Lighthouse

Name: Lighthouse
Author: Google

Google's built-in audit for performance, accessibility, SEO and best practices.

AccessibilityOpen sourceSelf-hostable

What it is

Lighthouse ships inside Chrome DevTools and as a CLI and Node module, auditing a page for performance, accessibility (via axe-core), SEO and progressive-web-app criteria. Lighthouse CI adds assertions and historical tracking so a build can fail when a score regresses.

Best for

Every web team as a first, free quality baseline.

Where it is strong

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.

Where it falls short

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.

Pricing

Free and open source

Open source

Free tier: Everything, self-hosted

What drives the bill: Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Check current pricing on Google’s site

Figures are indicative and were last reviewed August 2026. Vendors change pricing often; confirm before you commit.

Works with

Chrome DevToolsGitHub ActionsPageSpeed InsightsWebPageTest

What people who use Lighthouse say

No reviews of Lighthouse yet. If you have used it in anger, yours would be the first.

Alternatives to Lighthouse

If Lighthouse is not the right fit, these solve the same problem differently.

axe-core

Accessibility

The open-source accessibility rules engine almost every other tool is built on.

Open sourceSelf-host

Pa11y