Alternatives

AcuityScan vs Lighthouse

Lighthouse is the developer's audit baked into Chrome. AcuityScan covers its ground and the things it was never built to check, like email, DNS, and live SSL.

Lighthouse is Google's excellent open-source auditor, built into Chrome DevTools and free. It grades performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices for a single page, and it's a staple of developer workflows. AcuityScan covers those same axes with comparable engines, then adds email authentication, DNS health, deep SSL/TLS, blacklist checks, privacy/tracker auditing, and ongoing monitoring, with a single health score and plain-English fixes for non-developers.

AcuityScan vs Lighthouse, side by side

Google's open-source audit in Chrome.

	AcuityScan	Lighthouse
Primary focus	Full website audit	Dev audit (4 axes)
Categories covered	8	Perf, a11y, SEO, best practices
Performance + Core Web Vitals	Yes	Yes
Accessibility (WCAG)	Yes (axe-core)	Yes (axe-core)
Email auth + DNS health	Yes	No
SSL/TLS + blacklist checks	Yes	No
Privacy / tracker audit	Yes	No
Runs without DevTools	Yes (hosted)	Local / CI
Monitoring & alerts	Included in Pro	No
Plain-English fixes for non-devs	Yes	Developer-oriented
Plain-English fix for every issue	Yes	No
Native Claude / MCP integration	Yes	No

Comparison based on Lighthouse's publicly listed features and pricing as of 2026. Competitor capabilities change, so if anything here is outdated, let us know.

Where AcuityScan goes further

Four categories Lighthouse does not cover: email authentication, DNS, deep SSL/TLS, and privacy.
A hosted scan and shareable report, no DevTools or command line needed.
Monitoring that re-checks the site over time and alerts on regressions.
Plain-English, copy-paste fixes aimed at owners and marketers, not only developers.

When Lighthouse is the better choice

We would rather you pick the right tool than the wrong one. Lighthouse is the better fit when:

You are a developer who wants the audit inside Chrome DevTools or your CI pipeline.
You only need performance, accessibility, SEO, and best-practices for a single page.
You want a free, open-source, scriptable tool you fully control.

Questions

Isn't Lighthouse free and built into Chrome?

Yes, and it's excellent for developers. AcuityScan is for teams that also need email, DNS, SSL, and privacy checks Lighthouse doesn't run, want a hosted report they can share with a client, and want monitoring rather than a one-off audit.

Does AcuityScan use the same accessibility engine as Lighthouse?

Yes, both use axe-core. AcuityScan runs it at desktop and mobile viewports plus 38+ custom HTML checks, and reports it inside the full audit.

Can non-developers use AcuityScan?

That's the point. Every finding comes with a plain-English explanation and a copy-paste fix, so an owner or marketer can act on it without reading a Lighthouse JSON report.

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Lighthouse is a trademark of its respective owner. AcuityScan is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Lighthouse. This comparison reflects publicly available information as of 2026 and may change, verify current features and pricing on each provider's own site.