Lighthousevs
SEMrush
SEMrush: Do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing from just one platfor
Lighthouse
Audit web page performance and quality
As of 30 August 2026, Lighthouse is free to use. Lighthouse is an open-source tool from Google that audits web pages for performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices. Softwr lists it under SEO. Lighthouse is made by Google LLC, launched in 1998, available on Browser extension.
Overview
What Lighthouse does
Lighthouse is an open-source tool from Google that audits web pages for performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices. It provides actionable recommendations to improve page quality and user experience.
What people use it for
- Performance auditing to identify page loading speed improvements
- Accessibility compliance checking for users with disabilities
- SEO optimization verification for search engine compatibility
- Security and best practices scanning for code health
- Progressive web app validation and CI/CD pipeline integration
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Lighthouse.
- Performance scores vary significantly due to A/B testing, device differences, browser extensions, and antivirus software affecting results
- Limited to metrics that contribute to scores; Opportunities and Diagnostics don't directly impact scoring
- Diminishing returns above 0.96 score, making perfect 100 scores extremely challenging
- Scores based on HTTP Archive data which may not reflect all performance scenarios
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Lighthouse
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
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Pricing
What Lighthouse costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Performance audit
- Accessibility check
- SEO analysis
- Best practices
Capabilities
Features
Performance scoring
Accessibility audit
SEO check
PWA validation
Chrome support
Available on chrome
Edge support
Available on edge
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Lighthouse free?
Yes. Lighthouse is completely free and open-source. It is developed by Google and integrated into Chrome DevTools, PageSpeed Insights, and available as a command-line tool. There are no licensing fees or premium tiers.
SourceCan I run Lighthouse offline?
Yes. Lighthouse can run offline in multiple ways: through Chrome DevTools (built into Chrome), as a command-line tool (Node.js), or as a Node.js module integrated into your build process. You do not need an internet connection after installing the tool.
SourceWhat pages can Lighthouse audit?
Lighthouse can audit any web page, including pages that require authentication. This is an advantage over some alternative tools that cannot test behind login screens. You can run audits on public pages or authenticated pages via command-line with custom headers.
SourceCan Lighthouse prevent performance regression during development?
Yes. Lighthouse CI is available to prevent performance degradation during development cycles. You can integrate Lighthouse CI into your continuous integration pipeline to automatically audit pages on every commit and fail builds if performance metrics fall below thresholds you define.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Lighthouse
- Company
- Google LLC
- Based in
- Mountain View, California
Keep looking
Where to go from Lighthouse
- Lighthouse alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Lighthouse pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Lighthouse badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All SEO softwareThe full category
- Best SEO softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best SEO software for
Compare Lighthouse with
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- SE Ranking
- SEMrush
- Conductor
- Surfer SEO
- Ubersuggest
- Serpstat
- Wincher
- Lumar
- Mangools
- Sitebulb
- Keyword Insights
- Botify
- Nightwatch
- Rank Math
- seoClarity
- Lumar
- Mangools
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Pricing on request11 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Lighthouse, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Lighthouse
Lighthouse alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Lighthouse pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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Put it head to head with anything we hold
Lighthouse badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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