What is the free version of Screaming Frog limited to?

The free SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs per site and otherwise matches the paid feature set almost entirely. A licence is £199 per year and removes the crawl limit, bounded only by your machine's memory and storage. Volume pricing: £189 each for 5-9 licences, £179 for 10-19, £169 for 20 or more.

Does Screaming Frog have a free plan?

Yes. Screaming Frog offers a free tier with limits; paid plans unlock higher usage or team features.

What are the main drawbacks of Screaming Frog?

The trade-offs we noted: Desktop only, no collaboration; Output needs SEO knowledge to interpret; Large sites need a powerful machine.

When should you not use Screaming Frog?

Skip Screaming Frog if: Your site is bigger than 500 URLs; that is the only real wall, and lifting it costs £199/year; You need collaboration — it is a desktop tool with no shared workspace; You are crawling very large sites on a modest machine; the crawl ceiling depends on your memory and storage.

Marketing

Screaming Frog

Desktop crawler for technical SEO audits.

What it is

Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler that walks your site like a search engine and reports technical problems. Running on your own machine means no crawl quota and full control over speed, headers and rendering, which matters on large or access-restricted sites. In exchange, crawl size is limited by your RAM and there is no scheduled monitoring unless you set it up yourself. Who it is for: SEO specialists and developers who need to audit a site's technical health: broken links, redirect chains, duplicate titles, missing canonicals, slow pages and orphaned URLs. Running on your own machine means no crawl credits and full control over speed, user agent and JavaScript rendering, which cloud tools ration. Where it falls short: it is a desktop application with a spreadsheet mindset. Findings are lists, not prioritised recommendations, so interpreting the output is on you, and very large sites need a machine with plenty of memory or a database-storage mode. The free version stops at 500 URLs, which covers small sites but not much else; the paid licence is annual and unlocks unlimited crawling, scheduling and the Google Analytics, Search Console and PageSpeed integrations. Sitebulb is friendlier for reports to clients; Screaming Frog is faster and more precise for the person doing the work.

Screaming Frog pricing

Screaming Frog does not publish a plan ladder we could verify. Free tier available.

Prices read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-07. Vendors change plans without notice — check the source before you budget.

Key features

Desktop site crawler
Crawls a site locally and reports status codes, redirects, titles and canonicals.
JavaScript rendering
Renders pages with a headless browser to crawl client-side content.
API integrations
Pulls Search Console, Analytics and PageSpeed data onto crawled URLs.

Strengths and trade-offs

What works well

Finds technical issues nothing else catches
One-off annual licence, no per-seat cloud fees
Crawls as deep as your machine allows

Where it falls short

Desktop only, no collaboration
Output needs SEO knowledge to interpret
Large sites need a powerful machine

Who it is for

Anyone responsible for technical SEO on a site of real size.

Pick it or skip it

Pick Screaming Frog if

Crawling small sites for free — the unlicensed version does up to 500 URLs
One-person technical SEO work where a desktop crawler beats a subscription platform
Anyone who needs JavaScript rendering, scheduling, custom extraction and GA/GSC integration — all of these are in the free version too

Skip it if

Your site is bigger than 500 URLs; that is the only real wall, and lifting it costs £199/year
You need collaboration — it is a desktop tool with no shared workspace
You are crawling very large sites on a modest machine; the crawl ceiling depends on your memory and storage

Our verdict

Still the standard technical crawler. It reports; interpreting is your job.

Frequently asked questions

What is the free version of Screaming Frog limited to?: The free SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs per site and otherwise matches the paid feature set almost entirely. A licence is £199 per year and removes the crawl limit, bounded only by your machine's memory and storage. Volume pricing: £189 each for 5-9 licences, £179 for 10-19, £169 for 20 or more.
Does Screaming Frog have a free plan?: Yes. Screaming Frog offers a free tier with limits; paid plans unlock higher usage or team features.
Who is Screaming Frog best for?: Anyone responsible for technical SEO on a site of real size.
What are the main drawbacks of Screaming Frog?: The trade-offs we noted: Desktop only, no collaboration; Output needs SEO knowledge to interpret; Large sites need a powerful machine.
When should you not use Screaming Frog?: Skip Screaming Frog if: Your site is bigger than 500 URLs; that is the only real wall, and lifting it costs £199/year; You need collaboration — it is a desktop tool with no shared workspace; You are crawling very large sites on a modest machine; the crawl ceiling depends on your memory and storage.

What we checked

Public APIOffers a documented API you can build against.No
Mobile appHas a native app for iOS or Android, not just a mobile website.No
Open source / self-hostableSource is open and the tool can be run on your own infrastructure.No
SSO (SAML)Supports SAML single sign-on on at least one plan.No

“Not checked” means exactly that — we have not verified it, and we do not guess.

Evidence and freshness

Status: Official sources reviewedReviewed: 2026-09-07

Screaming Frog — SEO Spider pricing ↗
Checked 2026-09-07 · Supports: licence £199 per year, free version crawl limit 500 URLs, JavaScript rendering, scheduling, custom extraction and Google Analytics/Search Console integration available in both free and paid, paid crawl limit depends on allocated memory and storage
undefined — Pricing (fetched 2026-09-15) ↗
Checked 2026-09-15 · Supports: Download & crawl 500 URLs for free, or buy a licence for £199 per year., For just £199 per year you can purchase a licence, which removes the 500 URL crawl limit, allows you to save crawls, and opens up the spider’s configuration options and advanced features.

Limit: Vendor pricing pages were reviewed; this record is not a ToolCompare benchmark. Pricing page was fetched on this date and contained the quoted pricing text; figures were read from the vendor page by hand.

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