Because the slow part of checking a website, opening every page, pressing Tab through it, measuring contrast and reading every label, is done by a browser and a model in minutes, not by a person over days. A manual audit is priced by an expert’s hours, and Accessible.org lists $1,250 to $2,750. Overlay widgets are priced by how many visitors your site gets. A BearScan report is $49 per site because what it takes is minutes of a cloud browser.
What the alternatives cost
| Option | Price | Priced by |
|---|---|---|
| Manual audit (Accessible.org) | $1,250 to $2,750 (opens in a new tab) | A person’s time |
| accessiBe overlay | $59 to $479 a month by visits; $490 to $3,990 a year (opens in a new tab) | Your monthly visits |
| UserWay overlay | $490 to $2,490 a year for the widget; monitoring from $990 a year (opens in a new tab) | Your page views, or pages monitored |
| WebAIM AIM report | From $500 (opens in a new tab) | Pages in the report |
| BearScan | Free scan; $49 report; Monitoring $29 a month or $228 a year | Per site, any traffic |
Each price is from the vendor’s own page, read on . Prices change; follow the links for today’s. The scanner comparison covers more tools.
Where the money goes
A manual audit pays for a person. An accessibility specialist tests your pages with a keyboard and a screen reader, judges what the automated checks can’t, and writes it up. That is skilled work, and it is priced for what it is. Some of those hours go to finding things a tool also finds: missing alt text, unlabelled fields, low contrast, a focus outline someone turned off.
An overlay pays for your traffic. The plans above rise with visits or page views, though a script on the page doesn’t change the site’s own code, which is what a demand letter is about. In 2025 the FTC ordered accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its tool could make any website compliant (FTC (opens in a new tab)). Our overlay guide has the details.
BearScan pays for a browser’s minutes. It opens your pages in a real Chrome, presses Tab through them, measures contrast from the colours it renders, tries the page at phone width, and has a model read your labels and error messages in any language. That runs in a cloud browser billed by the second, so what a report costs us is minutes of computing rather than days of someone’s time, and we charge per site rather than per visitor.
What the price doesn’t buy
- A guarantee. No automated tool can promise compliance; the Justice Department’s guidance (opens in a new tab) warns that “a ‘clean’ report does not necessarily mean everything is accessible.” BearScan never calls a site compliant, and says which checks need a person.
- Media. The scan doesn’t play video or audio, so captions and audio description are flagged for you to check rather than decided.
- Legal advice, or anyone to represent you.
When to pay for a manual audit
If you’ve received a demand letter or a lawsuit, if a buyer asks for a formal conformance report, or if your site is mostly video, a person’s audit is worth its price. It is worth more after an automated scan: fix what a tool can find first, and the auditor’s hours go to what only a person can judge.
Either way, see what your site has before you spend anything. The scan is free and needs no card.
Questions
How much does a website accessibility audit cost?
Accessible.org lists $1,250 to $2,750 for a manual audit, and WebAIM's AIM report starts at $500. An automated report such as BearScan's is $49 per site. They don't buy the same thing: a manual audit includes a person testing with assistive technology.
Is a $49 accessibility report too cheap to trust?
Judge it on your own site rather than on the price: the scan is free, and it shows every problem it found and where before you pay anything. What it can't tell you, it says, rather than calling your site compliant.
Why do overlay widgets cost more as my site grows?
accessiBe and UserWay price their plans by monthly visits or page views, so the bill follows your traffic. The accessibility problems a claim is about are in your site's code, and they don't grow with your visitor count.