Ahrefs Site Audit is one of the best technical SEO crawlers available. It detects 170+ issue types, renders JavaScript, tracks health score over time, and integrates with the rest of Ahrefs' ecosystem — backlinks, keywords, content explorer. For teams already paying for Ahrefs, the site audit is a tremendous bonus.
The problem is the price of entry: $129/month for the Lite plan, and that comes with a 5,000-page crawl limit. For teams that primarily need site auditing — not backlink analysis or keyword research — paying for the full Ahrefs suite feels like buying a sports car to commute two miles. The audit is great, but you're subsidizing features you don't use.
There's also the conversion blind spot. Ahrefs, like every traditional SEO tool, focuses purely on technical health: crawlability, indexability, structured data, Core Web Vitals. It can find a broken link or a slow-loading page, but it can't tell you that your above-the-fold area is wasting space on a stock photo instead of communicating your value proposition.
I tested five alternatives — some cheaper, some free, some solving problems Ahrefs ignores entirely.