Screaming Frog crawls your whole site for SEO issues. PageGuard monitors your site over time — automatically, with email alerts, covering Accessibility, Performance, and SEO.
Key Difference: Crawler vs Monitor
Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler for technical SEO audits — you run it manually, it scans your whole site, you fix issues. PageGuard is a continuous monitor that runs automatically and alerts you when something breaks. Both are useful, but for different jobs.
| Feature | PageGuard | Screaming Frog |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ✓ Free + from $9/mo | Free (up to 500 URLs) + £259/yr for unlimited |
| Who is it for? | ✓ Small businesses, designers, agencies — ongoing site monitoring | SEO professionals and technical SEO specialists doing site crawls |
| No install required | ✓ Yes — web app, any browser | No — desktop application (Windows/Mac/Linux) |
| Automated monitoring | ✓ Yes — weekly or daily scans, email alerts on score drop | No — manual crawls only, no scheduled monitoring |
| Email alerts on regression | ✓ Yes — notified when any score drops | No |
| SEO crawl depth | Single page — technical SEO checklist for scanned URL | ✓ Full-site crawl — every URL, redirect chain, broken links |
| Broken link detection | No — per-page analysis only | ✓ Yes — finds all 404s and redirect chains across the site |
| Accessibility audit | ✓ Yes — WCAG 2.1 AA scored 0–100 with issue list | Basic — can check some accessibility attributes |
| Performance audit | ✓ Yes — Core Web Vitals, LCP, CLS, FCP | No — SEO focused, not performance |
| Score history & trends | ✓ Yes — 7 to 365 days depending on plan | No — no historical tracking across time |
| AI-generated report | ✓ Yes — plain-English explanation of all issues | No — raw data in columns |
| Shareable report URL | ✓ Yes — public link, no login required to view | No — export to CSV/Excel or crawl database |
| Monitor multiple sites | ✓ Yes — up to 50 sites with a dashboard | Manual — run separate crawl per site |
| Structured data validation | Basic — checks for JSON-LD presence | ✓ Yes — full Schema.org extraction and validation |
| Integration with Google tools | No | ✓ Yes — Google Analytics, Search Console, PageSpeed API |
Accessibility + Performance + SEO + Best Practices. No install, no signup. Results in 30 seconds.
Results in ~30 seconds. 4 scores: Performance, Accessibility, SEO, Best Practices.
PageGuard is a free Screaming Frog alternative for teams that need ongoing monitoring rather than deep crawl analysis. Screaming Frog crawls your entire site to find SEO issues across every URL. PageGuard monitors specific pages over time, sending alerts when health scores drop — no desktop install required. For small businesses and agencies wanting to track site health continuously, PageGuard is the simpler, cloud-based choice.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free for sites up to 500 URLs. The paid license costs £259 per year (approximately $330 USD) for unlimited crawls. PageGuard is free to scan any page and offers paid monitoring plans from $9/month for automated weekly scans and email alerts across multiple sites.
Screaming Frog checks some accessibility attributes — like alt text on images — as part of its crawl, but it is primarily an SEO tool. PageGuard runs a full WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audit and gives your site an accessibility score from 0 to 100, covering alt text, color contrast, ARIA landmarks, form labels, and keyboard navigation.
No — Screaming Frog is a manual tool. You run a crawl when you choose to, then review the results in the desktop application. It does not schedule scans automatically or send email alerts. PageGuard provides automated weekly or daily scans and sends email alerts when your health scores drop after a site change or content update.