Silktide alternatives for accessibility monitoring
The main Silktide alternatives for accessibility are Askem, Siteimprove, DubBot and Monsido. Askem suits European teams needing EU data residency, feedback from real visitors and published pricing. Silktide remains the better choice if your priority is teaching a non-specialist team what accessibility problems actually feel like to use.
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 need EU hosting, feedback from real visitors alongside the scan, and a price that does not climb every time you publish a page.
- Siteimprove if you need accessibility, SEO and analytics managed together across many websites.
- DubBot if you are a North American university or government team and you want to write your own checks.
- Monsido if Acquia or Drupal is already your platform.
- Stay with Silktide if the simulations are the thing you are really buying, and teaching your team matters more than what it costs per page.
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 a Silktide alternative
Finding a problem and fixing it happen in different places
Silktide tells you what is wrong. The fix still has to happen back in your CMS. Jumping between the two is where the time goes, and it is why a good scanner can still leave you with a backlog that never shrinks.
You are buying accessibility, SEO and site speed together
Silktide is deliberately broad. If accessibility is the obligation you actually have, a good part of what you pay for is modules nobody asked you to buy.
The published rate is higher than teams expect
Silktide does not show prices on its own site, but it files a UK public-sector rate card with the G-Cloud framework. That works out at roughly €490 a month for 1,000 pages, €1,440 for 10,000 and €4,300 for 50,000. Worth knowing before the first call.
Data residency is not stated publicly
For European public-sector buyers, EU hosting is often a pass or fail requirement rather than a preference. If it is on your list, get the answer in writing before you shortlist anyone.
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.
Silktide alternatives compared
Compared on accessibility and content quality only. Silktide's SEO and site-speed modules are left out, not because they are weak, but because they cannot tell you whether your site is accessible.
| Capability | Askem | Siteimprove | DubBot | Monsido | Silktide |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous site-wide WCAG scanning | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Broken link detection | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Readability and content quality | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| 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 | Not published | €360–1,080estimated | €1,440 |
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.
You get a ranked list of what to fix rather than a score, and feedback from real visitors catches what no scanner can. €199 a month, published, and hosted entirely in the EU.
- 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 broadest platform here, and the right answer if you genuinely need accessibility, SEO and analytics on one contract with one vendor to deal with. Expect an enterprise price and a long setup.
- 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. DubBot
A focused accessibility and content-checking scanner built for web teams, with rules you can write yourself.
Narrower than Silktide by design. Strong document checking and custom rules, well regarded for support, and popular with 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
4. Monsido
An accessibility and website-quality tool, now part of Acquia, aimed at public sector and higher education.
Worth shortlisting if Acquia or Drupal is already your platform, since it comes as part of that rather than as a separate tool.
- Best for
- Organisations that have already chosen Acquia or Drupal as their platform.
- Not for
- Teams who want a standalone tool rather than one tied to a wider Acquia relationship.
- Pricing
- Not published. Quoted, usually as part of an Acquia deal.
- Also sells, outside this comparison
- SEO · Data privacy scanning · Part of the Acquia platform
What these actually cost
Every figure below is euros per month for a 10,000-page site with more than 50,000 visits a month, so you can compare like with like. Most of these vendors quote privately, in another currency, per year. That is the most common complaint people have about buying an accessibility tool.
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Monsido | No, quote only | €360–1,080*estimated | Not published | Quoted, usually inside a wider Acquia relationship. Third-party reporting puts it around €360 to €1,080 a month. |
| 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. |
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.
- Askem pricing, published on askem.com
- Vendr marketplace, Siteimprove pricing benchmarks reported by buyers (third-party estimate, not vendor-published)
- Third-party pricing estimate for Monsido (not vendor-published)
- Silktide pricing for UK public sector, published by Silktide to the UK Digital Marketplace G-Cloud 14 framework (rate card valid September 2024 to September 2025)
Moving from Silktide to Askem
Nothing needs exporting. Askem crawls your domains from scratch, so switching is a new scan rather than a data migration. Run both tools for one billing cycle if you want to compare findings directly, which is the quickest way to see where two scanners disagree. Anything you need as evidence should be downloaded from Silktide before the contract ends.
Sources
- 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.
Silktide alternatives: common questions
What is the best Silktide alternative?
Is Silktide good for accessibility?
How much does Silktide cost?
Is Askem cheaper than Silktide?
Is Silktide or Siteimprove better?
Where is Askem's data hosted?
See what Askem finds on your site. Book a 20-minute review.
- Published pricing from €199/month
- Hosted in the EU
- No installation project