If you have tested a page on GTmetrix in the last couple of years, you already felt the change. Testing used to take one click. Now it takes an account, and sooner or later, a plan that costs more than it used to.
A lot of people who used GTmetrix for years are quietly looking for something else. Not because the tool got worse at measuring speed, but because using it got more expensive and more restricted at the same time. If that is why you are here, this post explains what actually changed, and walks through AuditSpeed, a free alternative that we built and that we think does the job just as well, sometimes better.
What changed with GTmetrix
Since December 1, 2023, GTmetrix no longer lets you run a test without an account. You have to sign up with a verified email before you get a single report. That alone pushed a lot of casual users away, people who just wanted to check a page once in a while without registering anywhere.
The free plan got tighter too. Report history is limited, test allowances are capped, and reports only stick around for about a week before they disappear. If you wanted to compare a page's speed today against last month, you often could not, because last month's report was already gone.
Then there is the price. On the same date the account requirement kicked in, GTmetrix raised prices across every paid plan:
- Solo went from $13 to $14.50 a month, and from $128 to $148 a year.
- Starter went from $25 to $28 a month, and from $255 to $285 a year.
- Growth went from $50 to $55.50 a month, and from $510 to $568 a year.
- Enterprise went from $530 to $600 a month, and from $5,400 to $6,120 a year.
A cheaper Micro plan was added at $5 a month, but it only gives you 25 tests a week and a single monitored slot, which runs out fast if you manage more than one site. Test allowances on the bigger plans went up a little, but so did the starting price, so the actual value did not move much.
Why people are searching for an alternative right now
None of this is a disaster on its own. But add it up and a few groups of people start feeling it directly. Agencies that test client sites every week hit the new caps fast. Freelancers who used to run a quick anonymous check before a client call now have to log in first, and often hit a paywall right after. Small business owners who only need to check their site once in a while do not want to commit to a monthly subscription for that.
That is why searches like "gtmetrix alternative," "gtmetrix too expensive," and "free website speed test" have picked up. People are not unhappy with what GTmetrix measures. They are unhappy with how much friction and cost it now takes to get that measurement.
What AuditSpeed actually measures
AuditSpeed runs your page through its own real Chromium browser rather than leaning on Google Lighthouse the way many tools do. That matters because it means the results come from an independent measurement, not a wrapper around someone else's engine, so you get a second, transparent opinion rather than the same number repackaged.
Each test covers the Core Web Vitals that actually affect how Google and real visitors judge your site:
- LCP, Largest Contentful Paint, how long the biggest visible element takes to load.
- TBT, Total Blocking Time, how long the page stays too busy to respond to a click or tap.
- CLS, Cumulative Layout Shift, how much content jumps around while the page loads.
- Speed Index and TTFB (Time to First Byte) on top of that.
You get 24 individual audits with a plain A to F grade, a waterfall chart, filmstrip frames, and a full page video recording so you can actually watch the page load instead of guessing from numbers alone. Test history lets you compare today's result against a previous one, so you can tell whether a change you made actually helped.
AuditSpeed next to GTmetrix
- Testing without an account. GTmetrix removed this in 2023. AuditSpeed still lets you run up to 5 tests an hour and 10 a day with no sign up at all, full report included.
- Free account limits. A free AuditSpeed account bumps that to 10 tests an hour and 30 a day, plus one monitored page and API access, at no cost.
- Entry paid plan price. AuditSpeed Pro is $12 a month. GTmetrix Solo, its cheapest real plan, is $14.50 a month for less room to work with.
- What the paid plan actually gives you. Pro on AuditSpeed includes 60 tests an hour, 300 a day, 25 monitored pages, hourly tracking, and 10 API keys, well beyond what GTmetrix Solo or Starter offer at a similar or higher price.
- Fixes, not just findings. AuditSpeed hands you copy paste code for the issues it finds, with support for nginx, plain HTML, and Next.js among others. You are not left guessing how to act on the report.
- No surprise renewals. Pro does not auto renew and AuditSpeed does not store your card details, so there is no subscription quietly running in the background.
What you get without paying anything
You do not need to create an account to use AuditSpeed at all. Head to the site, enter a URL, and you get a full report: grade, Core Web Vitals, waterfall, filmstrip, and a video of the page loading. That covers most people who just need an occasional check.
If you test more often, a free account is worth setting up. It raises your limits, keeps your report history so you can track progress over time, gives you one monitored page with scheduled checks, and unlocks API access if you want to pull results into your own dashboard or script.
If you need more room
Agencies and anyone managing several sites will outgrow the free tiers eventually. That is what the $12 a month Pro plan is for: 25 monitored pages with hourly tracking, webhook and email alerts when something breaks, and enough on demand tests that you are not watching a counter all day.
Reading the report without getting lost in jargon
A grade alone does not tell you what to do next, which is where a lot of speed tools stop being useful. AuditSpeed treats the grade as a starting point rather than the whole answer.
- If LCP is slow, the report tells you which specific element is the largest contentful thing on the page and usually why it is slow to load, often an unoptimized image or a render blocking script.
- If TBT is high, it points to the scripts that are keeping the main thread busy long enough that clicks feel delayed.
- If CLS is bad, it shows you exactly which element is shifting and when, so you are not scrolling through a wall of code trying to find the culprit.
Then, instead of leaving you to translate that into a fix yourself, it gives you the actual snippet to paste into your config or your code. That is the part most testing tools skip, and it is the part that actually saves time.
Where Buinsoft fits in
AuditSpeed is built by the team behind Buinsoft, a Prague based AI and software consultancy. We built it because we test client sites constantly and got tired of the same friction everyone else ran into. If speed testing has become more of a hassle than it should be, give auditspeed.net a try, no account required for your first check.
If you want help beyond a single report, whether that is fixing what a test uncovers or building something bigger around your site's performance, you can read more on our AI integration consultancy page, email us at info@buinsoft.com, or reach out through our contact page.
