The Best Free Website Audit Services in the UK (2026)
Honest reviews of free website audit tools and services available to UK small businesses. What each one actually checks, what's genuinely free, and who it's best for.
There are dozens of services claiming to audit your website for free. Some of them are brilliant. Some of them are just lead generation forms dressed up as helpful tools. I've used all of the ones on this list — most of them regularly, as part of the audits I run for clients — so here's an honest breakdown of what's actually worth your time.
I've tried to cover tools that check different things, because no single audit covers everything. Speed is not security. SEO is not accessibility. And none of them check whether your contact form actually works.
What makes a good free audit?
Before the list, here's what I look for. A good free audit should:
- Actually be free — not "free but we need your card details first"
- Give you results you can understand without a computer science degree
- Tell you what's wrong and what to do about it
- Not bombard you with sales emails for the next six months
Some of these tools tick every box. Some are still useful despite failing on one or two. I'll be upfront about which is which.
The list
1. Nibbler by Silktide
What it checks: Accessibility, SEO, social media presence, technology, and overall experience. Scores you out of 10 in each area.
How it works: Paste your URL, wait about 30 seconds, get a report. No sign-up required. It tests up to five pages from your site in the free version.
What's genuinely free: The basic report is completely free. Silktide make their money from their paid accessibility platform, so Nibbler is more of a showcase than a sales funnel. You won't get chased.
Best for: A quick first look. If you've never tested your website before and want a general sense of where things stand, this is a solid starting point. The scores are easy to read, even if some of the recommendations are a bit vague.
2. Google PageSpeed Insights
What it checks: Page speed and performance. Scores your site out of 100 for both mobile and desktop, using real-world data from Chrome users where available.
How it works: Enter your URL, get results in about 15 seconds. No account needed. It runs Google Lighthouse under the hood and also pulls in field data from the Chrome User Experience Report.
What's genuinely free: Completely free, forever. It's Google. They want you to make faster websites because faster websites are cheaper for Google to crawl.
Best for: Checking speed specifically. If your mobile score is below 50, your site is genuinely slow and it's probably costing you customers. The diagnostic section tells you exactly what's slowing things down, though the suggestions can be technical. Pair this with GTmetrix for more detail.
3. Insites
What it checks: A bit of everything — SEO, accessibility, content, speed, social media, analytics setup, and spelling. It reviews multiple pages, not just your homepage.
How it works: Enter your URL and email, and it crawls your site and generates a report. The free version tests a limited number of pages. Results come back in a few minutes.
What's genuinely free: The free report is decent but limited. Insites is aimed at agencies, so the free tier is clearly a taster. They'll follow up with emails. Still, even the free report catches things other tools miss — especially content and spelling issues.
Best for: Getting a broader picture without running ten separate tools. The report is well-presented and easy to share. Good if you want to hand something to a colleague or boss and say "here's where we are."
4. StagHill Software Free Audit
What it checks: Speed, security headers, SSL configuration, SEO, accessibility, GDPR compliance, mobile usability, Google Business Profile, structured data, cookie consent, and — the bit the automated tools miss — whether your site actually makes sense to a customer. Does the contact form work? Is the phone number correct? Are you paying for services you don't need?
How it works: A real person (me) reviews your site manually using a combination of the automated tools on this list plus hands-on testing. You get a written report in plain English, not a dashboard full of graphs. I check things that software can't — like whether your hosting is overpriced, whether your domain is about to expire without you knowing, or whether your web designer has locked you out of your own Google Analytics.
What's genuinely free: The whole thing. No credit card, no "free tier," no follow-up sales calls. I do these because they're the best way to show small businesses that their website might not be working as hard as they think. If you want help fixing things afterwards, great. If you just want the report, that's fine too.
Best for: UK small businesses who want someone to look at their website the way a customer would — not the way a search engine does. Especially useful if you suspect your current web agency isn't doing a great job but you're not technical enough to prove it.
5. GTmetrix
What it checks: Page speed in detail. Waterfall charts show every file that loads, in what order, and how long each one takes. Good at identifying the specific bottleneck — usually one enormous image or a bloated JavaScript file.
How it works: Paste your URL, get a report. Free account lets you test from Vancouver by default. Paid accounts unlock more test locations (including London), but the free version is enough to spot the main issues.
What's genuinely free: Core features are free. You need an account but it's a real free tier, not a trial. The paid plans add historical tracking, more test locations, and alerts. They don't hassle you to upgrade.
Best for: Developers and technically-minded business owners who want to know exactly why a page is slow. If Google PageSpeed says your site is slow but you're not sure what to fix, GTmetrix's waterfall chart will show you.
6. SecurityHeaders.com
What it checks: HTTP security headers only. Grades you from A+ to F. Tests for Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, Strict-Transport-Security, and several others.
How it works: Enter your URL, get a grade in about two seconds. No sign-up. Created by Scott Helme, a well-known UK security researcher.
What's genuinely free: Completely free, no catches. There's nothing to upsell. Scott runs it as a community tool alongside his Report URI service, but the header scanner has no commercial pressure attached.
Best for: A quick security gut-check. Most small business websites score D or F. If yours scores an A, your developer actually knows what they're doing. If it scores F, it doesn't mean you've been hacked — it means your server isn't configured with basic protections that should be there.
7. Qualys SSL Labs
What it checks: Your SSL/TLS certificate and encryption configuration. Gives you a letter grade and flags specific issues like outdated protocols, weak ciphers, or certificate chain problems.
How it works: Enter your domain, wait a couple of minutes for the full test. No account needed. The report is detailed but the grade at the top tells you what you need to know.
What's genuinely free: Completely free. Qualys is a big enterprise security company. SSL Labs is a free community tool they maintain for the good of the internet. No upsell, no emails.
Best for: Checking that your HTTPS is properly set up. Anything below an A grade means something needs attention. If you see a B or lower, it usually means your hosting provider hasn't kept their SSL configuration up to date — worth raising with them.
8. Ahrefs Free Webmaster Tools
What it checks: Backlinks, organic search traffic, keyword rankings, and a site health audit that flags broken links, missing meta tags, redirect chains, and other SEO issues.
How it works: You need to create an account and verify ownership of your site (similar to Google Search Console). Once verified, it crawls your site and builds a report. Takes a while for the first crawl.
What's genuinely free: The free tier is a real subset of their paid product. You get site audit and backlink data for sites you own. The limitation is you can't research competitors or do keyword research without paying. They do send marketing emails, but nothing aggressive.
Best for: Business owners who want to understand their SEO beyond the basics. Especially useful for finding broken links and seeing which other websites link to you. The site audit feature catches technical SEO problems that simpler tools miss.
9. Get Your Website Seen
What it checks: SEO basics, mobile-friendliness, speed, and social media presence. UK-focused service aimed at small businesses.
How it works: Enter your URL and email to receive a report. The report covers the main areas and gives you a score with recommendations.
What's genuinely free: The report is free but it's a lead generation tool — expect follow-up emails offering their paid SEO services. The report itself is useful enough, just be aware of what comes after.
Best for: UK small businesses who want a simple, non-technical overview of their online presence. The recommendations are in plain English, which makes it more accessible than most developer-focused tools.
10. WAVE by WebAIM
What it checks: Accessibility only. Flags missing alt text, poor colour contrast, empty links, missing form labels, and structural issues that affect screen reader users.
How it works: Paste your URL and it overlays icons directly on your page showing where the problems are. Red icons are errors. Yellow ones are warnings. It's one of the most visual and intuitive audit tools out there.
What's genuinely free: Completely free. WebAIM is a non-profit. There's also a browser extension that lets you test pages behind logins. No upsell whatsoever.
Best for: Anyone who cares about making their website usable by everyone. Accessibility isn't optional — the Equality Act 2010 applies to websites, and WAVE is the fastest way to find out if yours has obvious problems. Also useful for catching issues that hurt usability for all visitors, not just those using assistive technology.
11. Google Lighthouse
Built into Chrome — no installation needed
What it checks: Performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Scores each category out of 100. It's the engine behind PageSpeed Insights, but running it locally gives you more control.
How it works: Open Chrome, press F12, click the Lighthouse tab, click "Analyze page load." It runs tests on whatever page you're currently viewing, including pages behind logins that online tools can't reach.
What's genuinely free: Completely free. It's built into your browser. Google made it open-source.
Best for: Developers and business owners who are comfortable with browser tools. The advantage over PageSpeed Insights is that you can test staging sites, password-protected pages, and pages that aren't live yet. The SEO and accessibility scores are a useful quick check even if you're not technical.
12. Mozilla Observatory
What it checks: Security configuration. Similar to SecurityHeaders.com but checks additional things like Content Security Policy, cookie flags, cross-origin resource sharing, and subresource integrity.
How it works: Enter your URL, get a grade. Also pulls in results from third-party scanners so you get a broader view of your security posture.
What's genuinely free: Completely free. It's Mozilla — they built Firefox. This is a public service, not a product. No account, no emails, no upsell.
Best for: Running alongside SecurityHeaders.com for a more complete security picture. If both tools give you a poor grade, your site's security configuration needs work. If they disagree, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
So which one should you use?
All of them, honestly. Or at least the ones that cover your main concerns. Each tool checks different things, and running three or four of them takes about fifteen minutes total. Here's a quick cheat sheet:
- Quick general health check: Nibbler or Insites
- Speed: Google PageSpeed Insights + GTmetrix
- Security: SecurityHeaders.com + SSL Labs + Mozilla Observatory
- SEO: Ahrefs Free Webmaster Tools + Google Lighthouse
- Accessibility: WAVE
- Everything at once, reviewed by a human: StagHill Software
One thing automated tools can't do: They can't tell you if your website is actually working as a business tool. They can't check if your phone number is right, if your contact form sends emails to the correct address, if your Google Business Profile matches your website, or if you're paying too much for hosting. That's the gap a manual review fills.
A note on "free" audits from agencies
You'll find plenty of web agencies and SEO companies offering "free website audits." Most of these are automated reports generated by white-label tools, packaged with the agency's branding. The report is free. The follow-up sales pitch is inevitable.
That's not necessarily a bad thing — some of these reports are genuinely useful and the agencies behind them are perfectly decent. Just go in with your eyes open. If someone is offering something for free, work out how they make their money. If the answer is "by selling you services after the audit," that's fine. Just don't mistake the audit for charity.
Want a proper audit? No strings attached.
I'll check your website's speed, security, SEO, accessibility, GDPR compliance, and whether it's actually working for your business. Plain English report. No follow-up pressure. Genuinely free.
Get Your Free Audit