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

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The In-House SEO Lead v1.0 · The Agency Owner v1.0 · The Technical SEO v1.0 · The Content Strategist v1.0 · The Data Analyst v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 16 Sep 2026

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 Data Analyst

Weighted verdict

Wants the numbers in the warehouse, not in a PDF. Cares about a documented API with published credit costs, bulk historical export, and whether three years of ranking history leaves with the customer or dies with the subscription.

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

Scored by The Data Analyst

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 Data Analyst

The crawler is the product: unlimited URLs bounded only by the customer's own memory and storage, Chromium rendering, custom JavaScript execution, structured-data validation against Schema.org, GA/GSC/PageSpeed joins, and crawl comparison with staging-vs-production URL mapping so regressions trace to a deploy. Issues carry a type and estimated priority, but the evidence never documents crawl-budget analysis or log-file work, which is what separates this from the top anchor. 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 Data Analyst

There is no keyword research anywhere in this sheet — no volumes, no intent, no difficulty, no SERP feature detail, and no German-language data of any kind. The single point is for adjacent on-page content analysis: titles/meta, exact and near-duplicate detection, and spelling/grammar in 25+ languages. 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 Data Analyst

No rank tracker and no proprietary backlink index exist in the evidence — link metrics are pulled live from the Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz APIs, so there is no vendor-owned dataset to be held accountable for. Honest architecture, but by this criterion's yardstick there is nothing proprietary to score. 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 Data Analyst

Exports are real — bulk error export, spreadsheet export, scheduled auto-export to any location including Google Sheets, CLI automation, and automated Looker Studio crawl reports — but every 'API' on the evidence is an outbound call the tool makes to Google or link providers, not an inbound API I can build against. No documented product API, no stated limits, no credit costs anywhere. 1 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 Data Analyst

The crawl history never lived on their servers: it's a desktop tool, crawls are saved and reopened locally, and scheduled auto-export pushes crawl data to any location with no credit metering to price the exit. One point off because the evidence documents spreadsheet export of 'key onsite SEO elements' and bulk error lists rather than a stated open format for the full-fidelity crawl database. 2 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 Data Analyst

The contracting entity is Screaming Frog Ltd, England and Wales, hosting is stated as UK and US with confirmed transfers out of the EEA for account and licence-telemetry data, and there is no subprocessor list — only an assurance that DPAs 'have been requested'. The desktop model keeping crawl data on the customer's machine is genuinely sovereign where it counts, but non-EU entity plus absent subprocessors lands this at the anchor regardless. 3 1

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 Data Analyst

Flat £199/$279 per user per year with published tier discounts at 5, 10 and 20 licences, a 500-URL free tier with its restrictions itemised, and no metering anywhere — no crawl credits, no API units, no overages — so the annual invoice is arithmetic. Held below 10 because VAT treatment of the £199 is not stated, and the link-metric integrations imply third-party API subscription costs the evidence never prices. 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.

Legal entity	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
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

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 11 Sep 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data residency, Legal entity. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
Weak sourcing — Subprocessors. No hosting or email provider is named anywhere, so US-headquartering is inferred from the disclosed US hosting and US-hosted email servers rather than from a named subprocessor list, and the SEO Spider product itself is desktop software.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

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.

43 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
16 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
8 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
5 support facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 compliance fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 integrations fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us
The panel’s written verdict is withheld: our own re-read found claims in it that the evidence does not carry, and a second synthesis did not fix them. The scores and the material below are unaffected. Know more? Tell us

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