Frequently Asked Questions

BeaverCheck is a free web performance and security auditing tool. You paste any public URL and it runs a full audit with no account, no signup and no queue, returning a composite A+ to F grade in about 45 to 90 seconds. Every scan runs two Lighthouse audits, mobile and desktop, plus BeaverCheck's own checks for HTTP security headers, TLS configuration, accessibility, SEO, content quality, infrastructure, regulatory compliance and carbon intensity. Eight of those categories are scored and weighted into the composite grade, and Lighthouse runs twice -- mobile and desktop -- as two separate reports, alongside unscored views for detected technologies, multi-viewport screenshots and changes since the previous scan. Results are stored permanently at a public URL, so you can link a report, compare it against a later scan, or export it as PDF, JSON or Markdown. It is aimed at developers and site owners who want one scan instead of five separate tools.

Half of all scans finish within 90 seconds, and about 60% within two minutes; the slowest are slow because the site being audited is. (Measured across 1,747 real scans, August 2026.) The result page appears immediately and fills in as each stage completes, so you are not left waiting on a blank screen. Most of that time is Lighthouse: every scan runs two full Lighthouse audits, one emulating a mid-tier mobile device on a throttled connection and one on desktop, and each is a real headless Chrome page load rather than a static analysis. Two real page loads against a live site is the floor on scan time. The remaining work runs alongside it: HTTP and TLS probing, security header analysis, technology fingerprinting across 1,000+ signatures, DOM and content analysis, accessibility testing, and screenshots at three viewports (375px, 768px and 1440px). A slow scan usually means a slow target, so a site that takes 15 seconds to render will push the total toward the upper end.

Yes, entirely. Every feature is available with no account, no signup, no email address, no credit card and no trial period. There is no paid tier holding back checks, no rate-limited free plan, and no queue you can pay to skip. Scans run immediately and everything is included: both Lighthouse audits, all eight scored categories, technology detection across 1,000+ signatures, multi-viewport screenshots, and the full findings list with remediation guidance. Reports can be exported as PDF, JSON or Markdown, embedded elsewhere as a score badge, or read through the public REST API, which also needs no authentication. Results are stored permanently and are publicly accessible by their URL, which is what makes the free model work: the scan corpus is open rather than gated behind accounts. Keeping a scan private is the one thing the free public tool deliberately does not do.

We currently have workers in multiple locations across Europe, North America, Asia, and South America. You choose which location to scan from.

The composite grade is a weighted average of eight scored categories: Performance 25%, Security 25%, Accessibility 15%, SEO 10%, Infrastructure 10%, Compliance 8%, Content 5% and Sustainability 2%. Those weights sum to 1.00, so the composite always lands on the same 0-100 scale as the individual categories. Each category is itself an average of its sections, with some sections weighted more heavily where the signal is high-stakes: statutory disclosures and regulatory requirements move the Compliance score more than cosmetic issues do. Sections that could not be measured drop out entirely and their weight is redistributed across the rest, rather than counting as zero, so a check that could not run never silently penalises a site. The 0-100 result then maps to a letter: A+ is 97-100, A is 90-96, B is 80-89, C is 70-79, D is 55-69, and F is anything below 55. The same thresholds apply to individual category scores.

Lighthouse is a lab test, and lab results vary between runs. BeaverCheck runs Lighthouse from its own workers, so network path, server load and CPU contention all differ from Google's PageSpeed Insights infrastructure. Variations of 3 to 5 points on the Performance score are normal and do not mean either tool is wrong. Two other differences matter more. First, PageSpeed Insights blends lab data with Chrome UX Report field data whenever a URL has enough real-user traffic, so comparing it against a lab-only Lighthouse run is not like-for-like. Second, BeaverCheck's headline grade is not a Lighthouse score at all: it is a composite across eight categories in which Lighthouse performance is one input among many, so a site can score well on PageSpeed Insights and still grade poorly here because of missing security headers or accessibility failures. Both Lighthouse scores, mobile and desktop, are shown separately on every report.

Yes. Every scan runs two Lighthouse audits: one emulating a mobile device and one on desktop. The result page has a toggle to compare scores. Screenshots are captured at three viewports: 375px, 768px, and 1440px.

A+ = 97–100, A = 90–96, B = 80–89, C = 70–79, D = 55–69, F = below 55. These apply to both the composite grade and individual categories.

We store scan results (scores, findings, screenshots) so you can view them later. We do not store the full HTML content of your pages. Results are publicly accessible by their unique URL.

Our JavaScript vulnerability database is updated with each deployment. Technology fingerprints cover 1,000+ technologies.

Yes, all scan results are public and accessible by their unique URL. Results are not indexed by search engines unless you share the link.

Lab data (Lighthouse) is collected in a controlled environment — consistent but doesn't reflect real-world variation. Real-user data (CrUX) is the 75th percentile of actual Chrome users over 28 days. When both are available, we show them side-by-side.

BeaverCheck analyzes HTTP headers and HTML content against 1,000+ technology fingerprints. It detects CMS platforms, frameworks, servers, CDNs, analytics tools, and more.

We extract text element positions and foreground colors from the DOM, then sample actual background pixels from the desktop screenshot. This catches contrast failures on background images and gradients that CSS-only tools miss.

Yes. Every result page has a Download PDF button that generates a comprehensive report covering all 8 scored categories, both Lighthouse runs, the executive summary, the composite grade, and every finding with its remediation guidance.