WAVE vs Lighthouse

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

Google · since 2016

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

Every web team as a first, free quality baseline.