A Screaming Frog alternative that explains what it finds

The short answer

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a widely used crawler for technical SEO experts. It runs on your computer, finds hundreds of kinds of issues, renders JavaScript, connects to Search Console and Analytics, and exports everything. It is built for people who want the raw data and full control over the crawl.

Meelu is a desktop app too, and it crawls your site from your computer, with no charge per crawl. The difference is what happens next. Meelu groups the issues into four levels, from Fix now to Polish, names the pages, and you can ask it in plain English what to fix first. It can also render your pages as Googlebot on desktop and mobile, and flags text, links or tags that only appear after JavaScript runs, which many AI crawlers never see.

The crawl is one part of Meelu. The same app does keyword research, AI search checks, content writing and data analytics.

Meelu vs Screaming Frog at a glance

	Meelu	Screaming Frog
Built for	Founders and small SaaS teams	Technical SEO experts and agencies
Runs as	Desktop app for Mac and Windows	Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux
Crawl cost	No extra cost beyond the website's 0.5 credits a day, up to 10,000 pages a crawl	Free up to 500 URLs, then £199 a year per user for any number of sites
Explains each issue	Yes, in plain English with the pages involved, ranked by severity	Yes, over 300 issues, each with a priority, an explanation and how to fix it
JavaScript rendering checks	Desktop and mobile, compared with the raw HTML	Yes
Custom extraction and detailed crawl settings	Not offered	Yes
Search Console and Analytics	Imported, and used as evidence in suggestions	Integrations during the crawl, with a paid licence
Keyword research and AI search checks	Yes	No, though it can send crawled pages to OpenAI and Gemini
Content writing	Yes	No
Starting price	About $15 a month per website, plus usage at cost	Free up to 500 URLs, or £199 a year per user

Where Screaming Frog is better

• Control. Custom extraction, crawl configuration, scheduling and a command line.
• Scale. Crawl very large sites, limited mainly by your memory and disk.
• Price for a pure crawler. One licence covers any number of sites for a year, while Meelu charges per website.

Where Meelu is better

• You do not need to be an SEO expert. Meelu tells you what is wrong, where, and what to do about it.
• The crawl meets your search data. Meelu has your Search Console clicks next to the crawl, so you can ask which problems sit on pages that get traffic.
• It does the next step too. Write the page, then check if ChatGPT cites you.

Pricing

Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs. A licence is £199 a year per user.

Meelu has no subscription and no tiers. Each of your first five websites costs 0.5 credits a day (1 credit is 1 US dollar), so about $15 a month, and each website after that costs 0.25 credits a day. Crawling uses no credits beyond that fee. AI model calls, keyword data and web searches are charged at what they cost. Your first website is free for the first day.