Summary
| Tool | Runs | Entry paid price | Billing | Crawl limit at entry price | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bseoa | Desktop | $279 | One-time | No limit | 14-day trial, all features |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Desktop | $279 / year | Yearly, per user | No set limit (depends on your machine) | Free version, 500 URLs |
| Sitebulb | Desktop or cloud | $18 / month (Lite) | Monthly or yearly | 10,000 URLs per audit | 14-day trial |
| Netpeak Spider | Desktop | $20 / month | Monthly, yearly or lifetime | Unlimited URLs | Free version, 500 URLs |
| Semrush | Cloud | $139 / month | Monthly or annual | See Semrush section | Free account, 100 pages/month; 7-day trial |
| Ahrefs | Cloud | $129 / month (Lite) | Monthly or annual | 100,000 crawl credits/month | Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for verified sites |
| Moz Pro | Cloud | $99 / month (Standard) | Monthly or yearly | 400,000 pages/month | Free trial |
| JetOctopus | Cloud | $689 / month (Pro) | Monthly or annual | 1M URLs (in-house) | 7-day trial, 10,000 URLs |
| Lumar (formerly DeepCrawl) | Cloud | Quote only | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Oncrawl | Cloud | Quote only | Not published | Token-based quotas | Demo |
| Botify | Cloud | Quote only | Not published | Not published | Demo |
Desktop crawlers vs cloud platforms
The tools above fall into two groups, and comparing their prices directly is a bit unfair to both.
- Desktop crawlers (bseoa, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb desktop, Netpeak Spider) run on your computer. Crawl size is limited mainly by your machine's memory and disk, and pricing is per user rather than per page. They do technical auditing only: no keyword rankings or backlink database.
- Cloud SEO platforms (Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz Pro) include a site audit alongside keyword research, rank tracking and backlink data. You pay for the whole suite, and site audits are limited by monthly page or credit quotas.
- Enterprise cloud crawlers (Lumar, Oncrawl, Botify, JetOctopus) focus on very large sites, scheduled crawls, log file analysis and team workflows. Most sell on annual contracts through sales.
If you already pay for Semrush or Ahrefs for keywords and backlinks, their site audit may be enough. If you need deeper crawls, JavaScript rendering on large sites, or crawl data you can script against, a dedicated crawler usually costs less than moving up a platform tier.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider price
Screaming Frog costs $279 per license per year (£199 or €245) for 1–4 licenses. Volume pricing drops to $265 per license for 5–9, $249 for 10–19, and $235 for 20 or more. Licenses are per user, so two people need two licenses. It's a yearly subscription; auto-renewal can be turned off, but the license expires after a year.
The paid license removes the 500-URL crawl limit (the page says unlimited, subject to your machine's memory and storage) and unlocks JavaScript rendering, crawl configuration, saving and opening crawls, scheduling and crawl comparison. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs without those features. There's no trial of the paid version.
Source: screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/pricing
Sitebulb pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite (desktop, 1 user) | $18 | $180 | 10,000 URLs per audit |
| Pro (desktop, 1 user) | $42 | $425 | 500,000 URLs per audit |
| Pro (desktop, 2 users) | $53 | $540.60 | 500,000 URLs per audit |
| Cloud | From $125 | From $1,500 | Flexible crawl plans |
JavaScript rendering is included. Yearly desktop plans save 15%, and there's a 14-day trial equivalent to Pro with no credit card. Sitebulb's FAQ notes that larger Cloud setups can run above £20,000 a year.
Source: sitebulb.com/pricing
Semrush Site Audit pricing and limits
Site Audit comes with Semrush's SEO plans. Current prices: SEO $139/month, Starter $199/month, Pro+ $299/month and Advanced $549/month, with about 17% off for annual billing. Extra users start at $45/month. There's a 7-day trial.
Semrush's help center still publishes Site Audit crawl limits under its older plan names:
| Plan (help center name) | Pages per month | Pages per audit | JavaScript rendering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free account | 100 | 100 | No |
| Pro | 100,000 | 20,000 | No |
| Guru | 300,000 | 20,000 | Yes |
| Business | 1,000,000 | 100,000 | Yes |
Based on the number of websites each plan monitors (5, 15 and 40), the current SEO, Pro+ and Advanced plans appear to correspond to Pro, Guru and Business, but Semrush doesn't state this directly, so confirm with Semrush before buying for a specific limit. Unused pages don't roll over; limits reset on the 1st of each month.
Sources: semrush.com/prices, Semrush KB: pages per audit
Ahrefs Site Audit pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Crawl credits per month | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free) | $0 | 5,000 per verified project | Verified sites |
| Lite | $129 | 100,000 | 5 |
| Standard | $249 | 500,000 | 20 |
| Advanced | $449 | 1,500,000 | 50 |
| Enterprise | $1,499 | Custom | Custom |
Only internal HTML pages that return 200 use crawl credits; redirects, errors, resources and external URLs don't. Every verified project also gets its first 5,000 credits a month free on any plan. Annual billing lowers the monthly price, extra users cost $40–$80/month depending on plan, and Ahrefs says it doesn't offer discounts or a trial.
Sources: ahrefs.com/pricing, Ahrefs help: crawl credits
Moz Pro pricing
Standard is $99/month (400,000 crawled pages a month, 3 tracked sites), Medium $179/month (2 million pages, 10 sites) and Large $299/month (5 million pages, 25 sites), with a smaller Starter plan at $49/month. Paying yearly saves about 20%. Enterprise pricing is through sales.
Source: moz.com/products/pro/pricing
Netpeak Spider pricing
Netpeak Spider is a Windows and macOS desktop crawler. Pro costs $20/month, $193/year, or $496 one-time for a lifetime license, with unlimited URLs and JavaScript rendering. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Licenses are per user on up to two devices, and there's a 3-day trial.
Source: netpeaksoftware.com/pricing/spider
JetOctopus pricing
Pro is $689/month ($549/month billed annually) for up to 1 million URLs for in-house teams, and Ultra is $1,369/month ($1,089 annually) for 3 million. Both include unlimited users and projects, JavaScript rendering, log analysis and API access. The top tier is custom. The 7-day trial is capped at 10,000 URLs.
Source: jetoctopus.com/pricing
Lumar, Oncrawl and Botify pricing
None of these three publishes prices. Lumar (which was DeepCrawl until 2022) asks you to fill in a form for a quote, Botify offers a demo, and Oncrawl's site links only to booking a demo. Oncrawl's help center describes quotas in crawl tokens: one token per URL, three with JavaScript rendering. Expect annual contracts priced for enterprise sites. Our write-ups on DeepCrawl/Lumar alternatives and Oncrawl alternatives cover the trade-offs.
What a crawler costs over three years
For one person doing technical audits, list prices over three years look like this (monthly plans shown at annual-billing rates where the vendor offers them):
| Tool and plan | 3-year cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| bseoa, Single License | $279 | One-time; updates included |
| Netpeak Spider Pro, lifetime | $496 | One-time |
| Sitebulb Lite, yearly | $540 | 10,000 URLs per audit |
| Screaming Frog, yearly | $837 | $279 × 3 |
| Sitebulb Pro, yearly | $1,275 | 500,000 URLs per audit |
| Moz Pro Standard, yearly | About $2,850 | Includes keyword and link tools |
| Semrush SEO, annual | About $4,224 | Includes keyword and backlink data |
| Ahrefs Lite, monthly | $4,644 | Less with annual billing; includes keyword and backlink data |
The platform tools aren't overpriced crawlers; most of what you pay for is keyword and backlink data a crawler doesn't have. The comparison matters when the site audit is the part you actually use.
bseoa pricing
bseoa is a desktop crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux with a GUI and a CLI. A Single License is $279 once, with no crawl limits and future updates included. The Agency License is $1,999 for teams. There's a 14-day free trial with every feature and no credit card, and every purchase includes a source code guarantee. See what the crawler checks or full pricing.
What bseoa doesn't include: keyword rankings, backlink data, rank tracking or scheduled cloud crawls. If you need those, a platform subscription is the right tool, and a crawler complements it.