Pa11y
Command-line accessibility testing for CI, with a dashboard for tracking over time.
What it is
Pa11y runs accessibility tests from the command line against URLs, using either axe-core or HTML_CodeSniffer as its engine, and returns machine-readable results suited to failing a build. Pa11y CI tests many URLs at once and Pa11y Dashboard tracks results over time — all free and self-hosted.
Best for
Where it is strong
- Free, scriptable and trivially added as a CI gate.
- Tests a sitemap of URLs in one run, unlike page-by-page extensions.
- Self-hosted dashboard for tracking without a vendor.
Where it falls short
- No guided manual testing or remediation workflow.
- Testing authenticated or interactive states requires scripting actions.
- Maintenance activity has been intermittent.
Pricing
Free and open source
Open sourceFree tier: Everything, self-hosted
What drives the bill: Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.
Check current pricing on OSS community’s siteFigures are indicative and were last reviewed August 2026. Vendors change pricing often; confirm before you commit.
Works with
What people who use Pa11y say
No reviews of Pa11y yet. If you have used it in anger, yours would be the first.
Alternatives to Pa11y
If Pa11y is not the right fit, these solve the same problem differently.
axe-core
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The open-source accessibility rules engine almost every other tool is built on.
Lighthouse
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Google's built-in audit for performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices.
WAVE
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Visual accessibility evaluation that shows problems in place on the page.