ShipcheckShipcheck vs Lighthouse
Lighthouse is Google's free auditing tool, built into Chrome DevTools and PageSpeed Insights. It is the standard for lab performance scores. Shipcheck focuses on what to fix before launch, including the things Lighthouse does not check.
| Feature | Shipcheck | Lighthouse |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free for meta tags and share previews; Pro is $20 once, lifetime | Free |
| Performance | LCP, CLS, INP with the slow element named, plus field data when availablePro | Full lab performance audit and score |
| Accessibility | Full axe-core WCAG 2.2 A/AA scanPro | A subset of axe-core rules |
| Keyboard tab order overlay | YesPro | No (manual checks listed) |
| SEO basics | Meta tags, SERP and share previews free; canonical, robots, and schema checks in Pro | Yes |
| AI search visibility (AI crawler access, llms.txt, JS-only content) | YesPro | No |
| Pre-launch checklist (security headers, legal pages, analytics, 404) | YesPro | Partial (some best-practice audits) |
| Broken links and site crawl | Yes, plus a 25-page accessibility and AI scanPro | No broken-link check; one page per run |
| AI fix prompts for Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT | YesPro | No |
| White-label PDF client report | YesPro | No (HTML/JSON report) |
| Runs in | Chrome side panel on any tab | DevTools, PageSpeed Insights, CLI, CI |
Shipcheck features marked Pro need the $20 lifetime license. The free extension shows issue counts for several of them as a preview.
When to pick Lighthouse
- You need a detailed performance trace and the official Lighthouse score.
- You want to run audits in CI from the command line.
When to pick Shipcheck
- You want to know if AI search engines can read and cite your page.
- You want a full launch checklist, not just a score.
- You want issues turned into fix prompts and a client-ready report.
Using both
Use Lighthouse for deep performance profiling and Shipcheck for the launch checklist, accessibility, and AI search checks around it.
Comparison based on publicly available information as of October 2026. Check the Lighthouse website for its latest features and pricing.
Free tools to try now
Meta tag & social preview checker
See your Google, X, LinkedIn, and Slack previews and fix titles, descriptions, and OG images.
Open tool →Security headers checker
Grade HSTS, CSP, and four more headers, then copy the config for your host.
Open tool →AI crawler checker
See which of 16 AI crawlers your robots.txt allows or blocks, with a copy-paste fix.
Open tool →