Screaming Frog SEO Spider
UK SEO agency and creator of the SEO Spider crawler and Log File Analyser for technical SEO audits.
By Screaming Frog Ltd · HQ Henley-on-Thames, UK · 4.0/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Technical SEO audits of large websites
- SEO agencies crawling client sites under per-user licences
- Finding broken links, redirects, duplicate and near-duplicate content
- Scheduled recurring crawls and crawl comparison between releases
- Log file analysis of raw server logs to verify bots
Ideal size: 1–20 SEO specialists people · SEO-mature team with in-house technical resource
Not for
- Marketers who want a hosted, zero-install audit platform
- Non-technical users seeking prioritised fix recommendations
- Buyers who require published SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification reports
- Teams wanting site crawling bundled with CMS or marketing automation
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Same day (free download)
~1 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$1,325/yr
Starts at $279 · Per-user licence, billed annually; $279 per licence per year, free tier capped at 500 URLs
Implementation Friction
1/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
Licences are per user; bulk discounts at 5–9, 10–19 and 20+ licences ($265/$249/$235 per licence)
Add-on costs
- None
Company & support
Who is behind Screaming Frog SEO Spider, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 2010 · 16 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Henley-on-Thames, UK
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailPaid plans
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsPaid plans
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Business hours
- Response time
- Within 24 hours during usual business hours
Technical support is reserved for paid licence holders; free users are directed to the getting started guide, FAQ and user guide. Support email and an in-app support ticket form are available to paid users.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Screaming Frog SEO Spider sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Mercury
- Aspire
- tawk.to
- Framer
- Shippo
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
Ships an official MCP server. Connects to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT connectors and Cursor out of the box.
AI & MCP readiness
What Screaming Frog SEO Spider ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Version 24 exposes the SEO Spider as an MCP server so Claude Desktop or LM Studio can start, pause and export crawls and run Node.js scripts through tool calls. Node tooling and filesystem access are disabled by default and the vendor warns about granting LLMs script execution rights. No bundled model or vendor-supplied model key is described.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Official MCP server
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Screaming Frog is a UK search marketing agency best known for the SEO Spider, a desktop website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux. The free tier caps crawls at 500 URLs; a $279 per user per year licence adds unlimited crawling, JavaScript rendering, scheduling, Google Analytics and Search Console integrations, custom extraction and free technical support. Version 24 ships a native MCP server so Claude Desktop or LM Studio can run crawls and export data, making it a fast-to-adopt technical SEO workhorse.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Screaming Frog cost?
The SEO Spider is free to download, but the free version is capped at 500 URLs. A paid licence is $279 per user per year and unlocks unlimited crawling plus advanced features. Licences are per user, last one year and must be renewed. Bulk discounts apply from 5 licences ($265), 10 licences ($249) and 20+ licences ($235).
How quickly can a team get value from the SEO Spider?
Value starts on day one: the tool is a desktop download for Windows, macOS or Linux, and a first crawl can be run immediately without onboarding or a services engagement. There is no mandatory implementation fee. Deeper value, such as scheduled crawls, crawl comparison, log file analysis and custom extraction, follows once the team configures its crawl settings.
Does Screaming Frog support AI assistants or MCP?
Yes. Version 24 can run as the vendor's own MCP server, letting Claude Desktop or LM Studio run crawls, generate reports and bulk exports, and execute Node.js scripts against crawl data. This is a paid licence feature only and requires database storage mode; Node.js and filesystem tools are disabled by default for security.
Is Screaming Frog certified for security or compliance?
The vendor pages reviewed do not claim SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, FedRAMP or ISO 42001 certification, so buyers should not assume them. The documented security content covers crawling HTTPS, mixed content, HSTS, Content-Security-Policy and similar headers, plus support for adding corporate MITM proxy certificates, rather than vendor-level compliance certifications.
What support is included?
Technical support is for paid users. You can email the support address or open a support ticket from the app, and the vendor aims to answer queries within 24 hours during usual business hours. Free users rely on the getting started guide, FAQ and user guide. Sales and general enquiries use a separate contact route.
Do we need to install anything or can it run in the cloud?
The SEO Spider is installed locally on Windows, macOS or Linux, and crawls run on your own machine, with memory and storage determining the practical crawl size. There is also a cloud option for the crawler and a separate desktop Log File Analyser, but the core product is not a hosted SaaS application.