Honest comparison

AuditMe vs Screaming Frog

A hosted cloud audit against a desktop crawler. Different tools, different jobs — here is what each one actually does, what it costs and when you should reach for which.

AuditMe: no install, hosted Screaming Frog: desktop, free to 500 URLs Many teams run both

The short answer

AuditMe vs Screaming Frog: Screaming Frog is a desktop SEO crawler you install locally — free up to 500 URLs per crawl, with a per-user annual licence unlocking the full crawl control (crawl configuration, JavaScript rendering, custom extraction, scheduling and saved crawls). AuditMe is a hosted cloud audit with no install: it runs 159 checks across 16 categories in about a minute and returns a score, evidence and a prioritized fix list, plus AI/GEO readiness checks (llms.txt, AI crawler access, schema and entity signals), an expert Proof Pass and a re-check workflow. Neither replaces the other — Screaming Frog is stronger when you need deep crawl control, log files and local or staging URLs, AuditMe is stronger when you need a scored, shareable, repeatable audit that also covers AI visibility. Many agencies keep both: Screaming Frog for the crawl, AuditMe for the client-ready report.

What is the difference between AuditMe and Screaming Frog?

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

A desktop crawler that runs on your own machine and walks a site the way a search engine does. You get the crawl itself: response codes, redirects, canonicals, titles, metadata, hreflang, duplicates, structured data and link paths, in tabs you can filter and export. Crawl behaviour is yours to configure, and advanced work — custom extraction, custom JavaScript, scheduling, crawl comparison — sits behind the paid licence. Log file analysis is a separate Screaming Frog product with its own licence.

AuditMe

A hosted audit you open in a browser. It fetches the URL from our servers, runs 159 checks across 16 categories — technical SEO, performance, schema, content, accessibility, security, plus AI search readiness and agent readiness — and hands back a score with evidence and a fix list ordered by impact. The same report covers llms.txt, AI crawler access and GEO readiness, can be re-run to track movement, and can be signed off by a human expert through Proof Pass.

How do AuditMe and Screaming Frog compare feature by feature?

Neutral on purpose: where a row says one tool does something the other does not, that is a difference in design, not a verdict.

Feature	Screaming Frog	AuditMe
Where it runs	Desktop app on Windows, macOS or Linux — on your machine	Hosted cloud service that runs in the browser
Setup	Download and install the application	No install and no local configuration
Free tier	Free to download, up to 500 URLs per crawl, no sign-up; advanced features are restricted	1 free audit with no sign-up; 2 free audits once you create an account
What comes back	A crawl dataset of tabs, columns and exports that you interpret	A 0–100 score from 159 checks across 16 categories, with evidence and a fix order
Crawl control	Deep control: crawl configuration, speed, user agent, rendering, include/exclude rules	Crawl size is set by plan; the audit engine decides which checks apply to the URL
JavaScript rendering	Configurable rendering mode (a licence feature)	Server-side fetch: JS-dependent content is flagged as a risk, never assumed present
Log file analysis	Available through the separate Screaming Frog Log File Analyser (its own licence)	Not offered
Local, staging and intranet URLs	Crawls anything your machine can reach, including localhost and internal environments	Fetches over the public internet only — auth-gated or internal pages are out of scope
AI and GEO readiness	No built-in llms.txt or GEO score; build your own with custom extraction and AI prompts	Built-in: llms.txt, AI crawler access in robots.txt, schema and entity signals, GEO readiness
Client-ready output	Exports and spreadsheets you turn into a report yourself	Hosted report you can link to, plus PDF export and an optional expert-signed Proof Pass
Re-checks over time	Saving, scheduling and crawl comparison are licence features	Re-run audits, score history and change monitoring are part of the product
Human expert review	Not part of the tool	Proof Pass and the deeper Expert SEO Audit add a named human review

How much do AuditMe and Screaming Frog cost?

Screaming Frog pricing

Free version: no sign-up, crawl up to 500 URLs per crawl, advanced features restricted.
Paid licence: per user, per year, removes the crawl limit and unlocks crawl configuration, saved crawls, JavaScript rendering, custom extraction and API integrations.
Listed on the vendor's pricing page at £199 per year (GBP) or $279 per year (USD) when we last checked, with volume discounts from five licences. Prices change — see screamingfrog.co.uk for current pricing.
The Log File Analyser is sold separately from the SEO Spider licence.

AuditMe pricing

1 free audit to start, 2 free audits once you create an account — no credit card.
Pro is $29 per month for larger crawls and the higher page limits.
Expert layers — Proof Pass and the Expert SEO Audit — are one-off purchases, not subscriptions.

See AuditMe pricing

Competitor pricing is quoted as published by the vendor and is not under our control — verify current figures on the Screaming Frog pricing page before you budget. Nothing on this page is a claim that one tool beats the other at everything.

When should you use Screaming Frog instead of AuditMe?

Reach for Screaming Frog when…

You want granular crawl control: connection speed, rendering mode, user agent, robots rules and include/exclude patterns.
The target is local, staging, behind a VPN or on an intranet — anything only your machine can reach.
You need custom extraction (XPath, CSSPath, regex) or custom JavaScript to build reports nobody else ships.
You analyse server log files to see how Googlebot and AI crawlers actually spend their budget (with the Log File Analyser).
You want the raw crawl dataset in spreadsheets and will do the interpretation yourself.

Reach for AuditMe when…

You want the audit scored and prioritized for you: a 0–100 result, evidence per finding and a fix order, not a pile of columns.
AI and GEO readiness matter: llms.txt, AI crawler access, schema and entity signals are checked in the same run.
The result has to be shareable — a hosted link, a PDF, a re-check history a client can open without installing anything.
You want repeat checks instead of one-off exports: scheduled re-audits, change monitoring and score history.
The deliverable needs a human name behind it: Proof Pass or the Expert SEO Audit.

Can AuditMe replace Screaming Frog?

Only partly, and only for some jobs. On the classic technical checks — status codes, redirects, titles, canonicals, robots directives, structured data, internal links — the two overlap, and AuditMe adds the score, the fix priorities and the AI/GEO section that a raw crawl does not hand you. What AuditMe does not replicate is the desktop crawler itself: crawl configuration and throttling, custom extraction rules, JavaScript rendering you control, log file analysis, and the ability to reach localhost, staging or intranet URLs. The honest answer is that they are complementary — a crawler gives you the data, an audit gives you the verdict.

The reverse is equally true: Screaming Frog does not produce a 0–100 score, a prioritized fix list, a hosted report you can re-check next week, llms.txt and AI crawler access checks, or a human-signed Proof Pass. You could build parts of that from exports and a spreadsheet, which is work rather than a feature.

Do agencies use AuditMe and Screaming Frog together?

Yes — the pairing is common because the two steps do not compete. A typical workflow looks like this:

1
Deep crawl on the desktop
Run Screaming Frog on your own machine for the heavy crawl: extraction rules, rendering, staging URLs and log file comparison.
2
Scored audit in the cloud
Run AuditMe on the same site for a 159-check score, a prioritized fix list and the AI/GEO readiness section that a crawler does not produce.
3
Re-check and hand over
Re-run AuditMe after fixes to show movement, and add a Proof Pass when the client needs an expert sign-off on the report.

If the report is going to a client, AuditMe's hosted link, PDF export and Proof Pass do the presentation work, while Screaming Frog quietly does the heavy crawl in the background.

Frequently Asked Questions about AuditMe and Screaming Frog

Is AuditMe a replacement for Screaming Frog?

Not for everything. AuditMe and Screaming Frog overlap on technical checks, but Screaming Frog is a configurable desktop crawler with custom extraction, crawl configuration and log file analysis (via its separate Log File Analyser), while AuditMe is a hosted 159-check audit that returns a score, evidence and a prioritized fix list plus AI/GEO readiness checks. Many teams run both because they answer different questions.

How much does Screaming Frog cost compared with AuditMe?

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free to download with no sign-up, limited to 500 URLs per crawl and with advanced features restricted (crawl configuration, saving crawls, JavaScript rendering, custom extraction and API integrations). A paid licence is per user, per year and removes the crawl limit; it was listed at £199 per year in GBP or $279 per year in USD on the vendor's pricing page when we last checked, with volume discounts from five licences. Prices change, so confirm current figures on the Screaming Frog pricing page before budgeting. AuditMe's first audit is free, you get 2 free audits once you register, and Pro is $29 per month.

Does Screaming Frog check llms.txt and AI/GEO readiness?

Not out of the box. A standard Screaming Frog crawl has no llms.txt validator and no AI-readiness or GEO score — you can approximate parts of that with custom extraction, custom JavaScript and its AI prompt features, then score the export yourself. AuditMe treats these as first-class checks: llms.txt, AI crawler access in robots.txt, schema and entity signals, plus GEO readiness scoring in the same report as the rest of the audit.

Can AuditMe crawl a staging, localhost or password-protected site?

No. AuditMe fetches URLs over the public internet from its servers, so pages behind a VPN, login or local network are out of scope. That is exactly where a desktop crawler wins: Screaming Frog runs on your machine and can crawl anything your machine can reach, including localhost, staging environments and intranet sites.

Which should I use for a technical SEO audit?

It depends on the deliverable. Use Screaming Frog when you need crawl-level control — throttling, rendering, user agents, custom extraction — and want the raw dataset to analyse yourself. Use AuditMe when you want the audit to arrive already scored and prioritized, shareable with a client or team, re-runnable over time, and covering AI/GEO readiness alongside the 16 traditional categories.

Do agencies use AuditMe and Screaming Frog together?

Yes, that is common. A frequent split: Screaming Frog handles the deep crawl and custom extraction on the agency's own machine, AuditMe produces the hosted, scored report the client can open and re-check, and an expert Proof Pass adds a human sign-off when the deliverable needs a name behind it.