What you give up, and what you don't
A free per-URL checker doesn't crawl your entire site, track rankings over weeks, or store a history of audits. If you manage SEO for a large site at a professional level, those are real needs and a paid suite earns its cost. seo·check doesn't try to replace that.
What you don't give up is the thing most people actually want from an audit: a clear, scored read on whether a specific page is set up right. On-page fundamentals, structured data, sitemap health — and crucially, GEO readiness for AI answer engines — are all in the free report. For checking a page before you publish, or sanity-checking a fix, that's the whole job.
Where the free checker actually wins
Beyond price, the free checker wins on friction and on AI coverage. There's no account, no onboarding, and no waiting on a site-wide crawl — paste a URL, read the report. And because it was built for the AI-search era, GEO signals like AI-crawler access and llms.txt are first-class, not a bolt-on the big suites are still catching up to.
The honest framing: use a paid suite when you need scale, tracking, and history; use seo·check when you need a fast, free, per-page read — especially for the GEO signals. Many people only ever need the second, and there's no reason to pay for the first to get it.
seo·check vs a paid SEO audit suite
| seo·check | Paid audit suite | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | One URL on demand | Full-site crawl |
| GEO / AI-search signals | First-class (crawler access, llms.txt) | Often limited or absent |
| Rank tracking & history | No | Yes |
| Account | None | Required |
| Cost | Free | Monthly subscription |
frequently asked
- When should I use a paid SEO suite instead of seo·check?
- When you need full-site crawls, rank tracking, backlink data, or audit history at a professional scale. seo·check is a per-URL checker, not a site-wide monitoring suite, so the paid tools win on scope and tracking.
- What does seo·check do that the paid suites often don't?
- It treats GEO — AI-answer-engine readiness — as first-class: AI-crawler access in robots.txt, JSON-LD, and llms.txt, scored alongside on-page SEO. Many legacy suites under-cover these.
- Is the free version limited compared to a paid plan?
- seo·check has no paid plan — the full per-URL report is free. The trade-off isn't features-behind-a-paywall; it's scope: one URL on demand rather than a full-site crawl with history.
- Do I need an account to use seo·check?
- No. You paste a URL and read the report — no sign-up, unlike most paid suites.
Published June 10, 2026 · Last updated June 13, 2026