Siteimprove vs WAVE

Quote on request

From $0.04 per credit (one basic page scan), falling to $0.025 at 10k+

Enterprise annual contracts priced by pages crawled and modules.

Free for interactive use. The API is bought in credits — one credit per basic page scan, 2-3 for advanced requests — at $0.04 each up to 999, $0.03 to 9,999 and $0.025 beyond. Minimum purchase is 250 credits ($10), and new accounts get 100 free.

Free browser extension for single-page checks.

Browser extension and single-page online checker are free.

Widely used

Siteimprove · since 2003

Widely used

WebAIM (Utah State University) · since 2001

• 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.

• The in-page visual overlay teaches non-specialists what is wrong far better than a list.
• Free for everyday developer and designer use.
• WebAIM's guidance behind each rule is authoritative and clear.

• 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.

• Manual, page-by-page — not a CI tool.
• Alerts require human judgement, so counts are not directly comparable between pages.
• No issue tracking or programme management.

Universities, government and large content organisations with legal accessibility obligations.

Designers and developers learning accessibility, and quick manual spot checks.