accessiBe alternatives: fixing accessibility instead of overlaying it

accessiBe is an accessibility overlay: a widget that alters pages in the visitor's browser. Alternatives such as Askem, Siteimprove, Silktide and DubBot instead scan your site and report what to fix, so the underlying pages change. That distinction matters most when a regulator asks you to evidence conformance.

Last updated August 2026 · Reviewed by the Askem accessibility team

The short version

Which one to shortlist, in a line each. Everything below is the detail behind these.

Askem if you have to show a regulator that your site itself meets the standard, not that you installed something.
Siteimprove if you need accessibility, SEO and analytics on one enterprise contract.
Silktide if you need to show colleagues why an overlay is not the same thing as an accessible page.
DubBot if you are a North American university or government team.
Stay with accessiBe if your site is small, you have no developer, and nobody is going to ask you to prove anything.

What this comparison covers

Accessibility and content quality only. Some tools on this page also sell SEO, site speed or content management. Those are useful, but they are a separate purchase and they will not tell you whether your website is accessible. That is the one question this page answers.

Not compared: SEO tools, including keyword research, rank tracking and backlinks
Not compared: Site speed and performance monitoring
Not compared: Content management, experience platforms and personalisation

Why teams look for an accessiBe alternative

An overlay does not change your website

This is not a criticism, it is simply what an overlay is. The widget changes pages inside the visitor's browser. The HTML you publish stays exactly as it was, so an auditor reading your code, or a visitor who has the widget switched off, meets the original site.

The FTC has ruled on automated compliance claims

In January 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims its AI product could make websites WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. The FTC alleged the tool failed to make basic components such as navigation menus, form fields and image descriptions accessible.

Undisclosed paid endorsements

The same FTC action found accessiBe had formatted advertisements as impartial third-party reviews without disclosing that it paid for them. Worth remembering whenever you read a comparison page about these tools, including this one.

There is nothing to show a regulator

European accessibility rules ask you to show that your service meets the standard, not that you installed something. Monitoring gives you a dated record of what was found and when it was fixed. A widget gives you a widget.

What to look for in an accessibility monitoring tool

Five things decide whether a tool actually keeps a large site accessible, rather than just telling you it isn't.

Continuous site-wide WCAG scanning: A one-off audit is out of date the next time somebody publishes a page. You have to stay accessible, not pass once.
Broken link detection: Dead links are both an accessibility problem and the thing real visitors complain about most.
Readability and content quality: WCAG is also about whether people can understand your content, not only whether a screen reader can read it aloud.
Page-level feedback from real users: Automated scanning catches roughly a third of accessibility problems. People find the rest.
EU data residency: In European public-sector buying this is often a straight yes or no requirement, not a preference.

accessiBe alternatives compared

One thing to keep in mind reading this table: accessiBe is a different kind of product, not a weaker version of the same one. It is here because buyers really do compare them, and because that difference is the most important thing to understand before you choose either.

Accessibility monitoring capabilities compared across Askem, Siteimprove, Silktide, DubBot, accessiBe
Capability	Askem	Siteimprove	Silktide	DubBot	accessiBe
Continuous site-wide WCAG scanning	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	Partial Partial
Broken link detection	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	— No
Readability and content quality	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	✓ Yes	— No
Page-level feedback from real users	✓ Yes	— No	— No	— No	— No
EU data residency	✓ Yes	Partial Partial	Not published Not published	Not published Not published	Not published Not published
Cost per montha 10,000-page site with more than 50,000 visits a month	€199	€2,530–5,050estimated	€1,440	Not published	€415

Compiled from each vendor's public product and pricing pages, August 2026. "Not published" means the vendor does not say publicly, not that the tool cannot do it. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

The alternatives in detail

1. Askem

Continuous accessibility and content-quality monitoring for large websites, with feedback from real visitors on individual pages.

Scans every page, tells you what to fix and in what order, and collects feedback from real visitors. Nothing is added to your site to change how it behaves. Hosted in the EU, €199 a month, published.

Best for: Public sector, healthcare, education, finance and associations with large, content-heavy sites, where communications, IT and legal all have to sign off.
Not for: Developer teams who want accessibility checks wired into their own build pipeline through an API or CI/CD, and sites under roughly 50,000 visits a month, where manual checks are still enough.
Pricing: Published on our own site: €199 a month for Quality Assurance.
Also sells, outside this comparison: Cookieless web analytics

2. Siteimprove

A large enterprise platform covering accessibility, content quality, SEO and analytics in one place.

The big enterprise option, covering accessibility alongside SEO and analytics. Quoted rather than published.

Best for: Large enterprises and government bodies that want one platform across many websites, and have the budget and the people to run it.
Not for: Small teams who need to act quickly on what they find, and organisations publishing a lot in languages other than English, where reviewers regularly report false positives.
Pricing: Not published. You get a quote after a sales call.
Also sells, outside this comparison: SEO · Analytics · Content governance across many sites

3. Silktide

An accessibility and website-quality platform, best known for its disability simulations, which let your team see a page the way a screen-reader or colour-blind visitor experiences it.

Strong disability simulations, which are useful for showing a sceptical colleague why an overlay is not the same thing as an accessible page.

Best for: Teams who want to build accessibility understanding among people who are not specialists, and public-sector organisations that value the simulations and training.
Not for: Teams who want the fix to happen where the problem is found, since issues still have to be corrected back in the CMS, and buyers who need EU-only data residency as a condition of purchase.
Pricing: Not shown on their own site. Listed for UK public sector on the G-Cloud framework, which works out at about €490 a month for 1,000 pages.
Also sells, outside this comparison: SEO · Performance monitoring · Accessibility training

4. DubBot

A focused accessibility and content-checking scanner built for web teams, with rules you can write yourself.

Focused accessibility and content checking, strong on custom rules, popular in North American higher education.

Best for: Higher education and government web teams in North America who want a focused, easy-to-use checking tool rather than a broad platform, and who want to write their own rules.
Not for: Organisations that want the tool built deeply into their CMS, and European buyers who need their data kept in the EU.
Pricing: Not published, and there is no free plan. You have to ask.
Also sells, outside this comparison: Custom XPath and regex rules · Spelling and brand-word checks

What these actually cost

accessiBe looks like the cheap option, and for a small site it is: about €51 a month. But that tier stops at 5,000 visits a month. Because the price rises with your traffic, a busy site ends up on the €415 tier, where the overlay costs more than a tool that actually fixes the site.

Published pricing and scaling model for Askem, Siteimprove, Silktide, DubBot, accessiBe
Tool	Price published?	Per month for this site	Cheapest starting price	What it scales on
Askem	Yes, on their site	€199published	€199 / month	Per domain, with each extra domain at a small added cost. Not tiered by pages or by traffic, so the figure does not move as the site grows.
Siteimprove	No, quote only	€2,530–5,050*estimated	Not published	Quoted on pages monitored, modules licensed and contract length. Buyers report roughly €870 to €2,170 a month at 1,000 to 5,000 pages.Watch for: Priced per module, so accessibility, SEO, analytics and content governance each show up as a separate line on the quote.
Silktide	Public-sector framework only	€1,440published	€490 / month at 1,000 pages	By pages scanned. Published UK public-sector rates convert to about €880 a month at 5,000 pages, €1,440 at 10,000, €2,915 at 25,000 and €4,300 at 50,000.
DubBot	No, quote only	Not published	Not published	Quoted per institution, with discounts through purchasing consortia such as HESS. There are no published rates, no free plan and no reliable public benchmark, so the only way to get a number is to ask.
accessiBe	Yes, on their site	€415published	€51 / month up to 5,000 visits	By monthly traffic: about €155 a month up to 30,000 visits, €415 up to 100,000.Watch for: The cheapest tier stops at 5,000 visits a month. A site the size compared here sits on the €415 tier, and it is still an overlay.

Converted at €1 = £0.855 = $1.154, the rate on 10 August 2026. Annual figures divided by twelve. Checked August 2026. * Third-party estimate reported by buyers, not a figure the vendor publishes. Treat it as a range, not a quote.

Moving from accessiBe to Askem

If you currently run an overlay, the honest first step is finding out what your site looks like underneath it. Askem scans your published pages directly and gives you the real list, which is usually longer than expected. That list is uncomfortable and it is also the thing an audit will find, so it is better to hold it yourself. Many teams keep the overlay running while they work through the backlog, then remove it once the underlying pages pass.

Sources

FTC press release, 'FTC Order Requires Online Marketer to Pay $1 Million for Deceptive Claims that its AI Product Could Make Websites Compliant with Accessibility Guidelines', January 2025
FTC case file, accessiBe Inc.
EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard the EAA points to
Vendor product and pricing pages, checked August 2026.

Why teams move to Askem

A price you can put in a budget request. €199 a month, published, and it does not go up with your page count. Most of the others will not give you a number until you have sat through a sales call.
An answer for IT. Hosted in the EU, never transferred outside it, with a data processing agreement and sub-processor list ready for procurement.
Something your team will actually open. Findings arrive as a prioritised list of what to fix first, readable by someone who is not an accessibility specialist.
Evidence for legal. Continuous monitoring creates a dated record of what was found and when it was fixed, which is what an audit asks for.

And where Askem is not the right answer: there is no SEO tooling, no CI/CD integration for development pipelines, and it is priced for sites big enough to need watching all the time. Under about 50,000 visits a month, checking by hand now and then will serve you fine and cost nothing.

See what Askem finds on your site See pricing

accessiBe alternatives: common questions

What is an accessibility overlay?

An overlay is JavaScript added to a website that modifies pages in the visitor's browser, typically offering a toolbar for contrast, text size or screen-reader adjustments. It does not change the site's underlying code, so the published HTML stays as it was.

Do accessibility overlays make a website compliant?

Not on their own. In January 2025 the FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims its AI product could automatically make sites WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, and barred such claims without evidence to support them. Conformance is assessed against your actual site.

What is the best accessiBe alternative?

For organisations that have to show a regulator their site meets the standard, a monitoring tool rather than an overlay: Askem, Siteimprove, Silktide or DubBot. Askem suits European teams needing EU data residency and published pricing, at €199 a month.

How much does accessiBe cost?

accessiBe publishes its prices: about €51 a month up to 5,000 visits, €155 up to 30,000, and €415 up to 100,000. The price rises with your traffic, so a busy site reaches the top tier quickly, where it costs more than Askem's flat €199 a month.

Is an overlay cheaper than a monitoring tool?

Only for small sites. Up to 5,000 visits a month, accessiBe's €51 tier is the cheapest option here. Above 30,000 visits it is about €415 a month, roughly double Askem's €199, and your site itself is still unchanged.

Is accessiBe ever the right choice?

For a very small site with no development resource and no compliance obligation to evidence, some improvement may be better than none. Once you have a legal obligation, a public-sector duty or an audit ahead of you, the calculation changes entirely.

Does the European Accessibility Act accept overlays?

The EAA points to EN 301 549, which sets requirements for the digital service itself. Conformance is assessed against your site, not against tooling added on top of it. Installing something is not the same as meeting the standard.

Does Askem add anything to my website for visitors?

Only the feedback widget, and only if you choose to use it. Accessibility monitoring works by crawling your published pages from outside, so nothing is injected into the experience your visitors get. Your site stays your site.

Compare other tools

Siteimprove alternatives Silktide alternatives DubBot alternatives All accessibility tools compared

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