WCAG Audit vs Siteimprove
What Siteimprove costs $500+/seat/month to do, WCAG Audit does for $9-99/mo — with more depth, real screen-reader testing, and a CLI that plugs into your CI/CD pipeline.
The core difference
WCAG Audit (recommended)
Open platform. Self-hosted option. CLI for CI/CD with threshold gating. Audits authenticated pages via interactive Chrome login. $9-99/mo. 13 checkers including a real screen-reader walkthrough. AI vision review by Claude — included on every paid plan, no API key required.
Siteimprove (legacy)
Cloud-only SaaS. No CLI. No CI/CD integration. No authenticated page testing. $500+/seat/month. No screen-reader walkthrough. No AI vision review. PDF reports only. No on-premise deployment option.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | WCAG Audit (recommended) | Siteimprove |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9-99/mo | $500+/seat/mo |
| Deployment | Self-hosted or SaaS | Cloud only |
| CLI / CI/CD | Yes — curl install + --fail-on thresholds | No |
| Authenticated pages | Yes, interactive Chrome login | No |
| Screen-reader testing | Real VoiceOver/NVDA | No |
| AI vision review | Claude (included on paid plans) | No |
| Output formats | 7 (Excel, Markdown, JSON, Cursor, etc.) | PDF reports |
| WCAG 2.2 coverage | 52/55 criteria | ~40 criteria |
| On-premise option | Yes | No |
| One-shot fix prompt | ✅ WCAG_FIXES.prompt.md — single-pass LLM-applicable fix | ❌ Dashboard reports only; no fix output |
| Deterministic codemods (~60% auto-fix) | ✅ 10 built-in codemods auto-fix common WCAG rules without AI | ❌ Flags issues only; no automated remediation |
| Persistent false-positive memory | ✅ .wcag-audit/false-positives.json — dismiss once, gone forever | ❌ No false-positive registry |
| Exact source mapping (file:line) | ✅ @wcag-audit/next-plugin maps violations to exact file + line | ❌ Points at page URL; no source-level location |
Why teams switch from Siteimprove
Siteimprove is a legacy enterprise platform built for compliance dashboards, not developer workflows. Teams that need to ship accessible code fast hit these walls:
No CI/CD integration
Siteimprove has no CLI and no way to gate deployments on accessibility thresholds. WCAG Audit's CLI runs in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or any pipeline with
--fail-on critical.No authenticated page testing
Siteimprove's crawler cannot log in to your application. WCAG Audit supports interactive Chrome login so you can audit dashboards, admin panels, and gated routes with full checker coverage.
$500+/seat/month adds up fast
A 10-person team on Siteimprove costs $5,000+/month. WCAG Audit's Business plan covers the whole team for $99/month — 50x less.
Get deeper accessibility testing at a fraction of the cost
Install WCAG Audit for free. Run 13 checkers including real screen-reader testing, AI vision review, and a CLI for your CI/CD pipeline — all for $9-99/mo.
Need help? Book a demo