Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Desktop website crawler for technical SEO audits, free for up to 500 URLs per crawl.

Not yet ratedSEOFree plan available

Overview

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler that runs as a desktop application on Windows, macOS and Linux, built for technical SEO site audits. It crawls a site the way a search engine would and reports what it finds: broken links, errors and redirects, page titles and meta data, meta robots directives, hreflang attributes, duplicate pages and structured data. It can also generate XML sitemaps from a crawl.

The SEO Spider is free to download and use for up to 500 URLs per crawl, which covers a full audit of many small sites. A paid licence removes that limit and unlocks the advanced features. Licences are priced per user per year: £199 for one, with lower per-licence prices from five licences upwards.

It is a crawler, not a suite. It has no keyword database, rank tracking or backlink index of its own, so it sits alongside tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs or Moz Pro rather than replacing them. Because it runs on your own machine, a crawl is a job you start and save, not a dashboard that updates in the cloud.

Key features

Platforms

Desktop app

SEO

Site audit

Integrations: Google Analytics
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux

Pros & cons

Strengths

Free version crawls up to 500 URLs per crawl
Runs on Windows, macOS and Linux
Finds broken links, redirects, duplicate pages and metadata issues in one crawl
Generates XML sitemaps from a crawl

Limitations

Crawls beyond 500 URLs and the advanced features need a paid licence
Technical crawling only: no keyword database, rank tracking or backlink index of its own
A desktop application, so crawls run on your own machine rather than in the cloud
Priced per user per year, with no monthly option on the pricing page

Pricing

Pricing last reviewed Sep 13, 2026

Freemium. Free for up to 500 URLs per crawl. A paid licence is £199 per user per year and adds unlimited crawling and the advanced features; volume pricing is £189 per licence for 5–9, £179 for 10–19 and £169 for 20 or more. The pricing page also lists €199 per year.

Free

Crawls up to 500 URLs per crawl.

Up to 500 URLs per crawl
Broken links, redirects and metadata
XML sitemap generation

Licence

Popular

£199/user/yr

£199 per user per year; £189 each for 5–9 licences, £179 for 10–19 and £169 for 20 or more.

Crawl more than 500 URLs
Advanced features

See Screaming Frog SEO Spider pricing

Prices are listed in GBP and can change. Confirm current pricing on the vendor’s pricing page.

Best for

A good fit if you are

Technical SEO audits of a site's structure, links and metadata
Freelancers and agencies auditing client sites
Small site owners who can audit within 500 URLs for free

Not ideal if you

Keyword research or rank tracking
Teams that want a cloud dashboard rather than a desktop application

Compared in these shortlists

Best SEO audit tools