WAVE vs axe-core

From $0.04 per page (API, indicative)

Free and open source

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

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

Browser extension and single-page online checker are free.

Everything, self-hosted

Widely used

WebAIM (Utah State University) · since 2001

Category standard

Deque Systems · since 2015

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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