Vettd vs Lighthouse
which one fits your workflow?
Lighthouse is Google's free, open-source page-quality auditor. It runs in Chrome DevTools, the command line, the Node module, GitHub Actions (Lighthouse CI), and PageSpeed Insights. It audits four categories — Performance, Accessibility, SEO, Best Practices — and is the de facto baseline for web vitals optimization.
TL;DR
Pick Lighthouse if
- Your only goal is performance optimization (LCP, CLS, FCP, TTI, TBT) — Lighthouse is the gold standard and is free.
- You want to run audits locally in Chrome DevTools without any signup, account, or third-party service.
- You're integrating Web Vitals checks into CI and want zero-cost, zero-vendor-lock-in tooling.
- You're building a public-facing tool that depends on the Lighthouse JSON output format.
Pick Vettd if
- You want production-readiness checks beyond performance — security headers, dependency CVEs, legal compliance, completeness, AEO, CRO. Lighthouse covers ~25% of what Vettd covers.
- You want a hosted scanner you can paste a URL into, with a public report URL, no install, no Node setup.
- You want auto-generated fixes attached to findings, not just severity scores.
- You want the same product to also review your code on every push to GitHub.
- You want AI-graded analysis of your legal pages, headlines, and screenshots — not just rule-based checks.
At a glance
Side by side, in one breath.
Who picks which
A recommendation for your situation.
Lighthouse will tell you if your LCP is bad. It will not tell you that your privacy policy is missing, your Stripe key is in the bundle, your "Lorem ipsum" still sits in the footer, your social links point to "#", or that your robots.txt blocks ChatGPT. Vettd Site Scan covers all of that for free in 30 seconds — same Web Vitals checks Lighthouse runs, plus 70+ more.
Lighthouse is the right tool. It's the most-trusted source of Web Vitals data, integrates natively with Chrome DevTools, runs in your CI for free, and produces JSON you can pipe into anything. Vettd is the wrong shape for this workflow — it's a hosted product, not a CI primitive.
Lighthouse is one-shot per run — there's no native multi-site dashboard, no scheduled re-scans, no email when a score drops, no shareable client-facing report URL. Vettd Watch tiers ($19-99/mo) cover all of that. Lighthouse can be wrapped in a custom dashboard, but you'll be building it. Vettd ships it.
Feature matrix
Every capability that matters, side by side.
35 rows across scanning, fixing, distribution, compliance, and team workflow.
| Feature | Vettd | Lighthouse |
|---|---|---|
| Scanning | ||
Performance audit (Web Vitals: LCP, CLS, FCP, TTI, TBT) Vettd uses Lighthouse-style metrics from a real browser run. | ||
Accessibility audit Lighthouse has the deeper a11y rule set. | Partial | |
SEO audit | ||
Best Practices audit | ||
Security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, etc.) | Partial | |
Dependency CVE scan (npm audit on connected repo) | ||
Hardcoded secret detection in source | ||
Legal compliance (privacy policy, terms, cookie consent) | ||
AI-graded headlines + legal page summaries | ||
AI search readiness (AEO) — llms.txt, citable schema, FAQPage | ||
CRO checks (CTA contrast, value prop, social proof) | ||
Completeness — Lorem ipsum, dead social links, debug logs in prod | ||
Code Review on every push to GitHub | ||
Public scan — no signup, no install, no Node required | PageSpeed Insights only | |
| Fixing | ||
Per-finding suggested fix text | Generic recommendations | |
Auto-generated code patches | ||
Markdown export of fixes for AI agents | ||
AI-generated alternative headlines + value props | ||
| Distribution | ||
Hosted web app (paste URL → results) | PageSpeed Insights | |
Chrome DevTools panel | ||
Command-line interface (open source) | ||
GitHub Action / CI integration Lighthouse CI is the canonical CI tool here. | Roadmap | |
MCP server (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) Vettd ships shipvettd on npm. | ||
GitHub App (PR review) | ||
Embeddable status badge | ||
Public REST API | Roadmap | PageSpeed Insights API |
| Compliance & trust | ||
Open source | ||
Runs entirely client-side in your own browser | ||
No third-party data transmission Lighthouse running in DevTools sends nothing to Google. PageSpeed Insights does. | ||
Vendor lock-in risk | Some — hosted product | None |
| Team & workflow | ||
Multi-site dashboard | ||
Score history + trend graph | Manual via Lighthouse CI | |
Scheduled re-scans | ||
Email alerts on score drops | ||
Public shareable report URL | ||
Pricing breakdown
Tier by tier, in your local currency unit.
- 82 production-readiness checks
- Public report URL
- Embeddable badge
- Auto-generated fixes
- Markdown export for AI agents
- Money-back if no real issue caught
- 1 monitored project
- Code Review on every push
- Weekly auto re-scan
- Score-drop email alerts
- 5 monitored projects
- Per-project trend graphs
- 10 monitored projects
- Performance, accessibility, SEO, best practices audits
- Chrome DevTools panel
- Node CLI
- GitHub Action (Lighthouse CI)
- PageSpeed Insights web UI
- JSON output for any pipeline
Architecture & trust
Where data goes, what's persisted, what compliance covers.
| Vettd | Lighthouse | |
|---|---|---|
| License | Closed source (hosted SaaS) | Apache 2.0 open source |
| Where audits run | Vettd-hosted Puppeteer worker on Railway | Your local Chrome (or Google's servers via PageSpeed Insights) |
| Data sent to third parties | Yes — to Vettd | None (DevTools); to Google (PageSpeed Insights) |
| Vendor lock-in | Migration costs apply | None — open standard, JSON output portable |
| Cost at scale | $19-99/mo per project | $0 forever |
Migration & interop
How to move, or how to run both.
Vettd is a complement to Lighthouse, not a replacement, for most teams. Keep Lighthouse in your CI for tight Web Vitals regressions; use Vettd for the broader production-readiness picture (security, legal, completeness, AEO) and the deployed-site monitoring loop. The teams that fully replace Lighthouse with Vettd are usually solo devs and small teams who don't want the CI integration overhead and prefer one hosted dashboard.
No conflict — Lighthouse runs in your CI / DevTools, Vettd runs as a hosted scanner. Both will check Web Vitals; Lighthouse's numbers are the canonical reference. Some teams use Vettd as the catch-all "is this production-ready" gate and Lighthouse for the granular performance regressions on critical user paths.
FAQ
Answers to the obvious follow-up questions.
Try Vettd against your own site.
Free Site Scan, no signup. 30 seconds. 82 production-readiness checks.