Is this a free Screaming Frog alternative?

Yes for first-party audits. SEO Screaming Link Building is MIT-licensed, runs locally, and maps links, depth, orphans, and on-page issues. It does not pull off-site backlinks.

Can I crawl any website?

Only sites you own or are authorized to crawl. The tool is built for internal audits. Crawling third-party sites without permission is at your own risk.

Do I need Docker or a desktop build?

Neither is required. You can run the FastAPI backend and React UI locally, use Docker Compose, or build a Mac/Windows desktop app with the included scripts.

Does it render JavaScript?

No. It fetches HTTP HTML only. JS-rendered pages will look incomplete compared to a headless browser crawler.

SEO Screaming Link Building

Screaming Frog Open Source Free Alternative

Updated September 13, 2026 12 min read

Free open-source first-party SEO crawler — a Screaming Frog alternative for local audits, sitemaps, and multilingual gaps.

Download for Mac Download for Windows View on GitHub

Build from source

The problem it solves

Paid desktop crawlers are overkill when you only need to audit sites you own. Spreadsheets miss depth, orphans, and language gaps. Cloud tools add accounts, quotas, and data leaving your machine.

You want a free Screaming Frog alternative for first-party audits — not another SaaS login.
Internal links, click depth, and sitemap orphans are hard to see without a real crawl graph.
Multilingual sites need missing-locale checks, not just a flat URL list.

What you get

A local, MIT-licensed crawler with a workspace built for SEO review — not a generic spider dump.

01

Seed crawl you control

Start from a homepage you own. Host allowlist keeps the crawl on your domains, including www and language hosts.
02

Sitemaps and orphans

Discovers sitemaps from robots and common paths. Flags URLs listed in the sitemap with zero internal inbound links.
03

On-page issues

Titles, meta descriptions, H1s, canonicals, robots meta, redirects, noindex, and duplicate titles — with short explanations.
04

Link graph and depth

Inbound and outbound counts plus click depth from the seed, so thin or buried pages stand out.
05

Languages

Auto, path, or hreflang modes. Spot missing translations and thin language gaps when the site is multilingual.
06

Export and desktop

CSV / ZIP export from the workspace. Optional desktop app so non-technical teammates can run it without a terminal.

How it works

Three steps. Same loop whether you use the web UI or the desktop build.

1

Seed

Paste the homepage URL, optional project name and extra hosts, then tune sitemap and language options if needed.
2

Discover

The crawler follows links, respects robots.txt, and optionally loads sitemaps while you watch pages and queue grow.
3

Review

Open the workspace: filter pages, orphans, and issues; inspect SEO fields and warnings; export what you need.

Who it's for

Founders, SEO freelancers, and in-house teams who own the sites they audit — and prefer open source that stays on their laptop.

Replacing a paid crawler license for first-party technical SEO.
Checking internal linking before a redesign or migration.
Auditing multilingual sites without uploading the crawl to a third party.

Get started

Clone the repo, run the backend and frontend locally, or build the desktop app.

MIT-licensed. It does not collect off-site backlinks.

Requirements

Tool	Version
Python	3.11+
Node.js	20+
Docker	optional

No Redis, Postgres, or external APIs. Data lives in a local SQLite file.

Clone and run locally

git clone https://github.com/stivmartinez/SEO-Screaming-Linkbuilding.git
cd SEO-Screaming-Linkbuilding

Backend (port 8000)

cd backend
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate   # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn app.main:app --reload --port 8000

Frontend (port 5173)

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173. Start a crawl with a seed URL you own.

Health check: http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/health

Docker

docker compose up --build

Open http://localhost:8000. Crawl data is stored in the crawler-data volume.

Install desktop

Pre-built Mac and Windows binaries are not published as downloads yet. Build from source with the desktop scripts.

Run from source (dev machine)

chmod +x scripts/run-desktop.sh
./scripts/run-desktop.sh

Build an installable app

chmod +x scripts/build-desktop.sh
./scripts/build-desktop.sh

macOS: dist/SEO Screaming Link Building.app
Windows / Linux: dist/SEOScreamingLinkBuilding/

Gatekeeper / SmartScreen may warn until you code-sign the binary. The API has no authentication — the desktop app binds to localhost only on purpose.

Caveats

First-party only

Audit sites you own or are authorized to crawl. Third-party crawling without permission is at your own risk.
HTTP HTML only

No headless browser. JS-rendered content will look incomplete.
Local / self-hosted

Do not expose the unauthenticated API on the public internet.
As-is

Open-source software with no warranty. You are responsible for how you use it.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a free Screaming Frog alternative?: Yes for first-party audits. SEO Screaming Link Building is MIT-licensed, runs locally, and maps links, depth, orphans, and on-page issues. It does not pull off-site backlinks.
Can I crawl any website?: Only sites you own or are authorized to crawl. The tool is built for internal audits. Crawling third-party sites without permission is at your own risk.
Do I need Docker or a desktop build?: Neither is required. You can run the FastAPI backend and React UI locally, use Docker Compose, or build a Mac/Windows desktop app with the included scripts.
Does it render JavaScript?: No. It fetches HTTP HTML only. JS-rendered pages will look incomplete compared to a headless browser crawler.

The problem it solves

What you get

Seed crawl you control

Sitemaps and orphans

On-page issues

Link graph and depth

Languages

Export and desktop

How it works

Seed

Discover

Review