Screaming Frog alternatives for Mac and Windows
Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is the crawler the others are measured against, and it is free up to 500 URLs. If you have outgrown that, or you want to pay a different way, there are six others worth a look: Sitebulb, SEO PowerSuite's WebSite Auditor, Netpeak Spider, Scrutiny, LibreCrawl and ours, Docket. This page says what each costs, which computers it runs on, how much it will crawl, and when it is the better choice than Screaming Frog. Docket is the answer for some readers and not for others, and the page says which.
Short answer: pick by what you are missing
- You want it free: LibreCrawl, if you are happy to start it from a script or Docker, or Screaming Frog itself or WebSite Auditor for sites under 500 URLs.
- You want to pay monthly, not yearly: Netpeak Spider, from $20 a month.
- You make reports for clients: Sitebulb Pro.
- You want rank tracking and backlinks from the same company: SEO PowerSuite.
- You want to pay once, on a Mac: Scrutiny at $149, or Docket at $59.
- You want to pay once, on Windows or a Mac, and be handed a list of what to fix first: Docket at $59.
- You want raw crawl data, exact control and the biggest sites: stay with Screaming Frog. Nothing below changes that.
Seven tools side by side
Read 5 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages (sources at the foot of the page). Prices are US dollar list prices for one person. The first row is the tool you are comparing against.
| Tool | Runs on | What it costs | Free version | How much it crawls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Windows, macOS (Apple silicon and Intel) and Ubuntu | $279 a year per licence; a licence lasts 1 year and then has to be renewed; two users need two licences | free, crawls up to 500 URLs | no fixed limit on a paid licence: the maximum is "dependent on allocated memory and storage" |
| Sitebulb | a desktop app for Windows or Mac, and a separate cloud product | Lite $180 a year for 1 user, Pro $425 a year for 1 user; cloud from $1500 a year | a 14 day free trial | 10,000 URLs per audit on Lite, 500,000 on Pro |
| SEO PowerSuite (WebSite Auditor) | Windows, Apple and Linux | WebSite Auditor Professional $149 a year; the whole Professional suite $349 a year | free for as long as you want, crawling and auditing 500 URLs | 500 URLs on the free version, and site crawling and auditing listed as unlimited on a paid licence |
| Netpeak Spider | Windows and macOS | $20 a month, cancel anytime, after a 3 day free trial | a 3 day free trial | not stated on the pages read |
| Scrutiny | Mac only: macOS 11.5 or later, and the page says there are no plans for Windows | $149, a one-off purchase | 30 days of free use with only exporting disabled | not stated on the page read |
| LibreCrawl | any computer that can run Docker or Python, as a web app you open in your browser | free and open source under the MIT licence | free, no tiers | not stated on the page read |
| Docket SEO | Mac (Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or later) and 64-bit Windows | $59 once, or four payments of $14.75 | a full audit with no key: the score, the number of problems in each area and the most important one in full | 200 pages by default and 15 minutes, and both can be raised |
Where each one is better than Screaming Frog, and where it is not
Sitebulb
A desktop app for Windows or Mac, and a separate cloud product. Its Lite plan is $180 a year, which is less than Screaming Frog's $279, and its Pro plan is $425 a year, which is more. The difference between the plans is size: 10,000 URLs per audit on Lite, 500,000 on Pro. Pro also adds what an agency uses every week: scheduled audits, audit comparisons and customised PDF reports. It is the better choice when the output is a report for someone else. Screaming Frog's feature list names JavaScript rendering, scheduling and crawl comparison, so the gap on features is smaller than a price difference suggests, and the better question is which of the two you find easier to read. Docket and Sitebulb compared.
SEO PowerSuite (WebSite Auditor)
It runs on Windows, Apple and Linux. It has a free version, free for as long as you want, crawling and auditing 500 URLs, which makes it the nearest like for like to Screaming Frog's own free tier. Paying is $149 a year for WebSite Auditor alone, or $349 a year for the whole suite. The same company sells Rank Tracker, SEO SpyGlass for backlinks and Link Assistant for link building. That is the reason to choose it: you are buying a set of SEO tools and the auditor comes with them. The cost to know about is the return policy: the pricing page says refunds are not issued for partial use or for the time left in a subscription.
Netpeak Spider
It runs on Windows and macOS and is sold by the month: $20 a month, cancel anytime, after a 3 day free trial. It crawls JavaScript with Chromium and has a built-in PageRank calculator. If your need for a crawler comes in bursts, paying for the months you use it can cost less than a licence that lasts a year, and the pricing page lists a 14 day money back guarantee. The pages we read do not say how many URLs it will crawl, so check that before you plan around a large site.
Scrutiny
It is Mac only: macOS 11.5 or later, and the page says there are no plans for Windows. It is $149, a one-off purchase, with 30 days of free use with only exporting disabled, so you can try it before you pay. Its page lists link checking, HTML validation, spelling and grammar checks, SEO warnings and sitemap export. That makes it a tidy fit for someone who looks after a few sites on a Mac and wants a one-off price. It is not an option on Windows, and it is not a crawler for work you share with a team on other platforms. Docket and Scrutiny compared.
LibreCrawl
It is free and open source under the MIT licence, and it has no paid tier. It runs on any computer that can run Docker or Python, as a web app you open in your browser, and you start it yourself. Its page lists JavaScript rendering through Playwright, PageSpeed Insights integration, issue detection and CSV, XLSX, JSON or XML export, and GitHub lists no published release, so it is started from the source. You choose it when the price has to be nothing, or when you want to read and change the code. The trade is the one every self-run tool has: you install it, you update it and nobody is paid to answer when it breaks.
Docket, the one we make, and what we ran ourselves
Docket is ours. It runs on Mac (Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or later) and 64-bit Windows, costs $59 once, and refunds the whole price within 30 days. It runs 99 checks on every page it reads, including whether AI crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot can reach the site, and it puts what it finds in the order to fix it, with the exact markup to paste. That is the difference from Screaming Frog, which gives you the data and leaves the ordering to you.
It is weaker than Screaming Frog in three places and you should know them before you buy. It has no custom extraction, so it cannot pull a field of your choice out of every page. It renders JavaScript in WebKit on a sample of pages and not on every page. And it crawls 200 pages by default and stops at 15 minutes, which you can raise, but it is not built for a site of hundreds of thousands of URLs. Docket and Screaming Frog compared in full.
We ran the free version of Docket 1.3.153, as shipped, on this site, docketseo.app. It read 147 pages in under a minute, scored the site 99 out of 100 (A), and found 4 problems. The free version put the most important one in full, with its fix, and said how many more the paid version shows.
We did not run the other tools for this page. Everything above about them is what their own pages say, with the date, and none of it says one is faster or finds more than another, because we did not measure that. Every tool in the table has a free version or a free trial, and the length of each is in the table. The quickest honest comparison is the one you run yourself: crawl the same small site with two of them and compare what you are told to do.
$59once
For Macs with Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or later, and 64-bit Windows
On a Mac? Get the Mac version.
On your phone?
Black Friday price, all of November: Docket SEO $29.50 once. From 1 December it’s $59, or 4 × $14.75. Buy applies the code FOUNDINGDOCKET for you; if the checkout shows $59, enter it under ‘Have a discount code?’.
30 days, no conditions, no questions asked. Refund policy
Not in the list
Ahrefs Site Audit and Semrush Site Audit run in a browser and are sold inside larger subscriptions, so they are not desktop crawlers; Ahrefs and Semrush are compared separately. If the thing you need is only a free check, the best free SEO audit tools says where each one stops. For a Mac-only view with the cost over three years, see SEO audit tools for Mac.
Checked 5 November 2026. The factual claims about this product were read from its own pages on that date: Screaming Frog SEO Spider: runs on Windows, macOS (Apple silicon and Intel) and Ubuntu; $279 a year per licence; a licence lasts 1 year and then has to be renewed; two users need two licences; free: free, crawls up to 500 URLs; crawl size: no fixed limit on a paid licence: the maximum is "dependent on allocated memory and storage"; its feature list names JavaScript rendering, scheduling and crawl comparison (source); Sitebulb: runs on a desktop app for Windows or Mac, and a separate cloud product; Lite $180 a year for 1 user, Pro $425 a year for 1 user; cloud from $1500 a year; free: a 14 day free trial; crawl size: 10,000 URLs per audit on Lite, 500,000 on Pro; every plan lists JavaScript crawling and Google Analytics and Search Console integration; Pro adds scheduled audits, audit comparisons and customised PDF reports (source); SEO PowerSuite (WebSite Auditor): runs on Windows, Apple and Linux; WebSite Auditor Professional $149 a year; the whole Professional suite $349 a year; free: free for as long as you want, crawling and auditing 500 URLs; crawl size: 500 URLs on the free version, and site crawling and auditing listed as unlimited on a paid licence; the same company sells Rank Tracker, SEO SpyGlass for backlinks and Link Assistant for link building; refunds: the pricing page says refunds are not issued for partial use or for the time left in a subscription (source); Netpeak Spider: runs on Windows and macOS; $20 a month, cancel anytime, after a 3 day free trial; free: a 3 day free trial; crawl size: not stated on the pages read; crawls JavaScript with Chromium and has a built-in PageRank calculator; refunds: the pricing page lists a 14 day money back guarantee (source); Scrutiny: runs on Mac only: macOS 11.5 or later, and the page says there are no plans for Windows; $149, a one-off purchase; free: 30 days of free use with only exporting disabled; crawl size: not stated on the page read; link checking, HTML validation, spelling and grammar checks, SEO warnings and sitemap export (source); LibreCrawl: runs on any computer that can run Docker or Python, as a web app you open in your browser; free and open source under the MIT licence; free: free, no tiers; crawl size: not stated on the page read; JavaScript rendering through Playwright, PageSpeed Insights integration, issue detection and CSV, XLSX, JSON or XML export; GitHub lists no published release, so it is started from the source (source); Screaming Frog free version, licence term and JavaScript rendering in the feature list (source); Sitebulb platforms, trial and plan features (source); SEO PowerSuite platforms and the WebSite Auditor price (source); SEO PowerSuite return policy (source); Netpeak Spider pricing, trial and refund terms (source); LibreCrawl README: JavaScript rendering, export formats and how it is started (source); LibreCrawl licence and published releases, read through GitHub's API (source). If a price or a feature on this page is out of date, tell us and it will be corrected.
Common questions
What is the best free alternative to Screaming Frog?
LibreCrawl is free with no paid tier and is open source under the MIT licence, but you start it yourself from a script or Docker. SEO PowerSuite's WebSite Auditor has a free version that crawls up to 500 URLs, and Screaming Frog itself is free up to 500 URLs.
Is there a Screaming Frog alternative I pay for once?
Yes. Scrutiny is a one-off $149 purchase and runs on a Mac only. Docket is a one-off $59 and runs on a Mac and on 64-bit Windows. Sitebulb, SEO PowerSuite and Screaming Frog are sold by the year, and Netpeak Spider by the month.
Which Screaming Frog alternatives work on Windows?
Docket, Sitebulb, SEO PowerSuite's WebSite Auditor and Netpeak Spider all list a Windows version. Scrutiny is Mac only, and LibreCrawl runs anywhere that can run Docker or Python.
Is Docket a replacement for Screaming Frog?
For some people. Docket ranks what it finds and says what to fix first, runs on a Mac and on Windows, and costs $59 once. Screaming Frog is the better tool for raw crawl data, custom extraction, JavaScript rendering on every page and very large sites, and plenty of people use both.