Level Access vs Siteimprove
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Quote on request
Quote onlyQuote on request
Quote onlyWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Enterprise contracts combining platform licence with audit and advisory services.
Enterprise annual contracts priced by pages crawled and modules.
Free tier
No free tier.
Free browser extension for single-page checks.
Open source
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Established
Level Access · since 1997
Widely used
Siteimprove · since 2003
Strengths
- Human expert audits and assistive-technology user testing alongside the tooling.
- Legal and VPAT support for organisations under compliance pressure.
- Covers web, mobile and desktop applications.
- Scans entire large sites and assigns findings to content owners, not just developers.
- Combines accessibility with SEO and content quality in one governance view.
- Reporting suited to demonstrating compliance progress to executives and regulators.
Limitations
- Expensive, services-heavy engagement model.
- The UserWay overlay heritage is contentious — automated overlays are widely criticised by accessibility practitioners.
- Not a self-serve developer tool.
- Expensive and aimed at organisations with a governance function.
- Weak fit for application testing as opposed to content sites.
- Limited shift-left developer tooling compared to Deque.
Best for
Organisations facing accessibility litigation or formal procurement requirements.
Universities, government and large content organisations with legal accessibility obligations.
All of these integrate with: Jira.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.