HubSpot Website Grader checks 4 technical categories — performance, SEO metadata, mobile responsiveness, and security. roast.page scores 8 conversion dimensions including messaging, CTA effectiveness, trust signals, and visual design using AI vision analysis. Both are free. The difference: HubSpot tells you if your page works technically. roast.page tells you if your page persuades. Technical performance accounts for 7% of the weighted conversion score — the other 93% is messaging, trust, design, and CTA effectiveness (roast.page, 1,000+ pages analyzed).
What does HubSpot Website Grader check — and what does it miss?
HubSpot evaluates page size, speed, caching, meta tags, headings, sitemap, HTTPS, and mobile rendering. These are important hygiene factors — they prevent your page from actively failing. HubSpot has analyzed 2M+ websites since 2007 and generates 70K monthly visitors as a lead magnet for HubSpot's CRM suite.
What it misses: a page scoring 90/100 on HubSpot can still have a headline that says nothing, zero social proof, and a CTA that says "Submit." The median page scores 44/100 on roast.page — and the weakest dimension is Copy & Messaging at 4.8/10, which HubSpot doesn't evaluate at all. 62% of SaaS pages lead with features instead of outcomes. 38% have zero testimonials. 71% make no attempt to differentiate. HubSpot's grader reveals none of this.
When should you use HubSpot vs roast.page?
Use HubSpot for a quick technical check — SSL status, mobile rendering, basic SEO elements. It's fast, free, and authoritative for technical fundamentals. If you're failing HubSpot's checks, fix those first.
Use roast.page when you need to know why visitors aren't converting. The AI vision analysis evaluates what visitors see — layout, messaging, trust signals, persuasion flow. It includes Google PageSpeed data (LCP, CLS, FCP, INP) so you get the technical layer too. Pages with outcome-driven headlines score 58/100 vs 44/100 for feature-driven headlines — that 14-point gap represents the kind of insight HubSpot cannot surface.
The highest-ROI workflow: run HubSpot to verify technical hygiene, then roast.page to diagnose conversion strategy. Fix the strategy first — rewriting your headline delivers a larger score improvement than shaving 200ms off your load time.