Search for a free website audit and you get dozens of tools that all promise a score. They are not interchangeable. Some tell you what Google actually sees, some crawl your pages looking for faults, and some time how long a page takes to load. Most of them are also a shop window for a subscription, and ours is no exception: it is how people who might want a new website find us.
So here are seven free tools that are worth your time, what each is good at, where its free plan stops, and what it will not tell you. The limits were checked on each tool’s own website in September 2026. They change, so check before you plan around one.
At a glance
| Tool | Free limit | Needs | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | No limit | Proof you own the site | What Google has indexed and what people search to find you |
| PageSpeed Insights | One page per test | Nothing | How fast one page loads, on a phone |
| Screaming Frog | 500 URLs per crawl | A desktop install | Every broken link and missing title, in a spreadsheet |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools | 5,000 pages a month per site | Proof you own the site | A full technical crawl, plus who links to you |
| Semrush | 100 pages a month | A free account | A second opinion on a small site |
| Seobility | 100 pages, one site | A free account | Watching one small site over time |
| Onlineify | 5 pages | An email for the report | One plain-English list of fixes, in order |
1. Google Search Console
If you only use one tool, use this one. Everything else on this list is somebody’s crawler making an educated guess about how Google sees your site. Search Console is Google telling you directly.
What it is good at. The Pages report shows which of your pages are in Google’s index and, for the ones that are not, why not. The Performance report shows the searches you appeared for, how often, in what position and how many people clicked. The Core Web Vitals report shows how fast your pages are for real visitors, not a test machine.
Where it stops. You have to prove you own the site before it shows anything, and the data runs a few days behind. It does not crawl your site for faults the way the tools below do, so it will not tell you about a missing page title until that becomes an indexing problem. A new or quiet site shows very little, because the speed report needs real traffic to report on.
Who it suits. Everyone who owns a website. If yours is not set up, do that before anything else on this list.
2. PageSpeed Insights
Google’s speed test. Type in an address and it runs Lighthouse, the same test built into Chrome, against that page as a phone would load it. If enough real people have visited, it shows their experience above the test result.
What it is good at. Telling you why one page is slow, in order of what would help most: an oversized image, a script that holds everything up, a font that loads late. It costs nothing and needs no account.
Where it stops. One page at a time. Beyond speed you get quick scores for accessibility, good practice and basic SEO, but nothing about the rest of your site. The score also moves a few points between runs, so do not read much into a change of three.
Who it suits. Anyone checking a particular page, especially the ones that matter most. We wrote more about why speed decides local search and how to read the result.
3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
A desktop program that crawls your site the way a search engine does and lists every address it finds, with dozens of columns about each one. It is the tool most SEO professionals reach for first.
What it is good at. Finding every broken link, redirect, missing title, duplicate description and missing heading across the whole site. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers most business websites.
Where it stops. Saving a crawl, changing how it crawls and connecting it to Google’s tools all need the paid annual licence. And it is built for people who do this for a living. You get a spreadsheet of everything that is there, not a view on what matters. Forty images without alt text and a contact page that returns an error sit side by side.
Who it suits. Someone comfortable in a spreadsheet, or anyone who wants a full list to hand to a developer.
4. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
The free side of one of the big paid SEO suites. Its Site Audit uses the same crawler and the same checks as the paid product.
What it is good at. A thorough technical crawl, 170 plus issue types, with 5,000 crawl credits a month for each site you verify. It also shows which other websites link to yours, in far more detail than the short links report in Search Console.
Where it stops. Like Search Console, you have to prove you own the site. That rules out checking a competitor, or a website you are thinking of buying. The issue list is long and written for SEO people, so expect to look a few terms up.
Who it suits. Owners happy to verify their site and spend an hour learning a dashboard, particularly if links from other sites are something you are working on.
5. Semrush
Semrush’s free account includes its Site Audit, capped at 100 pages a month, alongside a small daily allowance of its keyword and competitor reports.
What it is good at. A tidy health score, issues grouped into errors, warnings and notices, and no need to prove ownership, so it will look at any site.
Where it stops. One hundred pages a month in total, and unused pages do not roll over. The free account exists to show you what the paid one does, so expect to meet the upgrade prompt often.
Who it suits. A small site that wants a second opinion, plus a quick look at keyword data while you are there.
6. Seobility
A German SEO suite with a free plan that is genuinely usable for one site.
What it is good at. It keeps watching. The free plan holds one site, crawls up to 100 pages, and tracks ten keywords, so you can see whether things are getting better or worse without remembering to run anything.
Where it stops. One site and 100 pages. Many reviews still quote a far higher free crawl limit; Seobility’s own pricing page says 100.
Who it suits. Someone with one small site who wants a free, ongoing check rather than a one-off.
7. The Onlineify website audit
Ours, so read this section with that in mind. We built it for the owner who does not want to learn a dashboard. It reads your pages the way a search engine does, runs 42 checks on each, runs Google’s speed test on your start page as a phone loads it, and has an AI model read your copy the way a first-time visitor would. It also checks whether AI assistants are being turned away from your site, which is easy to do by accident.
What it is good at. Order. Every problem is explained in plain English, says what it costs you and how to fix it, and the list is ranked so the first hour you spend goes on the thing that matters most. No account, no card, and the report opens in about a minute.
Where it stops. The free report reads five pages, the smallest free allowance on this list, and shows the first three findings from the copy review. The full report reads up to 30 pages, shows every finding and checks where you rank on Google for up to eight phrases, for £3.50 plus VAT, once. It does not show links from other sites, and it is a report rather than a dashboard, so it will not keep watching for you. It cannot see your Search Console data either, because that needs your login.
Who it suits. An owner who wants one list of fixes in the right order, or someone deciding whether their current site is worth fixing at all. Run the free audit.
Which one for which job
- “Is Google indexing my pages?” Search Console. Nothing else knows for certain.
- “Why is this page slow?” PageSpeed Insights.
- “Find every broken link on a big site.” Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs Webmaster Tools if you can verify the site.
- “Who links to me?” Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
- “Keep an eye on my site for free.” Seobility, or Ahrefs if you verify.
- “Just tell me what to fix first.” Ours.
Three things to know before you trust any score
Scores do not compare across tools
Each tool weighs different things. A 72 from one and an 89 from another is not a disagreement, just two different scales. Pick one tool and use it to measure change over time on your own site.
A count of warnings is not a to-do list
Most tools report everything they find, at roughly the same volume. Missing alt text on forty images can look more alarming than a contact form that quietly fails, when the form is the one costing you customers. Put your fixes in order of what they cost you, not how many there are.
Every tool is sometimes wrong
Ours included. When we ran our audit on our own site in September, it reported nine duplicate page titles. There were none: it had counted each page twice, once with a trailing slash and once without. If a finding looks wrong, check it before you pay someone to fix it.
If you would rather do the checking yourself, here is how to audit your own website in an hour using the free tools above.