The best UX audit tools in 2026, compared honestly

There's no single tool that audits everything about a website. Some measure speed. Some check accessibility. Some record what real visitors do. Some review the page the way a UX consultant would. Each is good at its own job and weak outside it.

This guide groups the tools by what they're for, says plainly what each one doesn't do, and ends with how to combine them. We make AgoraScan, so we've tried to be especially clear about where other tools do things it can't.

Automated UX audit tools

These tools load a page and review it against a UX checklist: is it clear what the business does, is there an obvious next step, is there proof, is it readable on a phone. They're the closest thing to an expert review you can run in minutes.

AgoraScan

For: a prioritised UX audit of a website, with screenshot evidence and specific fixes. It loads your pages on desktop and mobile, runs the measured checks (accessibility, speed, mobile layout), then reviews the screenshots against a checklist covering usability, content, design and trust.

Not for: understanding why real visitors behave the way they do. It reviews the page, not your traffic. It also doesn't replace user testing or a full WCAG conformance audit.

Price: free scan of one page with your top three issues. A full audit of up to five pages is £29 inc. VAT, with a £12 monthly Watch plan and agency plans for people auditing many sites.

Other AI UX audit tools

There are a growing number of small AI-based audit tools, such as uxaudittool.com. Most work in a similar way: give them a URL or a screenshot and they return a list of suggestions. Quality varies a lot. When you compare them, check whether findings point to a specific element on your page, whether they include evidence, whether the measured checks are actually measured, and whether you get the same results if you run it twice.

Price: varies. Many have a free tier.

Speed and technical tools

Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse

For: page speed and Core Web Vitals. PageSpeed Insights runs Lighthouse against your page and, where Google has enough traffic data, shows how fast the page is for real Chrome users. Lighthouse is also built into Chrome's developer tools, and gives scores for accessibility, best practices and SEO too.

Not for: UX. A page can score 100 for performance and still not say what the business does. Lighthouse's accessibility score covers only what can be tested automatically, so a high score doesn't mean the page is accessible.

Price: free.

GTmetrix

For: detailed speed testing, including a waterfall of every file the page loads, tests from different locations, and monitoring over time. Developers often prefer it to PageSpeed Insights for working out exactly what's slow.

Not for: anything beyond performance.

Price: free tier, with paid plans for more locations, devices and monitoring.

Accessibility tools

WAVE

For: a visual accessibility check of a page. WAVE, from WebAIM, marks errors and warnings directly on the page, which makes it easy to see where the problems are. It's a good teaching tool as well as a checker.

Not for: proving a site is accessible. Like every automated checker, it finds a share of the problems, not all of them.

Price: the browser extension is free. There's a paid API for checking pages in bulk.

axe DevTools

For: developers. The axe DevTools browser extension, from Deque, runs the axe-core rules inside Chrome's developer tools and points to the exact code at fault. Many other tools, including Lighthouse, use axe-core underneath.

Not for: non-technical owners, who may find the output hard to act on. It also doesn't judge things a rule can't, like whether text over an image is readable.

Price: free extension, with paid tiers that add guided testing and team features.

Behaviour analytics

These tools record what real visitors do: where they click, how far they scroll, where they hesitate and where they leave. This is something no page review can show you, AgoraScan included.

Microsoft Clarity

For: heatmaps and session recordings on your own site. You add a tracking script, wait for visitors, then watch what they did. It also flags things like rage clicks, where someone clicks repeatedly on something that doesn't respond.

Not for: telling you what to change. Recordings show what happened, not why or what the fix is. You need traffic before there's anything to watch, and you'll need to update your cookie notice.

Price: free.

Hotjar and Contentsquare

For: heatmaps, recordings, on-page surveys and feedback widgets. Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, which offers a larger analytics platform for bigger organisations. The surveys are the main advantage over Clarity: you can ask visitors why they're leaving, not just see that they are.

Not for: sites with very little traffic, where there's not enough data to learn from. Same caveat as Clarity: it shows behaviour, not fixes.

Price: Hotjar has a free tier and paid plans. Contentsquare is priced for larger businesses.

Retired tools people still search for

Some well-known free tools have gone. If you've followed an old guide or bookmark, here's what happened and what to use instead.

Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer

Unbounce's free landing page grader now redirects to Unbounce's home page. For a similar check of a landing page's message, calls to action and trust signals, use an automated UX audit tool such as AgoraScan, and PageSpeed Insights for the speed side.

Silktide Nibbler

Nibbler gave a quick score across accessibility, SEO and technical basics. It now redirects to silktide.com. For the same kind of overview, combine PageSpeed Insights (which includes Lighthouse's accessibility and SEO checks) with WAVE or axe DevTools, or use AgoraScan for the UX side.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test in December 2023. Use Lighthouse in Chrome's developer tools or PageSpeed Insights instead, and use the device toolbar in Chrome to preview the page at phone sizes. Better still, open the page on an actual phone. Being mobile-friendly in a technical sense isn't the same as the mobile first screen working, which is something AgoraScan checks separately.

Which tool for which question

• Is my page clear and persuasive? An automated UX audit tool, or an expert review
• Is it fast? PageSpeed Insights, then GTmetrix if you need detail
• Is it accessible? WAVE or axe DevTools for automated checks, then manual keyboard and screen reader testing
• What are real visitors doing? Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar
• Why are they doing it? On-page surveys, user testing or interviews
• Is my online shop following best practice? A full audit of your product, basket and checkout pages

How to combine them

You don't need all of these. For most small and mid-sized sites, this order works well:

1. Run a UX audit to find the obvious problems on your key pages. Fix the quick, high-impact ones first.
2. Check speed with PageSpeed Insights and accessibility with WAVE or axe DevTools. Hand the technical findings to your developer.
3. Install Microsoft Clarity, or Hotjar if you want surveys. Let it gather a few weeks of data.
4. Watch recordings of people on the pages your audit flagged. Did the fixes help? Where do people still get stuck?
5. Re-run the audit after your changes, so you can see what improved and what's left.
6. If you run a shop or a high-value site and you've done all of the above, that's the point to consider user testing or an agency audit.

The tools that review the page tell you what's likely to be wrong. The tools that watch visitors tell you whether it matters. Used together, they give you a short list of changes you can be confident in.

Start with the page itself. AgoraScan's free scan gives you a score, six category scores and your top three issues with screenshots, for one page on desktop and mobile. No card needed.