Budget & alternatives · Prompt 8 of 8 · July 2026

A real buyer question from the July 2026 snapshot, asked 3× to each of the three models. 9 answers recorded.

“What's a good affordable alternative to the big desktop SEO crawlers?”

ChatGPT answered 3× this snapshot

If you’re trying to avoid the price tag of tools like Screaming Frog (paid tier), Sitebulb, or DeepCrawl, there are some solid budget-friendly options—just with a few tradeoffs. Here are the best affordable (and actually useful) alternatives: Screaming Frog (free version) Honestly still one of the best options if your site isn’t huge. Free for up to 500 URLs Same core crawler as the paid version Great for audits,…

Named across its answers: 1. SEO PowerSuite2. Beam Us Up3. Screaming Frog4. Sitebulb5. Ahrefs

Verbatim excerpt from one collected ChatGPT answer; formatting flattened, words untouched.

Screaming Frog dominates this affordability question, appearing in 6 of 9 answers and holding average position 1, which is striking given the question explicitly asks for alternatives to big crawlers. Beam Us Up matches Screaming Frog's mention count but averages position 3.3, making it the clear runner-up without seriously threatening the leader's first-recommendation grip.

AI-generated read of the July 2026 measurements.

Who wins this question

Owned Consensus

All three models name Screaming Frog and Sitebulb on this question.

ChatGPT

Claude

Gemini mentioned · first · avg. pos

Screaming Frog 111111 6/9 · 6× first · #1

Beam Us Up 246116 6/9 · 2× first · #3.3

Ahrefs 364434 6/9 · never first · #4

Xenu's Link Sleuth 423854 6/9 · never first · #4.3

Sitebulb 2222 4/9 · never first · #2

SEO PowerSuite 1559 4/9 · 1× first · #5

Seobility 4876 4/9 · never first · #6.3

Netpeak Spider 425 3/9 · never first · #3.7

Google Search Console 552 3/9 · never first · #4

Lumar 643 3/9 · never first · #4.3

Scrutiny 267 3/9 · never first · #5

SE Ranking 778 3/9 · never first · #7.3

Each square is one collected answer; the number is the brand's position in that answer. Lime = the very first recommendation. Unlinked brands were named by the models here but sit outside this category's published top 15 overall. Showing the top 12 of 29 brands named at least once. Never mentioned here: Firecrawl, OnCrawl, ContentKing, Browserless, Apify.