Screaming Frog vs Sitebulb: recovered 12% lost link equity in a migration

Screaming Frog vs Sitebulb: recovered 12% lost link equity in a migration

Domain migration left 800 broken redirect chains. We crawled the wreck with both.

Screaming Frog (£199/yr ≈ $259)
👍 Found all 800 chains and 4-hop loops in one crawl; the redirect-chain report exports straight to a fix list
👎 Raw spreadsheets — zero hand-holding, you interpret everything yourself

Sitebulb ($25/mo Lite)
👍 Prioritized the chains by inbound internal links, so we fixed the high-value ones first
👎 Slower crawl on the 40k-URL site, and Lite caps projects

We flattened 800 chains to single 301s in 2 sprints. Restored ~12% of link equity that was leaking through redirect hops; the top 30 pages climbed an average of 4 positions.

Verdict: Pick Screaming Frog for raw power, Sitebulb if you want the tool to tell you what to fix first.

Best for: Frog = technical SEOs; Sitebulb = generalists who want guidance.

No affiliate link — we just use this stuff.