axe-core vs IBM Equal Access Toolkit

Free and open source

Free and open source

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Everything, self-hosted

Everything, self-hosted

Category standard

Deque Systems · since 2015

Emerging

IBM · since 2020

• Effectively zero false positives, which is why it became the industry default.
• Integrates into any existing test suite in a few lines.
• Free, actively maintained, and aligned with WCAG updates.

• Completely free including CI integration and reporting.
• Guidance is written for developers with concrete code examples.
• Includes design and content guidance beyond the code checker.

• Automated rules detect roughly a third of WCAG issues — the rest need human testing.
• A library, not a workflow: no dashboards, tracking or reporting.
• Only evaluates the DOM state it is given, so dynamic states need explicit test coverage.

• Smaller community than axe-core, so fewer worked examples.
• Reporting is basic compared with commercial platforms.
• Rule set differs slightly from axe, which can confuse cross-tool comparisons.

Any team that wants accessibility checks inside their existing automated tests.

Teams wanting a free, well-documented alternative or complement to axe.