SEO by Daniel vs Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is Google's hosted front end for Lighthouse. Paste a URL and you get a performance score plus Core Web Vitals, with field data from real Chrome users where Google has enough of it. It is free and needs no account. SEO by Daniel audits a whole site and produces a report. PSI measures speed on a page. SEO by Daniel measures SEO across a site.

Where PageSpeed Insights wins

• Free and account-free. Google hosts it, so there is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
• Field data where available. The CrUX numbers come from real users, not a lab run, which is what Core Web Vitals rankings are based on.
• Lab detail when you need it. The Lighthouse run underneath lists the exact scripts and images holding the page back.
• It is the reference. When a client or a developer argues about page speed, PSI settles it.
• One URL, one answer. There is no configuration to get wrong.

Where SEO by Daniel wins

• It looks at the whole site. One URL starts a crawl across the pages found in the sitemap. PSI stops at the URL you paste.
• Sitemap auto-discovery. We read robots.txt, follow nested sitemap indexes and handle gzipped sitemaps.
• SEO checks beyond speed. Missing titles, duplicate descriptions, redirect chains and thin content. PSI does not look at most of that.
• A report to send. Executive summary, issues grouped by severity and CSV export, instead of metrics a developer has to interpret.
• Monitoring on a schedule. We re-scan and flag changes. PSI is a check you remember to run.

A real example

You are a Laravel developer. You rebuild a client's homepage, run it through PageSpeed Insights, fix a hero image and a blocking script, and get the mobile score from 48 to 92. The client is happy and you move on. This is PSI doing its job, and it does it better than anything you would pay for.

Three weeks later rankings drop on the category pages. You open PSI, check one category URL, and the speed is fine. The problem is not speed. A template update shipped the same title tag to forty category pages, and the old URLs are now redirecting through two hops. PSI never looks at either issue, because neither is a performance metric.

You run SEO by Daniel on the domain. The crawl finds the duplicate titles and the redirect chains, groups them by severity, and gives you a report you can attach to the fix. PSI stays open for the speed work. The two tools answer different questions, and a client will ask both.

Then you send the client the SEO by Daniel report and keep the PSI result for your build notes. She sees a score and a fix list. You keep the metric that started the conversation.

The verdict

| | PageSpeed Insights | SEO by Daniel | |---|---|---| | Best for | One URL's speed and Core Web Vitals | Whole-site scored reports | | Cost | Free | Free scan, €19/mo entry | | Scope | Single page | Full site crawl | | Field data | Yes, from Chrome users | Not the focus | | Sitemap discovery | No | Automatic | | Client-ready report | No | Executive summary, severity grouping, CSV | | Monitoring | No | On a schedule |

When to pick which

Pick PageSpeed Insights when the question is about speed on a specific page, or when you need Google's own Core Web Vitals data. It is free, authoritative and the only sensible place to start a performance conversation.

Pick SEO by Daniel when the question is about the whole site, or when the result has to reach a client. If you need a scored report and monitoring rather than a single-page number, that is the other tool. Neither needs the other to work, but a freelancer who does both speed work and site audits will keep both open.

FAQ

Is PageSpeed Insights free? Yes. Google hosts it and there is no account. SEO by Daniel's quick scan is free too, with no account needed.

Does PSI check the whole site? No. It measures the URL you give it. To find site-wide SEO issues you need a crawler, which is what SEO by Daniel is.

Can I use both? Yes, and most people should. PSI for page speed and Core Web Vitals, SEO by Daniel for the site audit, report and monitoring.

Drop in a domain and see the whole-site score for free.