Sitebulb vs Yoast SEO Comparison 2026
Sitebulb crawls a whole site after it is live and explains the technical problems it finds, from $18 a month for Lite. Yoast SEO checks one WordPress post while it is still open in the editor: a missing meta description, a heading that does not nest, for free on the core plugin, or $9.90 a month billed annually for Premium's redirect manager and internal linking. They check different things at different moments, so the real question is a full technical crawl against a pre-publish check inside WordPress.
A crawler that explains what it found
Checks a WordPress post before you publish it
At a glance
- Yoast SEO starts cheaper, at $9.90.
- Only Yoast SEO has a free tier.
Side by side
Sitebulb | Yoast SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $18 | From $9.90 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated |
Sitebulb
A crawler that explains what it found
Sitebulb crawls a site and returns prioritised issues with an explanation of why each one matters, which is the difference between this and a spreadsheet of URLs. Crawl maps draw the structure of a site as a picture. JavaScript rendering is on every plan rather than reserved for the dearest. The desktop product audits ten thousand URLs at the entry tier, so anybody auditing a large site is looking at the cloud version instead.
Our note
Check your URL count before choosing Lite, because 10,000 sounds generous and a site with faceted navigation or a large archive passes it without anybody noticing. The explanations are the reason to buy this over a cheaper crawler, and they are worth most to whoever is still learning what the findings mean.
Yoast SEO
Checks a WordPress post before you publish it
Yoast SEO reads a draft in the WordPress editor and tells you what a search engine will struggle with: a missing meta description, a heading structure that does not nest, an internal link that should exist. The free plugin covers the basics and is what most sites run. Premium adds redirect management, which is the part that saves you when a URL changes, plus multiple keyphrases per post and internal linking suggestions. It is a subscription per site with the seat count stated separately.
Why people weigh these two
- Yoast SEO instead of Sitebulb
- Yoast SEO checks a single WordPress post before it publishes, right in the editor, with a free tier and a $9.90 plan, a per-page nudge rather than a whole-site crawl.
- Sitebulb instead of Yoast SEO
- Sitebulb crawls the whole site and explains what it found at $18, catching across pages what Yoast checks one post at a time.
Which one should you pick
Pick Sitebulb for a full technical audit of a live site: broken structure, orphaned pages and crawl-level issues explained rather than just listed, from $18 a month. It runs on any site, not only WordPress, and does nothing for a draft before it is published.
Pick Yoast SEO if the site is WordPress and the job is catching problems before a post goes live: the free plugin covers the basics for many sites, and Premium at $9.90 a month billed annually adds redirects and internal linking suggestions. It does not crawl the finished site the way Sitebulb does, so a bigger technical problem across many pages will not surface here.
Common questions
- Does Yoast SEO work outside WordPress?
- No, it is a WordPress plugin specifically. Sitebulb crawls any site regardless of what runs it, from a desktop app on macOS or Windows.
- Is Yoast's free plugin enough, or do I need Premium?
- The free plugin covers the core checks and is what most sites run. Premium at $9.90 a month billed annually adds redirect management, multiple keyphrases and internal linking suggestions on top.
- Which one is cheaper?
- Yoast's free plugin costs nothing, and Premium is $9.90 a month. Sitebulb has no free plan; Lite starts at $18 a month.
- Does Sitebulb check a draft before it publishes, the way Yoast does?
- No. Sitebulb crawls a site that is already live and explains what it finds. Checking a draft in the editor before it goes out is specifically Yoast's job.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.