 60 checks in 11 groups. It flags AI bots blocked in robots.txt, content that loads only with JavaScript, and llms.txt.

Paid plans add exports (CSV, PDF, Google Sheets) and a list of new and fixed issues between crawls. Only HTML pages that return 200 count toward the limit.

Who should skip: anyone who needs full JS rendering or log-file analysis. Our pages don't list either, so use a dedicated crawler for those jobs.

2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider: the desktop standard

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. A licence costs $279 a year per user and removes the cap.

• Paid adds JavaScript rendering, scheduling, crawl comparison, saved crawls and custom extraction.
• The paid limit depends on "allocated memory and storage", per its pricing page.
• Bulk licences drop to $265 (5 to 9) and $235 (20+) per user per year.
• Log files are a separate app: Log File Analyser is $139 a year (free version: 1,000 log lines, 1 project).

Who should skip: teams that want shared, scheduled cloud reports without a computer left running. Comparing options? See our Screaming Frog alternatives.

3. Sitebulb: the clearest reports, desktop or cloud

Sitebulb Desktop Lite costs $18 a month ($180 a year) for 10,000 URLs per audit. Pro costs $42 a month ($425 a year) for 500,000 URLs per audit.

• JavaScript crawling is in every plan, including Lite.
• Scheduled audits and audit comparisons are Pro only.
• Pro's limit can be raised to 2 million URLs, if your machine can cope, per its FAQ.
• Sitebulb Cloud Mini costs $125 a month ($1,500 a year): 2 users, 50,000 URLs a month, recurring audits. Larger Cloud plans are listed too.
• 14-day free trial.

On visual reporting, the same Onely guide puts it plainly:

Who should skip: Lite buyers with big sites. 10,000 URLs fills up fast on a store with filters.

4. Netpeak Spider: a low-cost desktop crawler with JS rendering

Netpeak Spider costs $20 a month after a 3-day free trial. It runs on Windows and macOS.

• JavaScript rendering is listed as a feature.
• It includes data segmentation and an internal PageRank calculator.

Who should skip: anyone who needs a free tier. We found only the 3-day trial on its pages.

Cloud Crawlers Inside SEO Suites

5. Semrush Site Audit: easy if you already pay for Semrush

Semrush's SEO plan costs $139 a month ($117.33 billed yearly). It covers 5 websites and 500 tracked keywords.

• Its help centre lists 100,000 pages a month and 20,000 per audit for the Pro SEO Toolkit tier. That tier has the same 5-site, 500-keyword limits as the $139 plan.
• JavaScript rendering needs the Guru or Business toolkit tier. On today's pricing page, that means Semrush One Pro+ ($299 a month) or higher.
• Without a toolkit, Site Audit crawls 100 pages a month.
• Daily or weekly scheduled re-crawls.

Who should skip: JavaScript-heavy sites on a budget. Rendering starts at more than twice the $139 price.

6. Ahrefs Site Audit: generous for verified sites

Ahrefs Free gives 5,000 crawl credits a month per verified project. Credits are used only for HTML pages that return 200.

• Lite ($129 a month): 100,000 crawl credits a month, up to 25,000 pages per project.
• Standard ($249): 500,000 credits, 50,000 pages per project.
• Advanced ($449): 1.5 million credits, 250,000 pages per project.
• Annual billing "save up to 17%" is arranged through support. No annual USD prices are listed.

Who should skip: anyone auditing sites they can't verify, like a prospect's or a competitor's. Ahrefs Free works on verified sites only.

7. SE Ranking Website Audit: the biggest allowance at $129

SE Ranking Core costs $129 a month ($103.20 billed yearly). It includes 250,000 audited pages a month, up to 250,000 per project.

• Growth ($279 a month) raises that to 2 million pages a month, up to 1 million per project.
• Both include rank tracking, keyword research and AI visibility tracking.
• 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

Who should skip: people who only need a crawler. You pay for a full SEO suite.

Crawlers for Large and Enterprise Sites

8. JetOctopus: published prices for big crawls and logs

JetOctopus is the only log-file-focused enterprise crawler here with prices on its page. Growth is $349 a month billed yearly, or $459 quarterly.

• Growth: 500,000 crawled URLs and 2 million log lines a month.
• Pro: $809 yearly or $1,089 quarterly, for 2 million URLs a month.
• Ultra: $1,559 yearly or $2,069 quarterly, for 5 million URLs a month.
• The plan table lists a JavaScript rendering crawl mode, crawl comparison and unlimited projects and seats.
• Free trial (7 days, per the page) opened after a demo; no credit card.

Its pricing page quotes practitioners too. That's a vendor-selected testimonial, so weigh it as one:

Who should skip: small sites. The cheapest plan is $4,188 a year on yearly billing.

9. Lumar, Botify and Oncrawl: quote-only enterprise platforms

All three are cloud platforms for large sites. None publishes a price, so we can't compare cost per page.

• Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl): its pricing page asks you to fill in a form for a quote.
• Botify: no prices or plans on its pricing page; only "Get a demo". It lists AI agent and bot analytics.
• Oncrawl: owned by BrightEdge since February 2022. Its old /pricing/ URL returned "Page not found" today; the site offers "Book a demo".

Who should skip: sites under a few hundred thousand URLs. The tools above cover them with public prices.

How to Choose by Site Size and Job

Not sure your site needs JS rendering? Open a key page in our source code viewer. If the main content isn't in the raw HTML, you need a crawler that renders.

Found redirect chains in a crawl? Paste the URL into our Redirect Checker to see every hop and status code.

What Crawl Volume Really Costs

Here is the monthly price per 10,000 pages of crawl allowance. We divided each plan's monthly price by its listed monthly page or credit allowance.

• Per audit matters too. Semrush's 20,000 and Ahrefs Lite's 25,000 pages per project can cap one big site before the monthly allowance runs out.
• Suites bundle more. Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking also include keyword research and rank tracking in that price.
• Desktop is off this chart. Screaming Frog is $279 a year (about $23 a month) with no page cap, but you supply the hardware.

Want to see who links to the pages you're fixing? Our Backlink Analyzer shows the 50 strongest backlinks free.

Rather Have Someone Fix It?

A crawl gives you a list. Someone still has to fix templates, redirects and indexing. Our team offers SEO & GEO services, including technical work.

Scope and pricing depend on your site. Book a free consultation with Anatolii Ulitovskyi to talk it through.

The Verdict

Small site or one-off check? Use a free tier first: Screaming Frog (500 URLs), seotools.pro (500 pages with a free account) or Ahrefs Free.

Hands-on audits by one person? Screaming Frog at $279 a year is the default. Choose Sitebulb Pro if you want clearer, prioritised reports.

Scheduled cloud audits on a budget? seotools.pro Lite or Pro. Choose SE Ranking if you also want its full suite.

Millions of URLs and log files? JetOctopus if you want public prices. Otherwise ask Botify or Oncrawl for quotes.

FAQ

Sources

Pricing and limits (checked 6 November 2026): seotools.pro pricing and Website Audit; Screaming Frog SEO Spider; Screaming Frog Log File Analyser; Sitebulb Desktop and Cloud; Netpeak Software; JetOctopus.

Suites (checked 6 November 2026): Semrush pricing and Site Audit limits; Ahrefs pricing and Ahrefs Free limits; SE Ranking.

Enterprise (checked 6 November 2026): Lumar; Botify; Oncrawl; BrightEdge press release (23 February 2022).

Quotes: Onely, Bartosz Góralewicz (published 30 October 2026); JetOctopus pricing page testimonial (seen 6 November 2026).