Lighthouse 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

Google · since 2016

Emerging

IBM · since 2020

• Already installed in every Chrome browser — zero adoption cost.
• Covers performance, accessibility and SEO in one report.
• Lighthouse CI turns scores into enforceable build assertions.

• 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.

• Lab data from a synthetic environment, not what real users experience.
• Scores vary run to run, which makes strict thresholds frustrating.
• Accessibility coverage is the axe-core subset, not a full audit.

• 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.

Every web team as a first, free quality baseline.

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