Question 1

Is Crawly really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes - completely free to download and use with no URL limits. There is no licence fee, no trial period and no 500-URL cap.

Question 2

What Mac versions does Crawly support?

Accepted Answer

Crawly is a universal build that runs natively on both Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) and Intel Macs. macOS 12 Monterey or later is recommended.

Question 3

Is there a Windows or Linux version?

Accepted Answer

Not yet - Crawly is currently Mac-only. Windows and Linux versions are on the roadmap.

Question 4

How does the MCP integration work?

Accepted Answer

Crawly runs a local MCP server that exposes your crawl data to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf and any other MCP-compatible AI coding tool. Once configured, you can ask questions like 'which pages are missing a meta description?' directly in your terminal.

Question 5

How do I set up the MCP integration?

Accepted Answer

Add Crawly to your MCP config file with a single line, then run a crawl. Full setup instructions are on the MCP page at getcrawly.com/mcp.

Question 6

Does Crawly crawl behind a login?

Accepted Answer

Not currently - Crawly crawls publicly accessible pages. Authenticated crawling is planned for a future release.

Question 7

How many pages can Crawly crawl?

Accepted Answer

There is no hard limit. Crawly can crawl thousands of pages - performance depends on your machine and the target server's response time.

Question 8

Can I save and revisit crawls?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Crawly saves every crawl locally so you can reopen, compare and diff them at any time.

Question 9

How does crawl comparison work?

Accepted Answer

After running two or more crawls on the same site, you can diff them to see added, removed and changed URLs with field-level differences for title, H1, status code, indexability and more.

Question 10

What SEO issues does Crawly detect?

Accepted Answer

Crawly auto-categorises issues including missing/duplicate titles, missing/duplicate H1s, missing meta descriptions, missing alt text, 4xx/5xx errors, redirect chains, non-indexable pages, mixed content, hreflang errors, Schema.org validation errors, and missing Open Graph tags.

Question 11

Is my data sent anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. Crawly runs entirely on your Mac. Crawl data is stored locally and never sent to any server. The MCP integration only exposes data to the AI tool running on your machine.

Question 12

How do I report a bug or request a feature?

Accepted Answer

Open an issue on the GitHub releases repo or contact us via the support page at getcrawly.com/support. We read everything.

Frequently asked questions