Guides · 5 min read · Updated 2026-09-08
Sitebulb alternative: Truelint compared, honestly
Truelint and Sitebulb are the two desktop crawlers that explain the fix, not just the finding. Where they overlap, where each is stronger, what they cost, and who should pick which.
Sitebulb is the crawler most SEOs mention when they’ve outgrown Screaming Frog’s spreadsheet-of-everything and want the tool to tell them what matters. It prioritises findings, explains each one, draws crawl maps, and produces client-ready PDF reports. Truelint sets out to do the same job with a different engine and a different set of trade-offs. This page lays both out, using Sitebulb’s own published figures; nothing here has been benchmarked against Sitebulb, and where we can’t measure, we say so.
The short version
Both tools crawl your site, group the findings by importance, and explain what to do. Sitebulb has been doing it since 2017, runs on Windows and Mac, and adds Google Analytics and Search Console data, PDF reports and a cloud edition. Truelint is newer, runs on Mac today, is an order of magnitude lighter on memory, runs from the terminal and in a browser as well as the desktop, and has an open-source core. Sitebulb is priced monthly per user; Truelint has a free tier with every check and a flat yearly Pro price.
If your deliverable is a branded PDF for a client, or you need Search Console data joined onto the crawl this week, Sitebulb is the safer choice today. If you crawl very large sites, want crawls in a pipeline, care about where your data lives, or want to read the code that judges your site, Truelint was built for you.
Feature by feature
| Truelint 0.1 | Sitebulb Desktop | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS (Windows, Linux coming) | Windows, macOS |
| Checks | 125, every one with fix guidance, all tiers | “100+ Hints” on Lite, “300+ Hints” on Pro, with explanations |
| URL limit per crawl | 1,000 free, unlimited on Pro | 10,000 on Lite, 500,000 on Pro (expandable) |
| Memory model | Disk-backed; 1M URLs measured at 210 MB peak | Depends on machine; Sitebulb’s FAQ says most work computers handle up to 500,000 |
| JavaScript rendering | Chrome you already have; raw-vs-rendered diff per page | Built-in evergreen Chromium |
| Duplicate content | Exact and near, on main content only | Yes |
| Structured data | Validation against required and recommended properties, 35 types, rich-result eligibility | Yes (Pro) |
| Accessibility | axe-core on every rendered page, WCAG tags | Accessibility report (Pro) |
| Hreflang, canonicals, sitemaps, redirects | Yes | Yes |
| Crawl comparison | Pro | Pro (“Audit Comparisons”) |
| Scheduled crawls | Pro, via the OS scheduler or the server edition | Pro |
| Visualisations | Crawl tree, directory tree, force-directed | Crawl maps, charts, timelines |
| Custom extraction | CSS, XPath, regex, custom JavaScript | Content extraction |
| AI | Per-page prompts to your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Ollama | MCP integration |
| Google Analytics / Search Console | Not yet | Yes, including on Lite |
| PDF reports | Not yet (CSV, Excel, sitemap, API) | Customised PDF reports (Pro) |
| Command line | Yes, open source | No |
| Self-hosted browser edition and HTTP API | Yes | Sitebulb Cloud, a separate product |
| Cloud crawling at scale | Self-host; no hosted tier yet | Sitebulb Cloud, “up to 10m URLs per audit” |
| Data location | Your disk; no account, no telemetry | Your disk for Desktop; Sitebulb’s servers for Cloud |
Sources: Sitebulb’s pricing and features pages, September 2026.
What Sitebulb does that Truelint doesn’t
- Search Console and Google Analytics on every plan. Sitebulb joins clicks, impressions and sessions onto crawl data even on Lite. Truelint’s Google integrations are on the roadmap and need OAuth credentials to ship.
- PDF reports. If you send audits to clients as documents, Sitebulb’s customised PDF export is a real feature we don’t have.
- Windows. Today Truelint ships for macOS only.
- A hosted cloud. Sitebulb Cloud runs large crawls on their infrastructure with team access. Truelint’s browser edition exists, but you host it.
- Nine years of edge cases. Sitebulb has met more strange servers than we have.
What Truelint does that Sitebulb doesn’t
- Memory that doesn’t grow with the site. Truelint writes every page to a single SQLite file as it goes; a million URLs crawled in 307 seconds at 210 MB peak on a laptop. Sitebulb’s own guidance caps Desktop at 500,000 per audit and points larger sites to Cloud.
- Every check on every tier. The free plan and Pro run the same 125 checks; Pro removes the URL cap. Sitebulb’s Lite plan gets roughly a third of the Hints.
- A command line and an API.
truelint crawlruns in CI, on a server, or on a schedule; the HTTP API and event stream let you build on it. Sitebulb is a desktop application. - An open-source core. The crawler and rules are Apache-2.0 on GitHub. You can read exactly what a check does before you trust it.
- Main-content measurement. Word counts and duplicate detection ignore navigation and sidebars, so documentation sites don’t light up as duplicates.
- Forms-based login through your own Chrome, custom JavaScript per page, and AI prompts against the provider of your choice with your own key.
Price
Sitebulb Desktop is per user per month: Lite is listed at about $18 a month and Pro about $42 a month on monthly billing, roughly 15% less on annual plans, with extra users from £7 a month; there’s a 14-day trial. Sitebulb Cloud is priced separately and, per their site, runs “in excess of £20k/year for big teams”.
Truelint is free up to 1,000 URLs per crawl with every check, and Pro is $149 a year per person for unlimited URLs, comparison and clean exports. Over a year, one Pro seat of each: about $420–500 for Sitebulb Pro versus $149 for Truelint Pro.
Who should pick which
Pick Sitebulb if you deliver PDF audits to clients, need Search Console or Analytics data in the crawl now, work on Windows, or want a hosted cloud with a support team behind it.
Pick Truelint if you crawl sites Sitebulb Desktop can’t hold, want crawling in a pipeline or on a server, prefer a one-off yearly price to per-seat monthly billing, or want to read the code.
Try both. Truelint’s free tier has no time limit, and Sitebulb’s trial is two weeks. Run the same site through each and compare the findings; the overlap will be large and the differences will tell you which one fits how you work.