SiteScore vs the alternatives
The best SiteScore alternative depends on what you need: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free and essential, Screaming Frog is better for deep technical crawls, AI visibility platforms are better for weekly tracking, and SiteScore is the cheap one-off option with AI-crawler checks and a prioritised fix list.
| Option | Price | What it does | When it beats SiteScore | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Free | Shows what Google has indexed, search queries, clicks and errors from Google's own data. | Everyone should set it up. It does not check AI crawlers, llms.txt or AI answers, and it is Google-only. | source |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Free | Bing's index status and sitemap submission. Some AI search tools draw on search indexes like Bing's. | Submit your sitemap here too. It does not tell you whether AI answers name you. | source |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Free up to 500 URLs; licence €245/year (screamingfrog.co.uk, read 14 Oct 2026) | Desktop crawler with 300+ technical SEO checks. | Better than us for deep technical crawls if you are comfortable with an expert tool. You interpret the export yourself. | source |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools / Semrush free plan | Free tiers; paid plans above (see their pricing pages) | Site audits, backlinks and keyword data from large third-party indexes. | Better for backlink and keyword research. Free tiers are limited and the reports are long. | source |
| Fiverr 'SEO audit' gigs | From about $5 (fiverr.com/gigs/seo-audit, read 14 Oct 2026) | Freelancers who run an audit tool and send its export. | Cheapest option. Quality varies; many are tool exports without AI-search checks or priorities. | source |
| AI visibility platforms (e.g. Ryze AI) | Ryze AI: from $129/month, 3-day trial for $1 (per its own guide, 13 Oct 2026) | Ongoing tracking of citations across AI engines, and in Ryze's case automated SEO/GEO fixes. | Better if you want weekly tracking across many questions and engines. More than most small businesses need for a first check. | source |
| A local SEO agency | Usually a monthly retainer | Strategy, content, links, Google Business Profile management and reporting. | Better if you want someone to do the work every month. Ask them to cover the AI-crawler and schema checks in this list. |
What SiteScore does that most cheap audits skip
- Checks robots.txt rules for 11 AI and search crawlers, and detects firewalls that serve bot challenges.
- Counts the words crawlers without JavaScript actually see.
- Tests whether your first 50 words say who, what and where, which is the passage AI answers tend to lift.
- Asks an AI assistant with web search your buyer questions and lists the sources it cited instead of you.
- Every finding includes its evidence, so your developer can verify it.
What SiteScore does not do
- No backlink analysis or keyword volumes.
- No Core Web Vitals field data (we measure server and HTML basics only).
- One AI assistant per question, as a dated snapshot: not every AI tool, and not a ranking tracker.
- No ongoing monitoring: it is a one-off audit (Premium includes one re-test).
- We don't implement the fixes on your site.
Switching from a tool export
If you already have an audit export, send it with your order: we start from its findings, add the AI-search checks and turn everything into one prioritised list.
Last updated .