Top 10 Free Website Audit Tools to Boost Performance

In today's competitive digital landscape, your website's performance can make or break your online success, and free website audit tools can provide a starting point for identifying opportunities before you go in with paid tools or a manual review. 

They can scan your entire website, a representative set of pages, or a single page, providing valuable insights (like page load times, mobile responsiveness, and adaptability), helping you locate and fix issues that might be costing you visitors and conversions.

Accessibility is a critical component of overall site performance. When your website is accessible, it's not only usable by people with disabilities, but it also tends to be faster, more user-friendly, and better optimized for search engines. By addressing accessibility alongside traditional performance metrics, you create a better experience for all users while improving your site's technical foundation.

Whether you're running an e-commerce store, a blog, or a corporate site, understanding how your website performs is essential for cultivating user engagement and achieving your business goals. A free website performance audit can detect performance issues and help you move the needle.

What is a Website Audit?

A website audit is a comprehensive evaluation of your website's performance. The goal of the audit is to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. That can have different meanings based on the tool. For example: 

A website accessibility audit (or ADA website audit) checks for compliance with accessibility guidelines, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the European Accessibility Act(opens in a new tab) (EAA), and measures how well the site performs for people with disabilities. That includes tests for things like missing image alt text, low-contrast text, and redundant links.

An SEO audit evaluates how well your website is optimized to receive organic traffic through Google and other search engines. It might check keyword usage, meta descriptions, site structure, mobile-friendliness, and backlinks.

A performance audit focuses on your website's speed and overall performance. It might report page load times, image optimization, server response times, and mobile performance.

A security audit evaluates your website's vulnerabilities to security threats. This includes malware, SQL injection vulnerabilities, cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities, and SSL certificate validity.

There's some overlap among these different types of audits. For example, most SEO tools will evaluate page titles, meta descriptions, and heading structures, all of which are important for digital accessibility. Likewise, web performance metrics are important for both SEO and accessibility.

Why Conduct a Website Audit?

Put simply: If you aren’t measuring your website's performance, you can't make improvements.

Regular audits help you create content that communicates your message to your target audience. That includes the 1 billion people worldwide who have a disability(opens in a new tab).

And since the best practices of performance, SEO, and accessibility are strongly aligned, a single audit can give you a roadmap for improving virtually every aspect of your site. You can draw more organic traffic to your site and provide visitors with a safe, engaging, and intuitive experience. 

Expert audits are worth the investment, but free audit tools can help you get started on a budget.

How to Check Website Performance and Accessibility for Free

Conducting a basic website performance and accessibility check doesn't require expensive enterprise tools. Follow this step-by-step approach to get actionable insights with a free website audit:

Step 1: Run a Performance Audit.

Start by testing your website's technical performance using a free tool like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom. Enter your URL and let the tool analyze key factors, including page load speed, Core Web Vitals, image optimization, and mobile responsiveness. Automated accessibility scanners will generate a performance score and specific recommendations for improvement.

Step 2: Check Accessibility.

Next, run the same URL through a free accessibility checker, such as the AudioEye Free Accessibility Checker or WAVE(opens in a new tab). These automated scanners scan your site for accessibility barriers, such as missing alt text, insufficient color contrast, keyboard navigation issues, and other violations with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The scan will identify specific accessibility issues and their locations on your page.

Step 3: Review and Prioritize Fixes.

Compare the results from both audits and prioritize fixes that impact both performance and user experience. For example, properly sized and compressed images improve load times while alt text makes those images accessible. Semantic HTML structure helps both search engines and assistive technologies. Focus first on issues that affect the largest number of users or create the most significant barriers.

Step 4: Implement Changes and Retest.

After making improvements, run both audits again to measure your progress. Website optimization is an ongoing process. Plan to conduct these free checks regularly, especially after adding new content or features.

A stylized webpage with a series of purple checkmarks, signaling accessibility errors that have been fixed

What are the Top Free Website Audit Tools?

Each of these free website audit tools can provide key insights about your website's performance and functionality, though you may need some technical knowledge to use some of them effectively.

“Okay, but can I really find tools to audit my website for free?”

Keep in mind that free audit tools are just a starting point and only provide surface-level diagnostics.

AudioEye Website Accessibility Scanner

Best For: Finding accessibility issues, prioritizing fixes, improving site performance for assistive technology users, and simplifying and streamlining your path to accessibility.

AudioEye's Free Accessibility Checker identifies common accessibility issues that could be preventing users with disabilities from fully engaging with your site. Beyond flagging technical compliance issues, it shows how accessibility improvements benefit all users and directly impact SEO performance. 

Powered by powerful automation technology, the scanner checks for more than 30 WCAG(opens in a new tab) issues, including missing alt text, poor color contrast, and empty hyperlinks. AudioEye also supplements automated testing with Expert Audits by accessibility experts and individuals from the disability community to help you achieve full compliance.

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

Best For: Single-page testing, though paid subscription options are available for site-wide testing.

Developed by WebAIM, the WAVE tool(opens in a new tab) is a free web accessibility evaluation tool that highlights accessibility errors and areas of improvement. It provides visual feedback directly on your web page, using icons to indicate where your content may be missing the mark.

While WAVE is not a substitute for expert screen reader testing, it's valuable for developers who want to build their understanding of how assistive technologies might interpret content. It's available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

axe DevTools

Best For: Scanning individual pages for accessibility issues, particularly staging sites and password-protected content.

axe DevTools(opens in a new tab) is a browser extension that helps developers find and fix accessibility issues during development. It provides detailed reports on WCAG accessibility violations and offers guidance on resolving them.

Available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, axe is particularly useful for catching accessibility issues early in the development lifecycle.

Google Lighthouse

Best For: Developers who want to test live performance on a page level. Lighthouse is built into Chrome and can be accessed through the Chrome DevTools menu.

Google Lighthouse(opens in a new tab) is an open-source, automated tool designed to improve the quality of web pages. Integrated into Chrome DevTools, it audits performance, accessibility, progressive web apps (PWAs), SEO, and more.

Lighthouse provides clear scores and actionable recommendations, making it a valuable resource for developers and website owners looking to optimize their sites. It's particularly useful for identifying issues that affect Google's own Core Web Vitals metrics, though the accessibility testing features are limited when compared with testing tools built around WCAG (such as AudioEye, WAVE, and Axe).

Ahrefs Web Audit (Limited Free Version)

Best For: Quickly analyzing the SEO health of a single website.

Ahrefs(opens in a new tab) is a powerful, industry-standard SEO suite that crawls your website and identifies various SEO and technical issues, such as broken links, missing meta descriptions, and slow-loading pages. 

The free version has limitations on the number of pages it can crawl, but it's still a good option for smaller websites or for getting a quick overview of potential problems. The limited free version of the Site Audit tool offers an introduction to its capabilities.

SEMrush (Limited Free Version)

Best For: Analyzing the SEO and basic performance of a smaller website.

A competitor to Ahrefs, SEMrush(opens in a new tab) has a free version of its site audit feature that provides insights into your website's technical SEO health, site performance, and potential security issues.

While they offer a comprehensive suite of SEO tools for a fee, SEMrush lets you run a certain number of free website audits per month.

Ubersuggest (Limited Free Version)

Best For: Analyzing SEO for a basic website. Ubersuggest also has excellent tools for finding new keywords.

Created by SEO guru Neil Patel, Ubersuggest(opens in a new tab)’s free site audit feature can identify on-page SEO issues, track keyword rankings, and analyze a limited number of competitor websites. 

The free version comes with a limited number of daily reports and audits, along with a suite of SEO tools.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Limited Free Version)

Best For: Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. Screaming Frog is powerful, even at the free level, but its output can be technical, and its accessibility tools can be prone to false negatives and false positives.

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider(opens in a new tab) is a powerful website crawler that provides in-depth automated testing data on various SEO elements. The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs to evaluate broken links, page titles, meta descriptions, HTTP status codes, and more.

This standalone software is a favorite among SEO professionals for its comprehensive crawling capabilities. It can analyze your site's security, find broken links, and even integrate with analytics tools to provide exceptionally detailed reports. Recent versions also include accessibility testing features that test for failures of a limited set of WCAG accessibility standards.

It's important to note that while Screaming Frog can help you get started with accessibility, we recommend using additional accessibility testing tools to better assess your current accessibility and ensure conformance with WCAG guidelines.

GTmetrix

Best For: Measuring site performance and page speed.

GTmetrix(opens in a new tab) is a popular choice for identifying performance bottlenecks and improving page load times. This free audit tool analyzes your website's speed and performance, combining data from Google PageSpeed Insights and YSlow. It provides a comprehensive report with detailed metrics and recommendations for optimization, but its audit process is focused solely on speed.

While Google Lighthouse also analyzes site speed metrics, many developers believe that GTmetrix provides more consistent (and, therefore, useful) data.

Pingdom Tools

Best For: Determining how your website loads for users in different countries.

Pingdom(opens in a new tab) offers a free website speed test tool that allows you to test your digital assets' performance from different locations around the world. Its audit report provides detailed insights into load times, page size, and other performance metrics.

Because Pingdom Tools isn't tied to your internet connection, it may provide more accurate information about certain page speed issues (or help you verify that a speed issue actually exists).

A stylized webpage displaying a number of error warnings, with an accessibility icon in the bottom-right corner

What are the Limitations of Free Website Audit Tools?

While free audit tools can surface high-level issues, they can’t fully evaluate the depth or breadth of your website or replace testing performed by experts and real users.

Understanding these limitations helps set realistic expectations and recognize when a more robust solution may be necessary. Additional limitations include:

• Limited scope: Free tools typically scan only a limited number of pages or provide surface-level analysis. They may miss issues that exist deeper in your site structure or catch only the most obvious problems while overlooking nuanced accessibility or performance issues.

• No ongoing monitoring: Most free tools provide point-in-time snapshots rather than continuous monitoring. This means issues that arise after your audit won't be detected until you run another manual scan, potentially leaving your site vulnerable to new problems.

• Basic recommendations: Free tools often identify what's wrong but provide limited guidance on how to fix issues, especially for complex problems. You may need technical expertise to implement the recommendations effectively.

• Accessibility coverage: Free accessibility audit tools typically detect only 20-30% of potential WCAG issues. Many accessibility barriers (such as confusing navigation, unclear instructions, or content that makes sense visually but not to screen readers) require human evaluation to properly identify them.

• No automatic fixes: Unlike comprehensive accessibility solutions, free tools can't automatically fix the issues they find. You'll need to manually address each identified problem, which can be time-consuming for large sites.

• Compliance uncertainty: Free scans can help you identify issues, but they can't guarantee full compliance with WCAG, ADA, or other accessibility standards. A clean scan doesn't necessarily mean your site is fully accessible or compliant.

Free tools are excellent starting points and useful for regular check-ins. Still, organizations serious about accessibility, performance, and compliance often benefit from comprehensive solutions that provide ongoing monitoring, automatic fixes, and expert support.

Why Accessibility Matters for Website Performance

Accessibility improvements deliver benefits that extend far beyond compliance; they directly enhance your website's overall performance in measurable ways:

• SEO advantages: Search engines and screen readers navigate websites similarly. Accessible features, such as semantic HTML, descriptive headings, alt text, and clear link text, help search engines better understand and rank your content. Studies show accessible websites often rank higher in search results.

• Improved site speed: Many accessibility best practices overlap with performance optimization. Properly structured HTML loads faster, optimized images with alt text improve load times, and clean code without redundant elements reduces file size and parsing time.

• Better user experience for everyone: Accessible design principles such as clear navigation, readable fonts, high color contrast, and logical page structure create a better experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities. This leads to longer session times, lower bounce rates, and higher conversion rates.

• Increased market reach: One in four adults in the U.S. has a disability. Making your site accessible opens your content and services to a significant portion of the population that might otherwise be excluded, directly impacting your potential customer base.

• Mobile optimization: Many accessibility features, such as touch-friendly buttons, clear tap targets, and responsive design, align with mobile optimization best practices, ensuring your site performs well across all devices.

• Reduced technical debt: Building accessibility into your website from the start prevents costly retrofits later and creates a more maintainable, standards-compliant codebase.

When you improve accessibility, you're simultaneously strengthening multiple aspects of your website's performance. This makes it a high-impact investment that pays dividends across user experience, search visibility, and business outcomes.

Boost your website’s performance and reach with AudioEye

Regular website audits are essential for monitoring site health, improving the user experience, and attracting more organic traffic. Free testing tools can be somewhat limited in scope, and it takes a deeper evaluation to get the best results from your website audits.

Of course, web accessibility audits are especially important. The best practices of inclusive design can improve site performance and SEO while delivering a better experience for real-life users. By prioritizing accessibility, you can reach a larger audience and build a stronger brand. 

AudioEye makes the process of improving your website’s accessibility faster and easier. Our free Website Accessibility Scanner provides a quick snapshot of your site’s current accessibility status, identifying common accessibility issues and highlighting areas for improvement. Our Automated Accessibility Platform then automatically resolves those issues, streamlining your path to compliance and accessibility. And when you need more comprehensive support, AudioEye is ready with expert guidance and powerful solutions to help you achieve and maintain digital accessibility.