What a comparison here is based on
Every comparison on this site is built from the same handful of sources: a tool's published pricing page, its own documentation, and where available, its changelog or release notes. Where a vendor changes a plan or drops a feature, the table should follow within a reasonable time, though pricing pages tend to move faster than any editorial calendar and a gap can open up between the two.
What gets checked
- Pricing, taken from the vendor's current published tiers.
- Feature availability, checked against what the vendor documents as included at each plan level.
- Stated limits, such as crawl caps, keyword quotas or API call allowances, where the vendor publishes them.
- Known limitations, set out alongside the strengths.
Where affiliate links sit
Some of the links on comparison pages are affiliate links, and that relationship is set out on the affiliate disclosure page. A commission on a sale does not change which tool sits at the top of a table; the ordering follows the criteria above.
Where it can go wrong
A comparison built from public pricing pages and documentation is only as current as the last time those pages were checked, and a vendor can change a plan without much notice. The free tools on this site, such as the meta tag checker and the core web vitals checker, pull live data where they can, but a live reading can still come back wrong, whether from a slow response, a blocked crawler, or a page that changed between the check and the read.
What we check before comparing a tool
Every tool that appears in one of our comparisons is checked against the same set of questions, whatever the vendor's size or reputation.
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Pricing clarity
Whether current plans and limits are published openly on the vendor's site, or the price only appears after a sales call.
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What the free tier actually includes
The real scope of the free plan or trial, checked against the vendor's own terms.
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How often the underlying data updates
The refresh frequency the vendor states for its index or crawl data, since a stale database changes what any figure from it means.
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Overlap with cheaper alternatives
Whether a feature sold as a reason to upgrade is already available in a free tool or a lower-priced competitor.
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Export and API access
Whether data can leave the platform at all, and which plan tier is required to get it out.
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Contract terms and lock-in
Whether the vendor requires an annual commitment or allows monthly cancellation without penalty.
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Any affiliate relationship
Whether we earn a commission on a tool covered in the comparison, flagged wherever it applies.
These checks are drawn from vendor documentation, pricing pages and published terms.