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

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

The Technical SEO

Weighted verdict

Lives in crawl data and log files. Wants JavaScript rendering, crawl budget analysed, indexation diagnosed rather than listed, and regressions caught between crawls. Treats an issue list sorted by count rather than by traffic impact as busywork.

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

Scored by The Technical SEO

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.

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The Technical SEO

Chromium WRS rendering, custom JavaScript execution, crawl comparison with staging-vs-production URL mapping for regression detection between crawls, Search Console/GA/PageSpeed integrations to check what Google actually saw, structured-data validation, and issues carrying an estimated priority based on potential impact — that's a diagnostic core, not just a list. But the evidence is silent on log-file analysis and crawl budget analysis, which are exactly what the top anchor demands, so it stops at 8. 1 2 1

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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.

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The Technical SEO

There is no keyword research in this product at all — no volumes, difficulty, intent or SERP feature data anywhere in the evidence, and the German-language question doesn't even arise. The only content-adjacent output is title/meta length analysis, duplicate and low-content detection, spelling in 25+ languages and optional AI prompts while crawling. 1 2

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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.

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The Technical SEO

The tool has no proprietary ranking data and no backlink index of its own — link metrics are pulled from Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz APIs into a crawl, which is someone else's data. Nothing here for the vendor to document or be accountable for, so the floor anchor applies. 1 1

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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.

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The Technical SEO

Scheduled crawls with auto-export including Google Sheets, full command-line automation and Looker Studio crawl reports, plus GA, Search Console, PageSpeed and link-metric integrations — solid outbound plumbing. But there is no evidence the product exposes its own API; the 'API integrations' in the evidence are connections to Google and link-data providers, not an interface a team builds against, which is the gap that caps it between the 3 and 5 anchors. 1 1

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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.

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The Technical SEO

The desktop deployment model makes exit nearly moot: crawls are saved and reopened as files on the customer's own machine via a disk-based storage engine, so the history never ends with the subscription, and spreadsheet/bulk exports are unmetered and unlimited under the licence. That fully meets the open-format bulk export anchor and exceeds it on retention; only the absence of API-based mirroring keeps it from 10. 1 2 1

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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.

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The Technical SEO

GB contracting entity under English law, data stored in UK and US data centres with transfers outside the EEA explicitly confirmed, and no subprocessor list — only 'assurances' that DPAs will be in place. It sits above the floor anchor because hosting locations and transfer scope are at least disclosed, and the crawl data itself never leaves the customer's machine (the vendor holds only licence and usage data), but non-EU entity plus US transfers plus unnamed subprocessors is nowhere near rubric level 3. 3

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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.

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The Technical SEO

A flat £199/$279 per user per year with published bulk tiers (£189 at 5-9 licences, £179 at 10-19, £169 at 20+), a 1-year term, and no metered keyword, crawl or API credits to hide behind because crawling is unlimited within the licence — the annual invoice is trivially computable for any team size. The only unstated item is VAT treatment, which is what keeps it off the top anchor. 2 1 1

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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

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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 →