Crawl-stats report vs raw server logs for crawl budget:

Crawl-stats report vs raw server logs for crawl budget:
Tactic comparison on a 200k-URL site burning budget on junk.

GSC Crawl Stats
➕ Free, zero setup, shows host status + crawl-by-response-type
➕ Good first signal that something's wrong (spikes, 5xx, slow response)
➖ Aggregated + sampled; can't tell you WHICH parameter URLs got hammered

Raw server log analysis
➕ Every Googlebot hit, exact URL — I found 60% of budget going to faceted filter URLs
➕ Verifiable (reverse-DNS the bot), no sampling
➖ Needs log access + a parser (Screaming Frog Log Analyser, etc.); real setup

Best for: a quick health pulse → Crawl Stats. Finding the exact budget leak → logs.

Price-vs-value: Crawl Stats told me budget was wasted; only logs told me WHERE. You need both, but logs end the investigation.

Pick Crawl Stats to notice the problem. Skip it as the diagnosis — logs name the culprit URLs.

Real site, my own logs.