whats-best.ai
Search Sign in

SEO

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

UK / wider Europe Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Screaming Frog Ltd · www.screamingfrog.co.uk

Compare with Sitebulb → Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Agency Owner

Weighted verdict

Runs forty client sites and rebills the licence. Wants multi-client management, white-label reports a client can receive unedited, and per-seat costs that do not punish a growing team. Reads "contact us" on a pricing page as a margin problem.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Agency Owner

Crawling & technical audit

How this is scored

Site crawling at real scale: what the crawler finds, how deeply it checks, whether Core Web Vitals and indexation problems are diagnosed rather than merely listed.

0 — No site crawler; the product is keyword data only.

3 — A crawler with a low page cap that reports broken links and missing tags, with no prioritisation and no rendering of JavaScript.

5 — Scheduled crawls at a stated page limit, JavaScript rendering, issue categories with severity, and Core Web Vitals pulled per template.

8 — Log-file or Search Console integration to compare what the crawler sees against what Google fetched, indexation and canonical diagnosis, structured-data validation, and issues prioritised by traffic impact rather than count.

10 — The audit is diagnostic rather than a list: crawl budget analysed, rendering differences surfaced, regressions detected between crawls with the deploy that caused them inferrable, and remediation guidance specific enough for a developer ticket.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

This is the anchor-8/9 crawler evidence: unlimited URLs bound only by my own hardware, Chromium WRS rendering, scheduled and CLI-automated crawls, Search Console data fetched per URL, canonical and structured-data diagnosis, issues with type and impact-based priority, and crawl comparison including staging-versus-production so regressions can be tied to a deploy. It stops short of 10 only because nothing evidences crawl-budget analysis. 2 1

Report an error

Keyword research & content guidance

How this is scored

Keyword discovery, intent classification, SERP feature analysis and on-page guidance — judged on the depth of the German-language data as much as the English.

0 — A keyword list with volumes from one source and no intent or difficulty signal.

3 — Volume and difficulty for major markets, with thin or stale German data and no SERP feature detail.

5 — Keyword research with volume, difficulty and intent across German and other EU markets, SERP feature presence, and basic on-page recommendations.

8 — Topic clustering, competitor gap analysis, SERP composition tracked over time, content briefs with entity coverage, and cannibalisation detection.

10 — Research and guidance close the loop: opportunity sized against realistic traffic, content scored against what currently ranks rather than against a keyword density heuristic, and recommendations that reference the specific pages in the customer's own site.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

There is no keyword research anywhere in this sheet — no discovery, volumes, intent, difficulty or SERP-feature data in any language, German included; what content features exist are on-page checks (meta data, duplicates, 25-language spell-check). 2 1

Report an error

Rank tracking & index quality

How this is scored

The proprietary data: ranking accuracy and frequency, backlink index size and freshness. Scored on what the vendor documents about their own data, because nothing here can be verified from outside.

0 — Rankings and backlinks with no stated update frequency, no country or device granularity, and no documentation of how either is collected.

3 — Weekly rankings for one country and device, a backlink index with no stated refresh cadence or size.

5 — Daily rankings with country, language and device selection, local results, and a backlink index with a documented crawl frequency.

8 — Rankings at stated frequency across many locations including city-level, SERP feature attribution, backlink index size and refresh published, lost-and-found link detection, and historical data retained for the life of the account.

10 — The vendor is accountable for their own data: methodology documented, index size and freshness published and updated, historical rankings retained and exportable in full, and discrepancies against Search Console explained rather than hidden.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

The vendor documents no rank tracking and no proprietary backlink index at all; the only link data is pulled from the Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz APIs, which is other companies' indexes with other companies' methodology. Judged on what the vendor publishes about their own data — nothing — this sits at the bottom anchor. 1 1

Report an error

Reporting, integrations & API

How this is scored

Getting the data out and in front of someone: dashboards, white-label reporting for agencies, Search Console and analytics integration, and an API a team can build on.

0 — On-screen views only; export is a manual CSV and there is no API.

3 — Scheduled PDF reports and CSV export, one analytics integration, no API worth building against.

5 — Customisable dashboards, scheduled reports, Search Console and analytics integration, and a documented API with stated limits.

8 — White-label reporting with client access, data-warehouse or BigQuery export, multi-site and multi-client management, and an API with credit costs published per endpoint.

10 — The tool is a data source rather than a destination: full historical export in open formats, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, integrations the vendor maintains, and reporting an agency can hand a client unedited.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

Scheduled crawls auto-export to Google Sheets, there is a Looker Studio crawl report, and GA/Search Console/PageSpeed integrations exist — but the 'API integrations' are inbound only and nothing documents an outbound API with stated limits. For an agency there is no white-label client access and no multi-client management, so I would be assembling client reports myself instead of sending one unedited, which is the work I pay a tool to remove. 2 1

Report an error

Data portability & exit

How this is scored

Whether the ranking and crawl history — the only thing a multi-year subscription actually accumulates — remains the customer's when they leave.

0 — No bulk export; history is visible in the interface and nowhere else, and ends with the subscription.

3 — CSV export of current views only, with historical data capped or unavailable in bulk.

5 — Bulk export of rankings, keywords and crawl results including history, via interface or API.

8 — Complete historical export in open formats without credit metering that prices it out of reach, plus a documented retention period after cancellation.

10 — Exit is designed for: the full account exportable including every historical data point, API access sufficient to mirror the data continuously, and a stated grace period during which the archive remains retrievable.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

The desktop model keeps the archive on my side: saved crawls and auto-export to any location are unmetered, and the vendor holds almost nothing (crawl data shared only on my instruction, Google data stored by the user only). But the free version restricts saving crawls, so what happens to my crawl history if a licence lapses is undocumented, and no retention or grace period is stated — so I stop between the bulk-export and designed-for-exit anchors. 3 1 1

Report an error

European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the account and crawl data live and who the contracting entity is. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted lower here than in categories holding personal data, because an SEO tool mostly holds the customer's own strategy rather than their customers' identities.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and site or user data of unclear scope leaving the EU.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published, and any analytics or Search Console data handling described with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a DPA that covers the crawl and analytics data the tool ingests.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

The contracting entity is England-and-Wales registered under English law, website and licence data sit in UK and US data centres with confirmed transfers outside the EEA, and no subprocessor list is published — that is a 0-to-3 anchor picture. The desktop deployment limits what the vendor ever touches (Google user data 'only available and stored by the user', crawl sharing user-initiated), which is the only reason this clears the floor. 3

Report an error

Pricing transparency

How this is scored

The category where the headline price is least often the invoice. Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost including keyword limits, crawl credits, API units, extra users and client seats — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A monthly headline exists, but keyword limits, crawl credits or the cost of an additional user are unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with the main limits given, but at least one commonly needed piece (extra seats, API credits, historical data) is unpriced or metered opaquely.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with keyword, crawl and API limits, overage rates, per-seat costs, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given keyword count, crawl volume, API usage and team size, with overage and every credit cost published.

Report an error

The Agency Owner

As a seat buyer this is the cleanest pricing sheet I could ask for: per-user licences at published volume bands (£199 down to £169 at 20+), a flat one-year term, unlimited URLs, and no keyword limits, crawl credits, API units or overages to model — my annual invoice for any team size is pure arithmetic with no 'contact us' anywhere. The only unstated item is whether the headline price is ex-VAT, which keeps it just off complete computability. 2 1 1

Report an error

European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Screaming Frog SEO Spider? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product page www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 16 Sep 2026 +2 earlier captures: 15 Sep 2026, 11 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 16 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 21 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Crawling & technical audit — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Keyword research & content guidance — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Rank tracking & index quality — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Reporting, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.screamingfrog.co.uk Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →