SE Ranking vs Screaming Frog
The short answer: these are not the same kind of tool. SE Ranking is a monthly subscription to a cloud platform, and its site audit is metered by pages per month. Screaming Frog is a licence for a crawler that runs on your own machine, with no page meter at all and a free tier. Choose on that difference first and on features second.
- SE Ranking suits a marketer who wants rank tracking, keyword research and an audit in one place, and is happy to pay monthly for it.
- Screaming Frog suits an SEO who wants raw crawl data from a desktop tool, on very large sites, with no page meter.
- Docket suits someone on a Mac who wants a ranked list of what to fix, bought once, with no meter.
At a glance
Every vendor figure here was read from that vendor's own pages on 8 October 2026.
| SE Ranking | Screaming Frog | Docket | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Monthly subscription | Annual licence | Once |
| Published price | $129–$279/mo ($103.20–$223.20/mo billed annually) | $279/yr USD | $349 once · or 4 × $87.25 |
| Plans | Core and Growth, then an Enterprise tier that says “Talk to sales” | One tier. Licences are per user | One licence, up to three Macs |
| Audit volume | Metered: Core states “250k pages per month in audit”, Growth “2M pages per month in audit” | Unmetered; the free tier stops at 500 URLs | Unmetered |
| Where the crawl runs | Their cloud | Your machine | Your Mac |
| Try before buying | “Start free 14-day trial”, “No credit card required” | Free tier, 500 URLs, permanently | Free: your score and how many problems each area has. Then a 30-day refund |
$349once · or 4 × $87.25
For Macs with Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or later
On your phone?
Founding price $174.50 once · or 4 × $43.63, first 25 buyers, then $349. Buy applies the code FOUNDINGDOCKET for you; if the checkout shows $349, enter it under ‘Have a discount code?’.
Screaming Frog is $279 a year. Ahrefs plans with Site Audit run $29–$449 a month. Docket is $349 once. Their prices read 8 October 2026.
30 days, no conditions, no questions asked. Refund policy
Intel Mac? Get the Intel version
Checked against the vendor's own pricing page: Ahrefs Site Audit checked 2026-10-08 (source); CrawlRaven checked 2026-09-16 (source); Google Lighthouse checked 2026-08-10 (source); JetOctopus checked 2026-09-16 (source); Otterly.AI checked 2026-08-10 (source); Profound checked 2026-09-16 (source); SE Ranking checked 2026-10-08 (source); SEOptimer checked 2026-10-08 (source); Screaming Frog checked 2026-10-08 (source); Scrutiny checked 2026-08-15 (source); Semrush Site Audit checked 2026-09-09 (source); Sitebulb checked 2026-09-08 (source); Sitechecker checked 2026-09-16 (source); Ubersuggest checked 2026-08-10 (source); crawler.sh checked 2026-09-16 (source). Prices change; check before you buy, and tell us if one here is wrong.
What SE Ranking is actually selling
Not a crawler. The audit is one module inside a rank-tracking and keyword platform, and the Core plan's own bullet list makes the proportions clear: ten projects and one manager seat, two thousand keywords and a hundred prompts tracked daily, five domains in GEO research, 250k pages a month in audit, and 25K API credits with MCP access. The Growth plan raises the audit to 2M pages a month, with thirty projects and three manager seats. If you want daily rank tracking across locations and devices, that is the product, and neither of the other two here does it at all.
The page meter is the thing to check before you buy. 250k pages a month is generous for one site and starts to matter when you are auditing many, or re-auditing the same large site often, and it is a ceiling that exists because the crawl happens on their hardware.
What Screaming Frog is actually selling
The opposite trade. It audits “over 300 SEO issues”, it runs on your machine, and nothing counts your pages. Their page says you can “Download & crawl 500 URLs for free”, and that “For just £199 per year you can purchase a licence, which removes the 500 URL crawl limit”. In US dollars the pricing page lists $279/yr USD per licence, and says licences are per user, so two people need two. The free tier is genuinely useful and genuinely limited: their Free vs Paid table puts Scheduling, Crawl Configuration, Save & Open Crawls, JavaScript Rendering, Crawl Comparison and Near Duplicate Content on the paid side only, so the free version cannot save a crawl or render JavaScript.
What you get back is data. Screaming Frog is the better tool if you know what you are looking for: custom extraction, very large crawls, a specific hypothesis to test. It does not rank what to fix first, and it does not try to.
Where Docket sits, and where it does not
Docket is the third shape: bought once, run locally, unmetered, and the output is a ranked plan rather than a table. Every finding carries how bad it is, how long the fix takes and the change to make. That is the whole pitch, and it is worth being clear about what it costs you.
Docket does not track rankings. No keyword positions, no daily rank checks, no competitor position history. If that is why you were looking at SE Ranking, Docket does not replace it and this page is not trying to talk you out of it.
Docket does not out-crawl Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog handles far larger sites, renders JavaScript across a whole crawl in its integrated Chromium, and supports custom XPath extraction. Docket renders a sample by default. On a large single-page application, Screaming Frog is the right tool.
Docket is macOS only. Both of the others run on Windows.
Docket on a real site: ours
Most of this page is about what the other two do. This is what Docket does: a real audit of our own site, with the figures the engine reported.
That audit found 9 things to fix: 2 medium, 3 low and 4 notice. Below are the ones that do not name other companies or sites, in the order Docket ranked them. 2 more name other companies or sites, a cookie-consent finding among them, and are left out here as they are in the public sample report.
| Severity | Finding | Effort | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medium | 4 pages across 2 groups target the same search as each other | Medium | 4 |
| Low | 2 groups of near-identical colours in your CSS | Medium | 2 |
| Low | Only 1 recognised profile in sameAs | Trivial | 1 |
| Low | 1 page promises one thing in search and another on the page | Small | 1 |
| Notice | Missing 1 baseline security header | Trivial | 1 |
| Notice | 2 marketing and analytics tools detected | Trivial | 2 |
| Notice | One AI visibility control cannot be checked from outside, including by Docket | Trivial | 1 |
When to pick SE Ranking or Screaming Frog instead of Docket
- You need daily rank tracking and keyword research. Pick SE Ranking, and the audit comes along with it. Docket does not track rankings.
- You crawl very large sites, or you want raw data to interrogate yourself. Pick Screaming Frog. It handles far larger crawls than Docket and supports custom extraction.
- You are not on a Mac. Docket runs on macOS only, on Apple silicon or Intel.
- You want to know what is wrong with your site and what to do about it, on a Mac, with no subscription or page meter. That is what Docket is for.
Checked 8 October 2026. The factual claims about this product were read from its own pages on that date: SE Ranking's Core plan states "250k pages per month in audit" (source); the same plan lists "25K API credits & MCP access" (source); its two priced plans are $129.00/mo and $279.00/mo, or $103.20 and $223.20 billed annually, above an Enterprise tier that says “Talk to sales” (source); it offers a "Start free 14-day trial" with "No credit card required" (source); Screaming Frog audits "over 300 SEO issues" (source); you can "Download & crawl 500 URLs for free", and its page says "For just £199 per year you can purchase a licence, which removes the 500 URL crawl limit" (source); its pricing page lists $279 per licence per year for 1 to 4 licences, and says "Licences are per user. 2 users will require 2 individual licences." (source); SE Ranking's Growth plan states "2M pages per month in audit" (source); its Free vs Paid table puts Scheduling, Crawl Configuration, Save & Open Crawls, JavaScript Rendering, Crawl Comparison and Near Duplicate Content on the paid side only (source). SE Ranking and Screaming Frog change their plans without telling anyone, so a figure here can go stale. If one has, tell us.
Docket is a one-time purchase for macOS: no account, no crawl credits, and the crawl runs
on your machine. Five optional checks fetch data it cannot produce alone; --offline
turns all five off.
$349once · or 4 × $87.25
For Macs with Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or later
On your phone?
Founding price $174.50 once · or 4 × $43.63, first 25 buyers, then $349. Buy applies the code FOUNDINGDOCKET for you; if the checkout shows $349, enter it under ‘Have a discount code?’.
Screaming Frog is $279 a year. Ahrefs plans with Site Audit run $29–$449 a month. Docket is $349 once. Their prices read 8 October 2026.
30 days, no conditions, no questions asked. Refund policy
Intel Mac? Get the Intel version
Common questions
Which is better for a site audit, SE Ranking or Screaming Frog?
It depends on the job. Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler with no page meter and a free tier of 500 URLs, for people who want raw crawl data. SE Ranking's audit is one module of a subscription platform, metered by pages per month and sold beside rank tracking and keyword research. Docket is a third option for Mac users: bought once, unmetered, with a ranked list of fixes.
How much does SE Ranking cost compared with Screaming Frog?
SE Ranking is $129–$279/mo ($103.20–$223.20/mo billed annually). Screaming Frog is $279/yr USD, with a free tier up to 500 URLs. Both were read from the vendors' own pages on 8 October 2026. Docket is $349 once.
Is SE Ranking's site audit unlimited?
No. Its Core plan states “250k pages per month in audit”, so the audit is metered by pages per month. Screaming Frog's paid licence has no page meter, because the crawl runs on your own machine rather than theirs.
Can I use Screaming Frog for free?
Yes, up to 500 URLs. Their Free vs Paid table puts Scheduling, Crawl Configuration, Save & Open Crawls, JavaScript Rendering, Crawl Comparison and Near Duplicate Content on the paid side, so the free version cannot save a crawl or render JavaScript.
Which one tracks keyword rankings?
SE Ranking. Screaming Frog does not, and neither does Docket. If daily rank tracking is what you need, that is the one of the three that does it.