Lighthouse vs Level Access

Free and open source

Quote on request

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

Enterprise contracts combining platform licence with audit and advisory services.

Everything, self-hosted

No free tier.

Category standard

Google · since 2016

Established

Level Access · since 1997

• 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.

• Human expert audits and assistive-technology user testing alongside the tooling.
• Legal and VPAT support for organisations under compliance pressure.
• Covers web, mobile and desktop applications.

• 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.

• Expensive, services-heavy engagement model.
• The UserWay overlay heritage is contentious — automated overlays are widely criticised by accessibility practitioners.
• Not a self-serve developer tool.

Every web team as a first, free quality baseline.

Organisations facing accessibility litigation or formal procurement requirements.