Head to head
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Up to 4 tools, same rows for each: what it is, what it really costs, the trap, and how to wire it up. The URL carries your picks — send it to anyone.
SitebulbGoogle Search ConsoleHacker News and Reddit
Quick read
- Free with no card: Google Search Console, Hacker News and Reddit.
| Field | Sitebulbsitebulb.com | Google Search Consolesearch.google.com | Hacker News and Redditnews.ycombinator.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Sitebulb is a technical SEO crawler that turns raw crawl data into prioritised hints — each issue carries a severity score and an explanation of why it matters. It ships as a desktop app and a cloud version, auditing structured data, accessibility, Core Web Vitals and internal linking. | Search Console reports how a site performs in Google: queries, impressions, clicks and average position, plus index coverage, sitemap submission, Core Web Vitals and manual action notices. Data spans 16 months and can be exported by API or streamed into BigQuery. | Hacker News ranks links by upvotes with a steep time decay, and Show HN is the convention for launching your own work. Reddit distributes through topical subreddits, each governed by its own self-promotion rules and volunteer moderators. |
| Category | SEO, growth & newsletter | SEO, growth & newsletter | SEO, growth & newsletter |
| Cost tier | paid | free | free |
| Pricing | 14-day free trial, no card. Desktop Lite (10k URLs per audit) and Pro (500k URLs per audit) are single-user and priced per currency on site — roughly £14 and £30/mo, 15% off yearly. Extra desktop users £7/mo. Cloud from £95/mo (about $120). | Free forever, no paid tier and no seat limits. Performance data covers 16 months. API, Looker Studio connector and BigQuery bulk export all included at no cost. | Free. Hacker News sells no placement at all. Reddit sells ads separately, but organic posts in any subreddit cost nothing. |
| Why builders pick it | Where Screaming Frog hands you a spreadsheet, Sitebulb hands you a ranked to-do list with the reasoning attached — useful when the person fixing the site is not an SEO specialist. | The only source of real query data — every other tool estimates. It shows which articles Google already ranks and which queries you nearly rank for, which is where the cheapest traffic lives. | A front-page HN post moves thousands of technically-minded readers in an afternoon and reliably produces backlinks. One well-matched subreddit can outperform every paid channel for a niche publication. |
| Watch out for | Desktop licences are per user and crawls run locally. Cloud starts at £95/mo and enterprise plans run past £20k/year, a steep jump from desktop. | The Performance UI caps at 1,000 rows per query and samples heavily; use the API or BigQuery export for full data. Its numbers will never match your analytics tool. | Both punish marketing tone: HN buries promotional titles and Reddit mods ban accounts with no comment history. Spikes are single-day events, and an HN front page can take down under-provisioned hosting. |
| How to wire it up | not logged | Verify via DNS TXT record or your host's one-click integration. | Post as Show HN with a plain descriptive title and no adjectives. |
| Editor's pick | No | No | No |
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# Tool comparison — Sitebulb vs Google Search Console vs Hacker News and Reddit Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects. Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code. ## Sitebulb (sitebulb) - URL: https://sitebulb.com - Category: SEO, growth & newsletter - Cost: paid — 14-day free trial, no card. Desktop Lite (10k URLs per audit) and Pro (500k URLs per audit) are single-user and priced per currency on site — roughly £14 and £30/mo, 15% off yearly. Extra desktop users £7/mo. Cloud from £95/mo (about $120). - What it is: Sitebulb is a technical SEO crawler that turns raw crawl data into prioritised hints — each issue carries a severity score and an explanation of why it matters. It ships as a desktop app and a cloud version, auditing structured data, accessibility, Core Web Vitals and internal linking. - Why builders pick it: Where Screaming Frog hands you a spreadsheet, Sitebulb hands you a ranked to-do list with the reasoning attached — useful when the person fixing the site is not an SEO specialist. - Trap: Desktop licences are per user and crawls run locally. Cloud starts at £95/mo and enterprise plans run past £20k/year, a steep jump from desktop. - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/sitebulb ## Google Search Console (google-search-console) - URL: https://search.google.com/search-console - Category: SEO, growth & newsletter - Cost: free — Free forever, no paid tier and no seat limits. Performance data covers 16 months. API, Looker Studio connector and BigQuery bulk export all included at no cost. - What it is: Search Console reports how a site performs in Google: queries, impressions, clicks and average position, plus index coverage, sitemap submission, Core Web Vitals and manual action notices. Data spans 16 months and can be exported by API or streamed into BigQuery. - Why builders pick it: The only source of real query data — every other tool estimates. It shows which articles Google already ranks and which queries you nearly rank for, which is where the cheapest traffic lives. - Trap: The Performance UI caps at 1,000 rows per query and samples heavily; use the API or BigQuery export for full data. Its numbers will never match your analytics tool. - Wiring: Verify via DNS TXT record or your host's one-click integration. - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/google-search-console ## Hacker News and Reddit (hacker-news-and-reddit) - URL: https://news.ycombinator.com - Category: SEO, growth & newsletter - Cost: free — Free. Hacker News sells no placement at all. Reddit sells ads separately, but organic posts in any subreddit cost nothing. - What it is: Hacker News ranks links by upvotes with a steep time decay, and Show HN is the convention for launching your own work. Reddit distributes through topical subreddits, each governed by its own self-promotion rules and volunteer moderators. - Why builders pick it: A front-page HN post moves thousands of technically-minded readers in an afternoon and reliably produces backlinks. One well-matched subreddit can outperform every paid channel for a niche publication. - Trap: Both punish marketing tone: HN buries promotional titles and Reddit mods ban accounts with no comment history. Spikes are single-day events, and an HN front page can take down under-provisioned hosting. - Wiring: Post as Show HN with a plain descriptive title and no adjectives. - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/hacker-news-and-reddit ## Quick read - Free with no card: Google Search Console, Hacker News and Reddit. ## Rules 1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is. 2. Read the full dossier before integrating. 3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.
Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=sitebulb,google-search-console,hacker-news-and-reddit