CognitiveSEO vs. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CognitiveSEO
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
CognitiveSEO is a relatively new search engine optimization toolkit, launched in 2012 from developer and CEO Razvan Gavrilas of the company of the same name based in Romania. With an emphasis on backlink analysis and link creating, the platform also presents content and site audit analysis, keyword research and tracking, also rank tracking, all presented via a customizable dashboard. For a small group of up to 5 users with no interest in an API, CognitiveSEO can be had for $99 per month…
$129.99
per month
Screaming Frog
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$149
per year
Pricing
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Editions & Modules
Starter
$129.99
per month
Business
Individual Pricing
Custom
Custom Plans Available
Paid Version
$149.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsBusiness Plan pricing can be customized by the user using the on-site calculator found on the pricing page. Individual tools (Link Analysis, Rank Tracking, etc.) available a la carte.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Considered Both Products
CognitiveSEO
Chose CognitiveSEO
CognitiveSEO specializes in target marketing for more efficient marketing campaigns and lead generation. While I am not too familiar with other competing products, I would highly advise using CognitiveSEO above all due to the efficiency, turnaround time, and customization …
Chose CognitiveSEO
Majestic and Ahrefs are great tools and we use them with CognitiveSEO but for different reasons. Majestic and Ahrefs have more comprehensive link databases while cognitive gives us more updated link information and more detailed link anchor text information. Cognitive also …
Chose CognitiveSEO
CognitiveSEO has some unique content optimization features and backlink analysis and auditing features that set it apart from other similar tools. For the price point it's well worth experimenting with to see if you can find value in using it.
Screaming Frog
Chose Screaming Frog
RankPro, Semrush, Keyword Hero, GetKeywords and KeywordSpy
Chose Screaming Frog
The biggest difference between DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog is cost. Screaming Frog is significantly cheaper, and fits within a budget much easier. For most websites that aren't huge it crawls quicker to. DeepCrawl is the better tool for analysing larger websites and is easier …
Chose Screaming Frog
Please note that, while Screaming Frog is a great tool for scanning the website all it is, is a tool that scans the website. For deeper analysis or for keyword analysis, please take a look at tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs for your medium size business, or Conductor for a …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog provides some similar benefits as the other tools but offers a wealth of other scanning options that the other tools don’t. I like how every scan of a URL (yours, a competitor’s, or any URL) provides 30+ points of data. The other tools offer other benefits that …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider does so much...a lot of these tools, in theory, should be used together because they lend big picture insights. But Screaming Frog SEO Spider is excellent because it can work directly with tools like Google Analytics.
Chose Screaming Frog
There aren't many direct competitors for Screaming Frog SEO Spider that I've found. Tools such as Moz provide similar outcomes, but in a completely different manner and with a different workflow. I can't really compare them.
Chose Screaming Frog
The choice to go with Screaming Frog was really mostly about price and the fact that it does almost the same exact thing. There are a few things that DeepCrawl does that Screaming Frog doesn't, but it wasn't worth the increase in price.
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog has a free version, so it competes with the paid programs (like Moz) solely in the fact that it can be used without incurring a budget line item. Compared to many other programs that also offer free scans, Screaming Frog is fast and much more customizable. Since …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is far superior to the host of free crawling tools available online and does not limit you to a certain number of pages as many other tools do. We were looking for just a crawling tool and not a more robust SEO tool like Moz, so this was perfect for us.
Chose Screaming Frog
I use several tools that can do much of what Screaming Frog can do - SemRush and SEO Powersuite. However, for what we use Screaming Frog for, it is the best tool. During a 15-minute phone call with a potential new client, I can crawl the site and determine what shape the site …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog seems to be the most thorough at crawling a website. Almost too thorough ;). But it is spreadsheet-like and so allows sorting and filtering in a simple way. But in general, with Screaming Frog I trust that it gets everything when it crawls a website.
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is different than a tool like SEMrush. It is a crawler that allows you to see the data like Google would see it when they crawl your site. A tool like SEMrush, or MOZ, gives you more analysis around SEO for the website you are reviewing. I wouldn't want to be …
Chose Screaming Frog
Our company also uses Website Auditor from the SEO PowerSuite by LinkAssistant and it's a great tool with a lot of fancy features and even an IA (information architecture) visualization which shows you how your website looks and how your pages interconnect.

Screaming Frog is a …
Chose Screaming Frog
Authority Labs is good for a limited function--tracking keyword rankings (though its keyword suggestion capability has recently improved as well) but doesn't do the page crawling that Screaming Frog does. Serpstat and SEMRush both have a lot more functions but also cost …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a downloadable desktop app. Its minimalist design makes for a straight forward seamless site crawling SEO experience. We use all these products and Screaming Frog fits in nicely as a member of our SEO product team. Each product has its strengths and weaknesses …
Chose Screaming Frog
The HTML-heavy little platform, Screaming Frog, is my favorite crawler compared to DeepCrawl and SEMRush. Partially precisely due to the fact that the tool doesn't try to give me recommendations or tell me what to do. Many similar tools go above and beyond to prescribe …
Chose Screaming Frog
The tools I mentioned are in the same space, tools for SEO, but aren't website scrapers like Screaming Frog. We haven't found another tool that we like as much for providing simple and straight forward insights about a website.
Chose Screaming Frog
I have not used any similar tools to Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
Chose Screaming Frog
Even though Screaming Frog is the industry standard, that doesn't mean that it's without its flaws. The crawl visualization is sub-par compared to Sitebulb, and the UX/UI looks like it's from the 90s and hasn't been updated since then. Tools like Deepcrawl and Sitebulb are …
Chose Screaming Frog
SEMrush is not a dedicated on-demand SEO crawler like Screaming Frog. SEMRush is more of a digital marketing suite that happens to offer SEO crawling along with other marketing tools. As such, it's much more of a commitment; which you'll notice with a monthly cost versus a …
Chose Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is probably the best non-client facing SEO audit tool in terms of technical SEO. There are other tools on the market that do a more complete job of keyword tracking, competitive analysis, and backlink profiles...however, for analyzing the technical SEO …
Chose Screaming Frog
We have a deep crawl integration with another tool and still find the information on DeepCrawl valuable because this tool is better at listing out reccomendations. However, Screaming Frog is easier to use, doesn't have limits on how many crawls it can run (on the Pro plan we …
Features
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
CognitiveSEO
7.1
Ratings
9% below category average
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
8.7
Ratings
12% above category average
Keyword analysis7.80 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Backlink management8.20 Ratings6.00 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking7.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Page grader6.80 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Competitive analysis6.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics6.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Site recommendations5.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Task management7.80 Ratings8.00 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
CognitiveSEO
5.4
Ratings
34% below category average
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
9.5
Ratings
22% above category average
Local SEO7.20 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Social SEO6.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile SEO3.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Global SEO5.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
CognitiveSEO
5.6
Ratings
41% below category average
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
8.8
Ratings
4% above category average
Multi-domain support5.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools5.80 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Small Businesses
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 10.0 out of 10
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.2 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
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Score 8.5 out of 10
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Score 8.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Likelihood to Recommend
6.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.1
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CognitiveSEOScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Likelihood to Recommend
When we have clients that are in a competitive landscape we need to monitor their links (live and lost) more aggressively than others. CognitiveSEO allows us to get daily alerts on new links that come in so we can review these quickly and make decisions to disavow them before these links become a problem.
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Screaming Frog tracks the crawl level, internal links, outbound links, title tags, and meta descriptions of the pages it crawls. It also adds HTTP status codes, title tag length, meta description length, H1, H2 tags and lengths, and canonical tags. Many of these elements are also broken into their own tabs at the top so that you can easily focus in on problem areas. You can right-click on any URL for many more options. The program is definitely valuable to anyone who is looking to gauge factors regarding SEO. However, if you are not a web designer/admin, you're going to lack an understanding of the information it provides.
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Pros
  • Good tool for tracking KW's when writing a blog post.
  • Easy to see the KW rankings all in one place.
Read full review
  • Collects all indexed HTML pages of the site. This helps for when we are redirecting old URLs to the URLs of a clients new site.
  • Finds all page titles that are too long or too short and allows us to address them more quickly than waiting for a program such as Moz. It's more immediate.
  • If we have duplicate meta data on pages, this program allows us to find them, sort them, export them and take care of them in a timely manner. In our business (as for many) time is money.
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Cons
  • More mobile accessibility for mobile devices to boost on the go marketing efforts.
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  • Customizing the crawler - It takes a little bit of playing around with the settings to understand what each of them controls and what options need to be checked or unchecked to get the right amount of information.
  • Cannot Crawl a large site - Screaming Frog runs out of memory when asked to crawl a large site, even after playing around with memory settings and allocating additional memory.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
The tool has become integrated into our teams daily workings and I have yet to find a tool other than scremaing frog to replicate all of our use cases for it. It's a great tool and we're sticking with it
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Usability
No answers on this topic
The main problem of Screaming Frog SEO Spider is it being an offline software which limits itself to a single pc and that creates problem when multi user agents want to get involved or even work on it, it’s a difficult task to collaborate on it and do research for keywords at one place
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Support Rating
They do not respond quickly to any questions or the one time I had an issue. I had resolved the issue myself before they gave a response
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Screaming Frog is a relatively primitive system, and doesn't need to be supported by devs or other software. Screaming Frog does interface directly with some programs that are most needed (Google Analytics, Search Console, Page Speed Insights), so that's convenient. It isn't widely supported by other programs, but it also doesn't need to be.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
If the software was a little easier to use for beginners, there really wouldn't be an issue
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Alternatives Considered
CognitiveSEO specializes in target marketing for more efficient marketing campaigns and lead generation. While I am not too familiar with other competing products, I would highly advise using CognitiveSEO above all due to the efficiency, turnaround time, and customization features to attract new leads based on specific criteria that relate to your products and daily procedures.
Read full review
The biggest difference between DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog is cost. Screaming Frog is significantly cheaper, and fits within a budget much easier. For most websites that aren't huge it crawls quicker to. DeepCrawl is the better tool for analysing larger websites and is easier to use in some ways, with a very friendly interface and some extras features that are useful. Ultimately price was the deciding factor though.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Beneficial performance in content optimization
  • Mitigating risk from backlink profile
  • Linkbuilding from mentions monitoring
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  • It has allowed me to make impactful and intelligent recommendations to clients. This has in turned deepened the client relationships and led to steady ongoing ROI.
  • It has also allowed me to diagnose interesting technical issues for non-client sites (like Forbes) which formed the basis for very cool company blog posts.
  • The investment is very low - this tool does 99% of what I need for a fraction of what other industry crawlers costs. Kudos to the Screaming Frog team!
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ScreenShots

CognitiveSEO Screenshots

Screenshot of Account DashboardScreenshot of Boost Search Rankings by Fixing Website Errors