LaunchAudit vs Lighthouse
Lighthouse is the audit engine built into Chrome DevTools and the thing PageSpeed Insights runs underneath. It is excellent, free, and already on your machine — and it is a developer tool, which is both its strength and the reason most site owners never run it twice.
What Lighthouse is good at
Stated first, and stated properly. If this section were not here, nothing below it would be worth reading.
- Already installed in every Chrome browser; nothing to sign up for.
- Open source, scriptable, and runnable in CI.
- The performance diagnostics are the most detailed available anywhere for free.
- Its accessibility audit, powered by axe, is genuinely thorough.
Where they differ
| Aspect | Lighthouse | LaunchAudit |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is written for | Developers. The output assumes you know what a main-thread task is. | The person who owns the site, whether or not they wrote it. |
| Secrets and exposed files | Out of scope by design. | A primary category. |
| Fixing things | Tells you what failed and links to documentation. | Writes the fix, including a version you can paste into Cursor, Lovable or Bolt. |
| Keeping watch | Runs when you run it. | Re-checks on a schedule and emails you when something breaks. |
Use Lighthouse if…
If you are a developer who wants deep performance diagnostics and a CI integration, Lighthouse is free, open source and better at that job. Use it.
Use LaunchAudit if…
If nobody on your side is going to open DevTools and read a waterfall — or if the thing you are worried about is what leaked rather than what is slow.
Settle it in a minute
Both are free to try. Run ours on your site and see whether it finds something the other one did not — that is a more useful answer than any comparison table, including this one.