Compared with axe DevTools and WAVE

Both are good tools. Here is where this one differs, and where it does not.

First, the thing a comparison page usually hides

This scanner is built on axe-core — the same open-source engine Deque’s own axe DevTools is built on. Its automated findings and ours come from largely the same rules, so any claim that this tool finds more automatically would be false, and you should be suspicious of any comparison that makes one.

The difference is everything around the automated pass: what is done about the half of WCAG that rules cannot reach, and what is behind a licence.

	This scanner	axe DevTools	WAVE
Price	Free, every feature	Free tier; Pro is paid per user	Free
Automated rule engine	axe-core, plus extra rules	axe-core	WebAIM's own engine
Where results appear	DevTools panel, or its own window	DevTools panel	Icons drawn on the page, and a sidebar
Guided manual checks	18, free	Intelligent Guided Tests, in Pro	No — manual review is prompted, not guided
Evidence gathered for you	Yes — the page’s own images, links, headings	Yes, within a guided test	Shown as on-page icons
Screen reader transcript	Yes	No	No
Tab order overlay	Yes	No	No
Document outline overlay	Yes	No	Yes — structure view
Contrast tuner	Yes — slider to a passing colour	Contrast analyser	Yes — contrast checker
Several pages in one run	Yes — up to 25, in your browser	In Deque’s other products	No — one page at a time
Record and replay a flow	Yes	No	No
Group findings by component	Yes	Deduplicated reporting, in Pro	No
Works on pages behind a login	Yes	Yes	Yes
Runs in CI	Yes — same engine, one file	Yes, in Pro	No — via a separate product
Account required	No	For Pro features	No
Sends anything to a server	No	Pro syncs results	No

Checked against each product’s own documentation on 25 September 2026. These products change; verify before relying on this.

Which to reach for

Use WAVE when you want to see it on the page

WAVE draws its findings as icons in place, over the content they are about. For explaining a problem to somebody who is not a developer — a designer, a content author, a stakeholder — that is often the clearest thing there is, and it is free. It is a genuinely good tool and this one does not replace it.

Use axe DevTools Pro when you need the enterprise around it

Deque’s paid tier brings things a single extension does not: issue tracking across a team, deduplicated reporting at organisation scale, and commercial support. If accessibility is being managed as a programme rather than done by a developer at a keyboard, that is what you are buying, and it is worth buying.

Use this one when the manual part is the part you are stuck on

The automated findings here come from the same engine as Deque’s, so that is not the difference. The difference is what surrounds it: eighteen guided checks with the page’s own content gathered as evidence, a transcript of what gets announced, the keyboard path drawn over the page — and none of it behind a licence.

Where this one is the wrong choice

You need Firefox or Safari. This is Chrome and Edge only.
You need a shared dashboard, ticket integration or an audit trail across a team. Nothing here leaves your machine, which is the point, and also the limitation.
You want a single number to put in a report. The score here deliberately excludes needs-review findings and manual verdicts, so it is smaller and less quotable than some — and no score is evidence of conformance anyway.

Sources

Claims about the other tools come from their own documentation: