SEO & marketing · checked 2026-10-13Can I vibecode Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
YES· one-shottable
Screaming Frog reads the live web, so there is no data moat to copy: an agent can write a crawler that follows your links, respects robots.txt and records status codes, redirects, titles, descriptions, canonicals and directives in one sitting. Store the results in SQLite, add an issues view and CSV export, and you have the audit most people open it for. What you give up is years of edge cases and extras: custom extraction, spelling and accessibility checks, Search Console and Analytics data per URL, and a crawl file colleagues already open. If your site is under 500 URLs, the free version may already be enough.
$23.25/moprice per seat
$279you'd save a year
one sittingbuild time
—people replaced it
What you need on hand.
DifficultyBeginner · No setup beyond your agent.
TimeAn hour or two
- Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
- Python 3.12uv or pip installs the rest.
- A site you own or may auditKeep concurrency low on shared hosting so the crawl doesn't look like an attack.
- Playwright (optional)`playwright install chromium` downloads the browser used for JavaScript rendering.
Before you buildIf your site has fewer than 500 URLs, the free Screaming Frog already runs the basic audit.
- 1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- 2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
- 3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.
The prompt
Build me a local SEO site crawler to replace Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Requirements: - Python 3.12: httpx (async) to fetch, selectolax to parse, a Typer CLI `seocrawl crawl https://example.com`, and a FastAPI + HTMX report on http://localhost:4950. - Crawl: stay on the start host (subdomains optional), obey robots.txt and a crawl delay, 5 concurrent requests by default, custom User-Agent, max depth, max URLs, include and exclude regexes. Record every redirect hop. - Per URL: status code, redirect chain, content type, response time, size, title and its length, meta description and its length, H1s, canonical, meta robots and X-Robots-Tag, hreflang, word count, images without alt, inlinks, outlinks, depth. - Storage: one SQLite file per crawl in ~/SEOCrawls/<host>-<date>.db, so 100k-URL crawls don't live in memory; a crawl can pause and resume. - Issues view: 4xx and 5xx with the pages linking to them, redirect chains and loops, missing, duplicate or too-long titles and descriptions, missing H1, canonicals to non-200 URLs, noindex pages listed in the XML sitemap, and URLs found only in the sitemap. - Export any table to CSV or XLSX (openpyxl); generate a sitemap of indexable URLs. - `--render` uses Playwright Chromium for JavaScript sites. - Compare two crawls of one site: new, removed and changed URLs. - No accounts, no telemetry, local-first. - Out of scope: Search Console or Analytics data, scheduling, spelling checks. - README: install, a warning to crawl only sites I own or may audit, and how to open a crawl .db in any SQLite browser.
Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.
Then keep going
Next prompts, same folder.
The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
Add custom extraction to the SEO crawler in this folder. Requirements: - Up to 10 rules per crawl, each with a name and an XPath, CSS selector or regex, set in the report UI or a YAML file passed with `--extract rules.yaml`. - Store each rule's matches per URL in their own table and show them as columns. - A rule tester: paste a URL, run the rules on that page only and show the matches. - Include extracted columns in CSV and XLSX exports. - Update the README with example rules.
Add Google Search Console data to the SEO crawler in this folder. Requirements: - OAuth desktop-app flow with google-auth-oauthlib; client id and secret in .env, the token cached in ~/SEOCrawls/.gsc-token.json. - After a crawl, fetch clicks, impressions, CTR and position for the last 28 days per page through the Search Analytics API and join them to the crawl by URL. - Add those columns to every table and a filter "has clicks". - Update the README; budget an hour for the Google Cloud console and the consent screen.
Add scheduled crawls to the SEO crawler in this folder. Requirements: - `seocrawl schedule add https://example.com --weekly mon 06:00` writes a cron entry (launchd plist on macOS) that runs the crawl with the saved settings. - After each run, compare it with the previous crawl and email a summary through SMTP from .env: new 4xx and 5xx, new redirects, pages that became noindex. - Keep the last 8 crawls per site and delete older .db files. - Update the README.
What you lose
- Dozens of specialist checks: structured data, AMP, spelling, accessibility
- Custom extraction with XPath, CSS or regex across a whole crawl
- Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed and link metrics next to each URL
- Scheduled crawls and Looker Studio reports
- Crawl files that colleagues and clients can open
Why people still pay
For people who audit sites for a living the yearly licence is small next to the time it saves, and it copes with odd servers, huge sites and JavaScript frameworks that a home-made crawler only meets after months of use. Agencies standardise on it, so crawls, exports and training material move between people without any conversion.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider or your own copy?
Seats
Over
Your usage
3h ×$/h
Screaming Frog SEO Spider, 1 yr$279
Your own copy, 1 yr$5running + build session
You keep$274pays for itself in the first month
Estimate · Runs on your machine with no services to pay for. The build is token usage on your agent plan.
Take your data, then cancel.
1 · Take your data out of Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- 1Any tab in the SEO Spider can be exported with the Export button above the table, to CSV, Excel or Google Sheets.
- 2Use Bulk Export for cross-cutting lists such as every inlink or every image, and Reports for redirect chains.
- 3Export what you need before the licence runs out: after expiry the tool falls back to the free version and can no longer open saved crawls.
- 4Copy your custom extraction rules and include or exclude patterns into a text file; no other tool reads Screaming Frog's configuration.
2 · Cancel Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- 1A standard licence needs no cancelling: it simply expires after one year.
- 2If you chose auto-renew when buying, log in to your Screaming Frog account and cancel it in the subscriptions section.
- 3For a refund, contact Screaming Frog within 14 days of purchase; there are no pro-rata refunds after that.
- An expired licence turns the same install back into the free 500-URL version, with configuration options locked.
- Licences are per person: anyone else who keeps using it needs their own.
- Crawls are stored in a local database by default; export or delete them before uninstalling.
Checked 2026-10-13 against Screaming Frog SEO Spider's docs: 1, 2
The escape hatch
Don't feel like building it? These are already free.
LibreCrawlOpen sourceBrowser-based crawler aimed squarely at Screaming Frog users: SEO fields, link analysis, JavaScript rendering, PageSpeed data and CSV or XLSX exports.★ 1.0k · active Sep 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗SiteOne CrawlerOpen sourceOne binary (CLI, wizard or desktop GUI) that crawls a site and writes an HTML audit: SEO, redirects, 404s, security headers, performance.★ 946 · active Sep 2026 · one-click install
Windows, macOS, Linux, CLIVisit ↗SEOnautOpen sourceSite-audit crawler with a web dashboard: broken links, redirects, missing tags, duplicate content.★ 806 · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗
WebVisit ↗SiteOne CrawlerOpen sourceOne binary (CLI, wizard or desktop GUI) that crawls a site and writes an HTML audit: SEO, redirects, 404s, security headers, performance.★ 946 · active Sep 2026 · one-click install
Windows, macOS, Linux, CLIVisit ↗SEOnautOpen sourceSite-audit crawler with a web dashboard: broken links, redirects, missing tags, duplicate content.★ 806 · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗
The numbers
Screaming Frog SEO Spider pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/user | $0/user | 500 URLs per crawl; broken links, redirects, titles and meta data, directives, hreflang, exact duplicates, XML sitemaps, site visualisations. |
| Paid licence | — | $23.25/user | No URL limit beyond your machine's memory and disk; every feature and free support. |
- Free tier
- 500 URLs per crawl; configuration, saved crawls, JavaScript rendering and all integrations are locked.
- Billing
- Sold only as a one-year licence per user ($279 a year), shown here as $23.25 a month; there is no monthly plan. Renewal is manual unless you choose auto-renew. Full refund if you ask within 14 days of purchase.
- Hidden costs
- Link-metric and AI integrations (Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, OpenAI, Gemini) use your own paid accounts with those services. Big crawls want an SSD and 16 GB of RAM.
- Source
- www.screamingfrog.co.uk
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Questions
Screaming Frog SEO Spider, briefly
Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.
Ask a question ›The free version crawls up to 500 URLs with the basic checks, but can't save crawls, render JavaScript or use integrations.
Yes. An AI coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor can build a usable personal version in one session with the prompt on this page, running on your own machine.
About $23.25 a month on the Paid licence plan per seat, $279 a year (checked 2026-10-13).
Dozens of specialist checks: structured data, AMP, spelling, accessibility; Custom extraction with XPath, CSS or regex across a whole crawl; Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed and link metrics next to each URL; Scheduled crawls and Looker Studio reports; Crawl files that colleagues and clients can open. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.
Yes: LibreCrawl (open source), SiteOne Crawler (open source), SEOnaut (open source).