axe-core vs WAVE

Free and open source

From $0.04 per page (API, indicative)

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

Free for interactive use; the API is priced per page for bulk scanning.

Everything, self-hosted

Browser extension and single-page online checker are free.

Category standard

Deque Systems · since 2015

Widely used

WebAIM (Utah State University) · since 2001

• 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.

• The in-page visual overlay teaches non-specialists what is wrong far better than a list.
• Free for everyday developer and designer use.
• WebAIM's guidance behind each rule is authoritative and clear.

• 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.

• Manual, page-by-page — not a CI tool.
• Alerts require human judgement, so counts are not directly comparable between pages.
• No issue tracking or programme management.

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

Designers and developers learning accessibility, and quick manual spot checks.