Do you use Google Lighthouse?

Yes. Every scan pulls real Lighthouse scores from Google through PageSpeed Insights — Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO, on mobile and desktop. They are the same numbers your developer would get running Lighthouse themselves.

If my Lighthouse SEO score is 100, am I good?

Not necessarily. Lighthouse's SEO score checks technical basics on a single page — things like a title, a meta description and whether the page can be indexed. It doesn't check whether answer engines can understand and recommend your business, or whether Google can tie your site to your local Google Business Profile. Plenty of sites score 100 and still don't show up.

Why not just run Lighthouse myself for free?

You absolutely can — and your developer should, to confirm fixes. Our scan starts with those same numbers, then adds answer-engine and local checks, translates everything into plain English, and hands you a prioritized fix plan.

Will my scores match what I see in Lighthouse?

They come from the same engine, so they should be close. Lighthouse scores naturally move a few points between runs based on network conditions and server load, and local Chrome runs can differ from Google's servers — so small differences are normal.

Built on Lighthouse

yourwebsite.sucks vs Google Lighthouse

Honest answer: this isn't really a versus. Every scan we run pulls real Lighthouse scores straight from Google. We're built on it — then we add the part Lighthouse was never designed to answer: can customers actually find you?

What Google Lighthouse is

Google Lighthouse is Google's free, open-source tool for measuring web page quality. It scores a page on Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO, and reports Core Web Vitals like load speed and layout shift. It runs inside Chrome DevTools, from the command line, and powers Google PageSpeed Insights. It is the industry standard for page performance — which is exactly why we use it.

When Google Lighthouse is the better pick

You are a developer tuning page speed in detail — testing pages that aren't public yet, digging into load traces and script-by-script breakdowns, or re-checking a fix you just made.

Side by side

yourwebsite.sucks

Google Lighthouse

Where the scores come from Even

Google's own Lighthouse engine, run through PageSpeed Insights on every scan. Same numbers, no reinterpretation.

Google's Lighthouse engine — it is the source.

Performance, Accessibility, SEO & Best Practices scores Even

Yes — all four, mobile and desktop, pulled live from Lighthouse.

Yes — these are its four core categories.

Price to you Them

Free scan. One-time report from $29.99 — no monthly subscription.

Free and open source.

Answer Engine Readiness Us

Yes — a free Answer Engine Readiness score (are you findable by next-generation search).

Not covered — Lighthouse measures how a page loads and is built, not whether ChatGPT or Google's answer boxes can recommend you.

Local / Google Business signals Us

Yes — checks for local business structured data, links to your Google Business Profile, map embeds and contact details.

Not covered — a page can score 100 on SEO and still be invisible in local search.

Site-level crawl checks Us

Yes — robots.txt, sitemap, indexability, platform detection and linked FAQ pages.

Audits one page at a time.

Plain English for non-technical owners Us

Yes — written for owners, not developers. No jargon.

Written for developers — accurate, but full of terms like LCP, TBT and render-blocking resources.

One overall verdict Us

Yes — one weighted verdict across speed, accessibility, SEO, best practices and answer-engine readiness.

Four separate scores; interpreting them is up to you.

Deep performance diagnostics Them

The headline numbers and the top fixes — not every trace.

A genuine strength — full load traces, script treemaps and detailed opportunities.

Testing unpublished or local pages Them

Public websites only.

Yes — runs locally in Chrome DevTools on any page, live or not.

What you get at the end Us

A plain-English fix plan any developer can follow — and a path to rebuild it right.

A detailed technical report — turning it into action is up to your developer.

The "Us / Them / Even" tags are our own assessment for a typical local business owner.

Where we win

You get the same trusted Lighthouse numbers — plus the checks Lighthouse doesn't run: answer-engine readiness and local / Google Business signals.
We look beyond a single page: robots.txt, sitemap, indexability and linked FAQ pages.
Everything is translated into plain English with one overall verdict, so an owner knows where they stand in 30 seconds.
The report ends in a prioritized fix plan any developer can follow — and a way to confirm each fix worked.

Where Google Lighthouse wins

It's free, open source, and built right into Chrome — nothing beats it for quick developer checks.
Deeper performance diagnostics than any report: full traces, script treemaps and line-item opportunities.
It can test pages that aren't live yet. That's why our Fix Brief tells developers to use Lighthouse to confirm their fixes.

The honest verdict

Lighthouse is the gold standard for measuring how a page performs — so we built on it instead of reinventing it. What Lighthouse doesn't tell you is whether customers can actually find you: whether answer engines understand your business, whether Google can connect your site to your local listing, and what to fix first. That's the part we add. Lighthouse tells your developer how the page loads. We tell you whether it's bringing in customers.

Common questions

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This comparison reflects our own opinion and our understanding of publicly available information about Google Lighthouse at the time of writing. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Features and pricing may change — check Google Lighthouse's own site for the latest details.