WAVE and Lighthouse show what's wrong with a page when you run them. Scanluma monitors your website on a schedule, tracks your score and keeps your scan history.
WAVE from WebAIM and Google Lighthouse are free, widely used and a good starting point for anyone who wants to know where a page stands today. WAVE works as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Edge or as an online checker. Lighthouse is built into Chrome DevTools.
For one-off audits, developer spot-checks, or a quick snapshot before a launch, a free checker does the job well. If you’re already tracking your Lighthouse accessibility score as part of your build process, that’s a solid habit worth keeping.
On their own, these tools are built for snapshots. They answer one question: what’s wrong with this page right now? That’s useful, but it leaves a gap that matters for ongoing compliance.
A check tells you the state of a page today. Browser tools don’t watch your live site on a schedule, so a problem caused by next week’s plugin update or content change goes unnoticed until you check again.
If a new accessibility issue appears after a site update, a browser tool won’t tell you. You only find out when you remember to run it again.
A browser check gives you today’s result. Lighthouse CI can save scores for every code change, but a developer has to set it up in a build pipeline. Without that, there’s no easy way to see whether your site is improving or slipping over time.
Results use technical terms like ARIA roles and contrast ratios. That’s ideal for developers, but harder to act on if you’re a site owner without a development background.
Checks that run when you start them and show what’s wrong right now. Great for developers during a build and for one-off checks.
Monitoring and score tracking for your live website, so you can see how its accessibility changes over time.
Scanluma uses the same scanning engine as enterprise accessibility platforms. Every tool has its own set of checks, so results won’t match one to one. What’s different is everything around the scan: every scan is saved as a new report, your score is tracked over time and your website is scanned again automatically, weekly on Free or daily on Pro.
See how accessibility monitoring works for what’s included.
This isn’t a strict either/or. A developer can use a browser tool while building and Scanluma for the live site.
Not necessarily. Each tool runs its own set of automated checks, so the results overlap but won’t match one to one. Scanluma uses the same scanning engine as enterprise accessibility platforms and runs 50+ checks. The bigger difference is what happens after the scan: Scanluma saves every report, tracks your score and, on Pro, emails you when new issues appear.
Yes. Scanluma handles ongoing monitoring of your live site, and a browser tool like WAVE or Lighthouse is handy for checking a page while you’re building it. They serve different purposes and work well together.
Scanluma scans your website again automatically, weekly on Free or daily on Pro, and saves each scan as a new report. That way you see your score over time and spot new issues after a content update, plugin change or theme edit. On Pro you also get an email when new issues appear. Browser tools only check when you run them.
Every plan scans automatically: weekly on Free, daily or weekly on Pro (and Agency, coming soon). You can also start a manual scan at any time.
Yes. The Free plan monitors your homepage weekly, with 10 scans per month, so you can see what Scanluma finds before paying. Pro adds daily scans, up to 10 subpages and mobile device scans.
Free weekly monitoring of your homepage, no credit card needed. Add your website and run your first scan with one click.
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