The category line is causality. Reporting suites aggregate and display. Audit platforms find issues at scale. Neither is trying to establish that a specific change produced a specific result, which is the only thing we are trying to do.
So these pages are written as 'how to run both', and each one states what the other tool is for in terms its own documentation would recognise. Where we cannot check a claim about somebody else's product, we do not make it.
Ahrefs
One is where you find the work. The other is where you find out whether the work paid.
Semrush
A suite that covers many channels, and a tool that answers one question about one of them.
Screaming Frog
The crawler on your laptop, and the crawler that keeps running when you close it.
Sitebulb
One is strong at explaining the audit. The other is about what happened next.
AgencyAnalytics
A dashboard shows what happened. A ledger argues about why, and can be wrong out loud.
Databox
Charts from everywhere, or a short list of claims each with a control group behind it.
SE Ranking
A bundle with an agency tier, and a single-purpose tool that refuses one of its main features on principle.
Looker Studio
The free dashboard nearly every agency already has, and the measurement it cannot construct.
Try it on your own site, free
No card, and the free tier does not expire — the first verdict takes about six weeks to arrive.