FocalScore vs Screaming Frog

Checked October 2026: the Screaming Frog SEO Spider facts on this page were read on official Screaming Frog pages, and FocalScore's come from our own code. Prices and plans change; the sources are listed at the end of the page.

Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is a desktop crawler for technical SEO audits. It follows the links on a site and reports over 300 SEO issues, warnings and opportunities, with deep configuration — custom extraction, custom JavaScript, scheduling — for people who know what to ask it.

FocalScore reads a sample of a site — up to 25 pages — and turns it into 395 checks an owner can act on: whether the site converts visitors, ranks in search and can be read by AI, with the fix for each.

At a glance

Question	Screaming Frog	FocalScore
Price	Free version, or £199 (€245) per licence per year. We could not confirm a US-dollar price on its site.	Free report: $0. AI Advanced Report: $49, one-time. Agency: $99 a month for up to 25 client sites.
What you get free	Crawl up to 500 URLs. JavaScript rendering, Google integrations, accessibility auditing, scheduling and AI prompts need a licence.	Your score with no signup; the complete page-by-page report with every fix after an email signup. No card.
Pages per audit	500 URLs free; unlimited with a licence, bounded by your computer's memory and storage.	Up to 25 pages per scan.
What it checks	Over 300 SEO issues, warnings and opportunities, plus custom extraction and custom JavaScript with a licence.	395 checks across 9 categories: Conversion & messaging, Trust & credibility, Content quality, AI readiness, Search, Speed, Mobile, Accessibility and Security & privacy.
Conversion and trust	Not a built-in check. With a licence, custom AI prompts can be set up to judge page copy as it crawls.	77 conversion and trust checks: does the page say what you sell and who it is for, is there a clear next step, and is there proof a buyer can trust.
AI crawler and AI-readiness checks	It can crawl as an AI crawler's user agent, so you can see what that crawler receives.	48 AI-readiness checks in the free report, including whether AI crawlers are allowed and whether you publish an llms.txt file.
Whether AI assistants mention you	No: it crawls your site, it doesn't ask AI assistants about you.	In the $49 report: real buyer questions put to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, recording whether you were named and who was named instead. A one-time reading, not ongoing tracking.
Backlinks	Link metrics through an integration with a backlink provider, with a licence.	Paid report only, on purpose: backlink data comes from a paid data provider, and the free scan never calls one. The $49 report lists which sites link to yours, read once. No backlink index of our own.
Setup	Desktop software to download and install, for Windows, macOS and Linux.	Nothing to install and no site verification. Works on any platform.
Ongoing monitoring	Scheduled crawls and crawl comparison, with a licence.	Not yet: Monitor (monthly re-audits, $19 a month) is coming soon and not on sale. A free re-scan shows where you stand.

What Screaming Frog does better

Crawl depth: every URL on a site, limited only by your computer, where FocalScore reads a sample.
Control: custom extraction, custom JavaScript, crawl comparison and scheduling for specialists who know what they are looking for.
Site migrations and large sites, where every redirect and every duplicate matters.
One yearly price, and the free version handles a small site of up to 500 URLs.

Choose Screaming Frog if…

You are an SEO specialist or developer and want full control of a technical crawl.
Your site is large, or you are migrating it, and every URL must be accounted for.
You are comfortable reading crawl data and turning it into fixes yourself.

Choose FocalScore if…

You don't want to install or configure anything: enter your address in a browser and the score is back in about a minute.
You want the findings ranked and explained for you, with 77 conversion and trust checks and 48 AI-readiness checks alongside the technical ones.
You own a small business and want to know why the website isn't bringing in enquiries — not only whether it is technically sound. 77 of the 395 checks are about conversion and trust.
You want every problem explained in plain English, with the exact fix, rather than an issue list written for an SEO specialist.
You want one report that covers converting visitors, ranking in search and being readable by AI assistants, for free, with an optional $49 one-time report instead of a subscription.

You can also use both: FocalScore for the owner's priority list, Screaming Frog when a developer needs every URL enumerated.

Questions

Is Screaming Frog free?

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Features such as JavaScript rendering, Google integrations, accessibility auditing, scheduling and AI prompts need a licence, £199 a year according to Screaming Frog's pricing page.

Does FocalScore crawl my whole site?

No. FocalScore reads up to 25 pages, which is enough to grade a small-business site and show the pattern of what is wrong across it. If you need every URL on a large site enumerated, Screaming Frog is built for that.

Can Screaming Frog check AI crawlers?

It can crawl your site as an AI crawler's user agent, so you can see what that crawler receives. FocalScore's free report checks AI readiness directly — 48 checks, including whether your robots.txt allows the AI crawlers — and its $49 report asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude real buyer questions about your market.

Sources

Checked October 2026 on official Screaming Frog pages. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

SEO Spider pricing and free-version limits: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/pricing/
SEO Spider features: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Screaming Frog and SEO Spider are trademarks of their owner. FocalScore is not affiliated with or endorsed by Screaming Frog. Product names are used only to identify the products compared. All comparisons →