Screpy vs WebPageTest in 2026: An all-in-one budget dashboard vs the free diagnostic gold standard for page speed
WebPageTest's free tier out-diagnoses nearly every paid tool with waterfall charts and frame-by-frame filmstrip playback. Screpy answers with four other tools bundled in for $10 a month, plus a friendlier interface for non-technical users.
Screpy
WebPageTest- WebPageTest's core diagnostic product, waterfall charts, filmstrip playback, and 30-plus global test locations, is completely free with no account required; Screpy's cheapest plan is $10/month with no permanent free tier.
- WebPageTest exposes request-level waterfall data (DNS, connection, TTFB, render-blocking resources) to diagnose exactly why a page is slow; Screpy shows an overall Lighthouse-based score and CWV trend without that resource-level breakdown.
- Screpy bundles rank tracking, uptime monitoring, and a site audit crawler alongside page speed; WebPageTest does none of those, it is a performance-testing tool only.
- WebPageTest's Pro API starts at $9.89/month and adds continuous monitoring plus programmatic test triggering; Screpy has no API on any plan, including its $59/month Advanced tier.
- Screpy includes white-label PDF reports from its $30/month Pro tier; WebPageTest has no white-label or client-branding option at any price.
- WebPageTest is open source and can be self-hosted for testing internal or staging environments; Screpy is closed-source SaaS only, with no self-hosting option.
Screpy and WebPageTest both report on page speed, but they are built for different jobs and different skill levels. WebPageTest is a free, open-source performance testing tool that runs pages through real browser instances at over 30 global locations, exposing the full waterfall of every request, connection timing, and a frame-by-frame filmstrip of what a user actually sees as the page loads. Screpy is a $10-a-month dashboard that shows an overall Lighthouse-based score and Core Web Vitals trend alongside site auditing, rank tracking, and uptime monitoring, aimed at people who want a quick health check rather than a diagnostic deep-dive. WebPageTest tells you exactly which request or script is slowing a page down; Screpy tells you the score changed and leaves the "why" to you. Neither replaces the other so much as answers a different question.
The tools at a glance
Screpy
AI-powered SEO platform combining site audits, rank tracking, page speed monitoring, and uptime checks from $10 a month
Screpy folds page speed into a wider bundle: a Lighthouse-based score and Core Web Vitals trend sit alongside site auditing, rank tracking, and uptime pinging, all inside one $10-a-month dashboard with unlimited projects and team members. For someone who wants a single subscription instead of four, that consolidation is the entire pitch, and AI-generated recommendations translate the findings into plain-language fixes for non-technical users.
What Screpy will not give you is a diagnosis. There is no waterfall chart, no request-level timing breakdown, and no filmstrip showing what a user actually saw as the page rendered, just a score and whether it moved. It also runs from a single vantage point rather than WebPageTest's 30-plus global test locations, so location-specific performance issues are invisible.
White-label PDF reports arrive at the $30 Pro tier, which is useful for agencies that need a branded deliverable, but there is no API on any plan, and the platform is mid-rebuild, so some features may shift as the new version rolls out.
| Feature | Lite $10/month | Pro $30/month | Advanced $59/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly credits | 2,500 | 8,000 | 30,000 |
| Unlimited projects | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited team members | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Rank tracker | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Competitor tracking | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| White-label PDF reports | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| API access | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
WebPageTest
The open-source gold standard for deep web performance diagnostics, trusted by engineers at Google, Mozilla, and every serious web team.
WebPageTest runs pages through real Chrome, Firefox, or Edge instances at over 30 global locations and exposes the full waterfall: connection timing, DNS, SSL, TTFB, and render-blocking resources for every single request. The filmstrip view shows frame-by-frame what a user sees as the page loads, with timestamps for first paint and visually complete. None of this costs anything; the public instance at webpagetest.org requires no account and no payment.
The Lighthouse integration means every run can include performance, SEO, and accessibility findings in the same report, and No-Code Experiments let you test the impact of a hypothetical change, removing a third-party script, switching to a self-hosted font, before committing engineering time. The tool is open source, maintained by Catchpoint, and can be self-hosted for internal or staging environments that a public tool can't reach.
The catch is that the interface assumes performance expertise: it rewards someone who already knows what a waterfall chart or TTFB means and offers little hand-holding for someone who does not. Continuous monitoring and API access require the Pro API tier at $9.89 a month, and there is no rank tracking, site audit, uptime monitoring, or white-label reporting at any price, WebPageTest does one job and nothing else.
| Feature | Free Free | Pro API (Starter) $9.89/month |
|---|---|---|
| On-demand tests | Shared queue | Priority access |
| Filmstrip and video replay | ✓ | ✓ |
| API access | ✗ | ✓ |
| Continuous monitoring | ✗ | ✓ |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Screpy | WebPageTest |
|---|---|---|
| Core product cost | $10/month (no permanent free tier) | Free (Pro API from $9.89/month) |
| Website/technical audit | Yes | No |
| Rank tracking | Yes | No |
| Uptime monitoring | Yes | No |
| Core Web Vitals scoring | Yes (Lighthouse-based, trend over time) | Yes (LCP, CLS, INP, TTFB and more) |
| Waterfall / resource-level diagnostics | No | Yes (full request-level waterfall) |
| Filmstrip / visual load playback | No | Yes (frame-by-frame filmstrip) |
| Global test locations | No (single-location checks) | Yes (30+ locations) |
| Continuous monitoring | No (scheduled audits plus uptime pings, not continuous crawling) | Yes (Pro API tier) |
| White-label reporting | Yes (Pro tier and up) | No |
| API access | No | Yes (Pro API tier) |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | Yes |
Which should you choose?
WebPageTestScrepyWebPageTestScrepyScrepyWebPageTestWebPageTest wins on pure diagnostic depth, and it is not close: nothing in Screpy's feature set approaches a request-level waterfall or a filmstrip that shows what a real user saw. But WebPageTest is also honest about its own gap, its free tier has no scheduled monitoring or trend dashboard, and even its own team recommends pairing it with a dedicated monitoring tool for that. Screpy fills a different gap: a non-technical business owner who wants one score, one dashboard, and three other tools bundled in for $10 a month.
Bottom line
Use WebPageTest, for free, whenever you need to actually diagnose why a page is slow, before a migration, after a redesign, or when a client asks for evidence rather than a score. Use Screpy when page speed is one line item inside a broader monitoring routine and you would rather pay $10 a month for four tools than manage WebPageTest, a rank tracker, an uptime monitor, and a site auditor separately. Neither tool tracks how a site shows up in AI-generated answers, so if AI search visibility becomes part of what you report on, that's a separate tool regardless of which one you pick here.
Frequently asked questions
Is WebPageTest actually better than Screpy for page speed, or just more complicated?
WebPageTest is genuinely more capable for page speed specifically: it shows a full request-level waterfall, DNS and connection timing, and a frame-by-frame filmstrip that Screpy does not provide at any price. The added complexity is real too, WebPageTest assumes some performance knowledge to interpret correctly, while Screpy just shows a score and whether it moved.
Why would I pay for Screpy when WebPageTest is free?
You would pay for Screpy if page speed is not the only thing you need to monitor. WebPageTest is free but only does performance diagnostics, it has no rank tracking, site audit, or uptime monitoring. Screpy bundles all four for $10 a month, which is cheaper than buying separate tools for rank tracking and uptime even before counting the page speed feature.
Does WebPageTest offer continuous monitoring like a dedicated uptime or performance tool?
Not on the free tier. The public WebPageTest instance does not offer scheduled monitoring or trend dashboards; that requires the Pro API tier at $9.89 a month. WebPageTest's own guidance is to pair it with a dedicated monitoring tool like SpeedCurve or DebugBear for that specific job.
Can I self-host WebPageTest instead of using the public instance?
WebPageTest can be self-hosted, since it is open source, which is useful for testing internal tools or staging environments that are not publicly accessible. Screpy has no self-hosting option, it is closed-source SaaS only.
Which tool is better for documenting Core Web Vitals improvements to a client?
WebPageTest produces more convincing evidence for that specific use case, since the filmstrip and waterfall let you show a client exactly what changed between a before-and-after test, not just that a number moved. Screpy's advantage is that its white-label PDF reports, available from the $30 Pro tier, package the CWV trend into a branded document without you having to build the presentation yourself.
Do I need an API for WebPageTest or Screpy to automate testing?
WebPageTest offers API access on its $9.89/month Pro API tier, letting you trigger tests and pull results programmatically for CI/CD pipelines or scheduled checks. Screpy has no API on any of its three plans, so there is no way to automate testing or pull its data into an external system.