6 Website Audit Costs in Canada, Honestly Compared

Published 14 November 2026 · Last updated and fact-checked November 2026

Short answer: A website audit in Canada costs from CA$0 for a tool report to a fixed fee for a human review. I sell one at CA$995. Pick the audit type first: tool report, SEO, conversion or AI visibility. Automated tools cover at most 50% of accessibility checks (Vigo and colleagues, 2013), so a free scan is a start, not a plan.

A founder in Burnaby opens three emails in one week. One offers a free website audit. One sends a 60-page PDF full of red warnings. One quotes a fee with no list of what’s in it. All three call it an audit. She can’t tell which one finds the reason her site gets visits and no enquiries.

I’m Joshua Jackai. I run Jackai Agency, a web design practice in Vancouver, and I sell a website audit. That’s a conflict of interest, so here it is up front: my audit is CA$995 and comes off a project if you start one within 30 days. This guide still separates the 4 audit types Canadian owners get sold, says what each finds and misses, and gives a rule for when a free tool is enough.

Key takeaways

• Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is free up to 500 URLs and £199 a year per licence after that (Screaming Frog pricing, vendor page, 14 November 2026).
• Semrush’s paid SEO plan, which includes Site Audit, is $139 a month on monthly billing (Semrush prices, vendor page, 14 November 2026).
• Six automated accessibility tools covered at most 50% of WCAG 2.0 success criteria (Vigo, Brown and Conway, 2013). A tool report misses half the list before it starts.
• Single reviewers found only 20% to 51% of usability problems; 3 to 5 reviewers together did far better (Nielsen and Molich, 1990).
• My Website Audit is CA$995, takes 1 week, and is credited in full if a project starts within 30 days (Jackai Agency pricing, November 2026).

1. Free automated tool report: best for a first look

A free automated report is a scan from a tool such as Google Lighthouse or Screaming Frog. It suits any owner who wants a quick list of technical faults before paying anyone. Screaming Frog’s free version crawls up to 500 URLs (Screaming Frog pricing, 14 November 2026). It finds faults. It doesn’t rank them.

• Cost: CA$0
• Examples: Google Lighthouse in Chrome, Screaming Frog free to 500 URLs, Google Search Console
• Finds: broken links, missing titles, slow pages, some accessibility faults
• Misses: why visitors leave, what to fix first, anything about your offer
• Time: 10 minutes to run, longer to read

Start here. It costs nothing, and it catches the dumb stuff: a page that returns an error, a title tag copied across 40 pages, an image the size of a billboard. Google Search Console is free too, and it’s the only tool that shows which pages Google actually indexed.

The catch is coverage. In a test of 6 automated accessibility tools, the best covered at most 50% of WCAG 2.0 success criteria, and completeness ran from 14% to 38% (Vigo, Brown and Conway, 2013).

“Relying on automated tests alone has negative effects and can have undesirable consequences,” wrote Markel Vigo, Justin Brown and Vivienne Conway (W4A Proceedings, 2013).

That study is about accessibility, but the pattern holds for the rest of a tool report. A tool checks what can be counted. It can’t tell that your headline answers the wrong question. So read a free report as a list of faults, not a list of priorities. If it shows 300 warnings, most of them won’t cost you a single enquiry. Sort by the pages that bring in leads, and fix those first.

2. Tool subscription you run yourself: best for a marketer in-house

A tool subscription is an SEO platform you pay for monthly or yearly and run on your own site. It suits a business with someone in-house who will check the reports every month. Semrush’s paid SEO plan, which lists Site Audit, is $139 a month on monthly billing (Semrush prices, 14 November 2026).

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: £199 per licence per year; free version to 500 URLs
• Semrush: SEO plan $139 a month, Starter $199, Pro+ $299 on monthly billing; the page shows “$” with no currency code
• Finds: the same faults as a free scan, tracked over time
• Misses: the priority order and the business reason behind each fix
• Needs: a person who reads the report and acts on it

A subscription earns its fee when someone uses it every month. It tracks whether last month’s fixes held, flags new broken pages after a launch, and shows rankings moving. For an in-house marketer, that’s worth a lot.

It’s also the source of most bad paid audits. Some sellers run the same tool, export the PDF, add a logo and send it. You’ve paid for a report you could have run yourself in an afternoon. The tell is easy to spot: the same warning labels, the same charts, and no sentence that mentions your customers.

“A tool checks what can be counted,” said Joshua Jackai, Vancouver web designer.

If you don’t have someone to read it, skip the subscription. A tool nobody opens costs £199 a year and finds nothing. Put that money toward one human review instead, and run the free version between reviews. Screaming Frog’s free crawl covers 500 URLs, which is more than most small Canadian business sites have. Ask whoever sells you an audit which tool they used and whether you can see the raw export.

3. SEO audit by a person: best before an SEO retainer or a redesign

An SEO audit is a person checking whether Google can find, read and rank your pages, then ranking the fixes. It suits an owner about to sign an SEO retainer or rebuild the site. Speed belongs in it: web users tolerated about 2 seconds of waiting for information (Nah, 2004).

• Should include: indexing, speed on a phone, titles and structure, redirects, content gaps
• Should deliver: a ranked list of fixes, with effort and likely impact for each
• Pricing to ask for: a fixed fee set before work starts, not hours
• Misses: why visitors who arrive don’t enquire
• Watch for: a report longer than 40 pages with no priority order

A good SEO audit answers one question: what’s stopping the pages that matter from showing up? The pages that matter are the ones that sell. A plumbing company doesn’t need its privacy policy to rank.

The speed part gets measured in seconds, and people notice. In one experiment, web users’ tolerable waiting time for information retrieval was about 2 seconds (Nah, 2004).

“The tolerable waiting time for information retrieval is approximately 2 s,” wrote Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah (Behaviour and Information Technology, 2004).

That study is from 2004, when pages were lighter and connections slower, so treat it as a floor on patience, not a target. An SEO audit also matters most right before a rebuild. A redesign that changes your URLs without redirects can wipe out rankings you spent years earning. My guide to website redesign and SEO covers that risk. If you’re auditing because your current SEO company isn’t delivering, read how to fire an SEO company in Canada first. Ask for the fix list sorted by pages that sell, not by warning count.

4. Conversion and UX audit: best when traffic arrives but leads don’t

A conversion and UX audit is a review of where visitors drop out and why, page by page. It suits a business with steady traffic and too few enquiries. Single reviewers found only 20% to 51% of usability problems; 3 to 5 reviewers together did far better (Nielsen and Molich, 1990).

• Finds: confusing headlines, forms that ask too much, weak proof, pages that don’t match the ad
• Method: expert review, analytics, session recordings, and a phone in hand
• Should deliver: the drop-out points ranked by how many visitors they touch
• Misses: indexing and ranking problems
• Watch for: one reviewer’s opinion sold as research

This is the audit most owners actually need and fewest buy. Tool reports don’t cover it, because a tool can’t read your offer. The usual problem is a page that answers a different question from the one the visitor arrived with. I call it a post-click mismatch.

Expert review has a known weakness. In four experiments, individual reviewers were “mostly quite bad” at finding problems alone.

“Individual evaluators were mostly quite bad at doing such heuristic evaluations,” wrote Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich (CHI Proceedings, 1990).

The fix in the same paper is aggregation: 3 to 5 reviewers combined found far more. So ask any UX auditor how they check their own blind spots. Mine is analytics and recordings, so I’m not relying on my eye alone. Looks still matter to visitors. When 2,684 people judged live websites, the design look came up in 46.1% of comments (Fogg and colleagues, 2003). A UX audit should cover the look, then go past it. The best ones end with a short list you could hand to a designer tomorrow.

5. AI visibility audit: best when your buyers ask AI first

An AI visibility audit checks what ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews say when a buyer asks about your category. It suits B2B firms whose buyers research with AI tools before calling anyone. My AI Visibility Report is free and arrives within 24 hours (AI Visibility Report).

• Cost: free report within 24 hours (my price table)
• Finds: the answers you appear in, the firms named instead of you, what the engines couldn’t find
• Should deliver: 3 fixes in priority order, dated
• Misses: the classic SEO and conversion faults
• Watch for: a guaranteed citation; nobody can promise one

This is the newest audit type and the one with the least agreement on method. The honest version is simple. Someone types the questions your buyers type, records the answers with a date, and notes what’s missing on your site that would let the engine cite you.

My free report does that. You send your website and a work email. Within 24 hours you get a one-page dated report: the answers you appear in, the competitors named instead of you, and 3 fixes in priority order. No sales call unless you book one.

What it can’t do is promise a result. AI answers change from week to week and from one wording to the next. So treat any AI visibility audit as a dated snapshot, and repeat it after you make changes. Be wary of anyone selling a score with no record of the prompts they used. If they can’t show you the exact questions and dates, you can’t check the work. That’s the same standard I’d hold an SEO audit to.

6. Full website audit with a fix plan: best when you don’t know which problem you have

A full website audit reviews your analytics and your funnel and turns the findings into one ranked plan. It suits an owner who knows the site underperforms but not why. My Website Audit is CA$995, takes 1 week, and comes off a project if you start within 30 days (Jackai Agency pricing, November 2026).

• Price: CA$995, fixed, before tax
• Timeline: 1 week
• Includes: analytics and funnel review and a ranked fix list
• Credit: the full CA$995 comes off a project that starts within 30 days
• Yours to keep: the document, whether or not you hire me

This is what I sell, so judge it by the same rules as the others. The deliverable is a ranked list of what’s costing you enquiries and what to fix first. You keep it either way. If the fix is a new headline, I’ll say so, and you can do it yourself.

I price it as a fixed fee for a reason. Hourly audits put the risk of a bad estimate on you.

“Most projects (60-80%) encounter effort and/or schedule overruns,” wrote K. Moløkken and M. Jørgensen (ISESE Proceedings, 2003).

That review covers software projects, and an audit is smaller. The point holds. A fixed fee moves the risk to the person who wrote the quote.

The credit is a sales tool, and I’ll say that plainly too. It makes hiring me cheaper than hiring someone else after the audit. That only helps you if the plan is honest. So check whether the top three fixes need me at all. If none do, the audit did its job.

Is a paid website audit worth it?

A paid website audit is worth it when the site gets traffic and the fix isn’t obvious from a free scan. It isn’t worth it when the site gets almost no visitors, or when a free report already shows a broken page. Single reviewers miss many problems (Nielsen and Molich, 1990), so pay for method, not for pages.

A question I see owners ask each other is “Site Audit worth it?” Here’s the rule I’d use.

Use the free tool when:

• Your site gets few visitors and you’re still checking basics
• Search Console shows pages not indexed, or a tool shows errors
• You have someone in-house who will read and act on the report

Pay for a human audit when:

• You get steady traffic and too few enquiries
• You’re about to spend on a redesign, an SEO retainer or ads
• Two vendors disagree about what’s wrong
• You need a ranked plan that someone will walk you through

“If it shows 300 warnings, most of them won’t cost you a single enquiry,” said Joshua Jackai, Vancouver web designer.

What’s a reasonable price for a professional website audit report?

A reasonable price is one that’s fixed before work starts and tied to a written list of what you get. In Canada, that runs from CA$0 for a tool report to a quoted fee for a human review; mine is CA$995. Semrush, a tool many sellers use, costs $139 a month (Semrush prices, 14 November 2026).

Price bands make more sense by what they deliver than by the number alone:

1. CA$0: a tool report. Faults, no priorities, no walkthrough.
2. Tool fee only (£199 a year to $299 a month): the same report, run as often as you like, read by you.
3. A fixed fee for a human review (mine is CA$995): a ranked plan and a credit toward the fix.
4. A larger scoped audit: for big sites with thousands of pages, priced by size. Ask for the scope in writing.

Where can I audit my website? Start with Google Search Console and Lighthouse, both free. Then add a person when the free tools stop giving you answers.

What do you guys put in the SEO audits? Red flags to check

The red flags are the same in every audit type: a resold tool export, hourly billing with no cap, and a free audit used as a sales funnel. An honest audit ranks its fixes and names a price before work starts. Controlled tests are the strongest proof a fix worked (Kohavi and colleagues, 2009).

That question, “What do you guys put in the SEO Audits?”, comes from people who sell audits asking each other. The answers vary wildly, which tells you the word “audit” has no standard. So check for these:

1. A resold tool export. Same charts and warning labels as a Semrush or Screaming Frog report, with a logo added.
2. Hourly billing with no cap. You can’t budget for it, and the overrun risk is yours.
3. A free audit as a sales funnel. Fine if the report is real. A red flag if every fix ends with “and we can do that for you”.
4. No priority order. A 300-item list is a to-do list, not an audit.
5. No way to check the result. A fix should come with how you’ll know it worked.

“Controlled experiments embody the best scientific design for establishing a causal relationship between changes and their influence on user-observable behavior,” wrote Ron Kohavi and colleagues (Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 2009).

Most small sites don’t have the traffic for a real A/B test. A before-and-after measure on the same page is the practical version. Ask for one.

Compare every website audit option side by side

This matrix lists 9 ways to audit a website in Canada, from a free Lighthouse scan to a fixed-fee review. Filter by budget and by the question you need answered: technical faults, conversion, or AI visibility. Vendor prices come from each vendor’s own pricing page, checked 14 November 2026.

Rows are hidden, not deleted, when a filter doesn’t match, so the full list returns when you reset the filters. Vendor plans change often, so check the vendor’s page on the day you buy.

Will a website audit pay for itself?

This calculator works out how many extra leads an audit needs to bring in to cover its fee. It uses your monthly visitors, your current enquiry rate and what one lead is worth to you. It also shows the change in enquiry rate that would cover the fee in 6 months. Default values are placeholders, not quotes.

If you don’t know what a lead is worth, divide last year’s new revenue by last year’s lead count. It’s rough, and it’s still better than guessing.

Website audit cost questions, answered

These are the questions Canadian owners type into Google about audit prices, answered with the figures in this guide. Vendor prices were checked on each vendor’s own page on 14 November 2026. Jackai Agency prices come from my November 2026 price table, in Canadian dollars before tax.

How much does a website audit cost in Canada?

It runs from CA$0 for a tool report to a fixed fee for a human review. Screaming Frog is free to 500 URLs and £199 a year after that. Semrush’s SEO plan is $139 a month. My Website Audit is CA$995, credited toward a project that starts within 30 days.

How much does an SEO audit cost?

A tool-only SEO report costs nothing to £199 a year to run yourself. A human SEO audit is usually a quoted fee set by site size and scope. Ask for a fixed fee and a ranked fix list in writing. Hourly billing puts the overrun risk on you.

Can ChatGPT do an SEO audit?

It can explain a tool report and spot obvious problems on a page you paste in. It can’t crawl your whole site, see Search Console data or test your forms. Use it to read a free report, then have a person rank the fixes against your business.

How often should a website audit be done?

Run a free tool scan monthly or after any launch. A human audit makes sense once a year, and before a redesign, an SEO retainer or a large ad spend. An AI visibility check is worth repeating every few months, because AI answers change week to week.

How I run a website audit

I run website audits from Vancouver for Canadian B2B firms on a fixed fee of CA$995. It takes 1 week. You get a ranked list of what to fix first, and you keep it. The full fee comes off a project that starts within 30 days. Every price I charge is on my pricing page.

If you only want to know what AI tools say about you, start with the free AI Visibility Report. It arrives within 24 hours and lists 3 fixes in priority order.

If the audit shows your landing page is the problem, my guide to landing page cost in Canada covers what a rebuild costs.

Book the CA$995 Website Audit, or book a 30-minute call and bring your site.

Sources

Peer-reviewed research

• Fogg, B. J., Soohoo, C., Danielson, D. R., Marable, L., Stanford, J., and Tauber, E. R. (2003). How do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites? Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on Designing for User Experiences, 1-15.
• Kohavi, R., Longbotham, R., Sommerfield, D., and Henne, R. M. (2009). Controlled experiments on the web: Survey and practical guide. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 18(1), 140-181.
• Moløkken, K., and Jørgensen, M. (2003). A review of software surveys on software effort estimation. Proceedings of the 2003 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, 223-230.
• Nah, F. F.-H. (2004). A study on tolerable waiting time: How long are Web users willing to wait? Behaviour and Information Technology, 23(3), 153-163.
• Nielsen, J., and Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 90), 249-256.
• Vigo, M., Brown, J., and Conway, V. (2013). Benchmarking web accessibility evaluation tools. Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A), 1-10.

Industry and vendor data (not peer reviewed)

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider pricing, in pounds sterling. screamingfrog.co.uk, accessed 14 November 2026.
• Semrush prices, monthly billing, “$” with no currency code. semrush.com/prices, accessed 14 November 2026.
• Jackai Agency AI Visibility Report (first-party). joshuajackai.com/ai-visibility-report
• Jackai Agency price table, November 2026 (first-party prices, CAD). Jackai Agency pricing