Screaming Frog SEO Spider vs Yoast SEO
Screaming Frog's Free Version Stops at 500 URLs — That Is the Entire Decision
One Yoast Premium Subscription Covers One Site — Price It Per Domain
The short answer
- Entry price
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider is priced in £ and Yoast SEO in $ (£199/year against $118.80/year). We do not convert between them, because the rate on the day you read this is not the rate we would be quoting.
- Our rating
- We rate Screaming Frog SEO Spider higher — 4.5/5 against 3.9/5.
- Against the rest of the category
- Of the 6 seo content tools we have reviewed that publish a starting price, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the 6th cheapest to start and Yoast SEO the 5th.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
from £199/yearThere is a free version and a £199-per-year version, and the only difference that decides it for most people is the 500-URL crawl cap. Licences are per person, not per company — two people need two licences — and they expire after twelve months.
What works
- ✓ The free version is a real tool, not a demo — it crawls 500 URLs with no time limit
- ✓ One flat £199 per year, with no usage metering or credit system
- ✓ Bulk licences drop to £169 each at 20 or more
- ✓ Paid crawling has no URL ceiling at all
What does not
- ✗ Licences are per user — two people require two individual licences
- ✗ The licence lasts one year and then must be renewed to keep working
- ✗ 500 URLs is a small site, and most real sites exceed it immediately
- ✗ 'Unlimited' crawling is explicitly dependent on your own memory and storage
Yoast SEO
from $118.80/yearYoast SEO Premium is $118.80 a year excluding VAT, and the vendor states plainly that one subscription covers one site or domain. Run three sites and that is $356.40 before tax — bulk discounts exist, but the unit you are buying is the domain, not the account.
What works
- ✓ Premium bundles Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO rather than selling them separately
- ✓ Includes one Google Docs add-on seat and academy access
- ✓ Subscriptions are transferable between live and staging sites
- ✓ Bulk discounts are available for multiple sites
What does not
- ✗ One subscription covers exactly one site or domain
- ✗ The $118.80 figure excludes VAT, so the billed total is higher in many countries
- ✗ Renewal terms are not stated on the plugin page
- ✗ A multi-site owner multiplies the price by domain count
Who should pick which
Pick Screaming Frog SEO Spider if this is the thing that matters most to you:
The free version is a real tool, not a demo — it crawls 500 URLs with no time limit.
What most often rules it out: Licences are per user — two people require two individual licences.
Pick Yoast SEO if this is the thing that matters most to you:
Premium bundles Local SEO, News SEO and Video SEO rather than selling them separately.
What most often rules it out: One subscription covers exactly one site or domain.
Figures come from our review of each product, checked against the vendor's own pricing page. We do not convert currencies or rank prices quoted on different billing periods — where that applies it is said above, not quietly resolved.
A third option, and what it is not
Bonfire Terminal is an AI agent that runs as a desktop app on your own machine — no cloud, nothing you type leaves your computer. It does not do what Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Yoast SEO do, and we will not pretend it does. If either is doing its job for you, keep it.
What the $27 actually gets you→The way in is the AI Marketers Club — $27 one-time, including 21 days of access. Keeping it after that is a separate purchase; the vendor's FAQ states Bonfire Terminal starts at $5,000. We earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which is why both tools' drawbacks are printed in full above and the $5,000 is here rather than left for you to find later.