Comparison · Inspeccia
Inspeccia vs Lighthouse: technical audit vs AI visibility
Lighthouse and Inspeccia sometimes show up in the same conversation, and almost never should. Lighthouse is a technical audit tool that lives inside the browser and tells a developer what to fix on a page. Inspeccia tells a marketing team whether artificial intelligence names them. One looks at the engine; the other, at reputation. Confusing them is like asking a mechanic whether your brand is well known.
What Lighthouse is
Lighthouse is an open-source Google tool. Per its documentation, it audits a page across categories like performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO, and returns scores with concrete recommendations. It runs in Chrome DevTools, via the command line or inside continuous-integration pipelines. It's essentially a developer tool: it keeps a site technically healthy.
Its SEO category, to be clear, is a list of basic checks: that there's a title, a meta description, that the page is crawlable, that the text is legible. Technical hygiene, not a ranking strategy.
What Inspeccia does
Inspeccia doesn't audit code. It audits your presence. It asks ChatGPT real questions from your industry and reports whether it mentions you, how it describes you and which competitors it places you against. There's no technical score involved; there's a qualitative answer about your place in AI's mental map.
A site can score perfectly across all four Lighthouse categories and not appear in any ChatGPT answer about its sector. It's not a contradiction: Lighthouse measures how the page is built, not how the model perceives you.
Side by side
| Lighthouse | Inspeccia | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Technical audit (dev) | Visibility analysis (marketing) |
| Evaluates | Performance, accessibility, practices, basic SEO | Whether AI names you and how |
| Output | Scores and technical recommendations | Qualitative answer, as a customer sees it |
| Typical user | Developers, QA | Marketing, brand owners |
| Best for | Technical page health | Presence in AI answers |
Lighthouse answers "is my page well built?". Inspeccia answers "does AI name me?". Both questions matter, but they're different, and one doesn't answer for the other.
Start a free analysis and see the question Lighthouse doesn't answer.
When to use which
Use Lighthouse during development and maintenance: before a launch, on every deploy, to avoid performance or accessibility regressions. It's free, integratable and lives where developers work.
Use Inspeccia when the question is about the market: whether your brand appears in AI answers, how the model describes you, who it compares you against. That information doesn't come out of a technical audit, however perfect.
The healthy way to think about it: Lighthouse keeps the house in order; Inspeccia tells you whether anyone knows your house exists. You need both.
Frequently asked questions
What is Lighthouse?
Lighthouse is an open-source Google tool that audits a page across several categories: performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO. It runs inside Chrome DevTools, via the command line or in continuous integration, and returns scores and technical recommendations. It's a developer tool, built to diagnose a page's technical quality.
Does Lighthouse's "SEO score" measure the same as Inspeccia?
No. Lighthouse's SEO check verifies technical basics: that the page has a title, meta description, valid tags, that it's crawlable, that the text is legible. It's a hygiene checklist. Inspeccia measures something entirely different: whether ChatGPT actually names you when someone asks about your category. Passing the Lighthouse check doesn't mean appearing in any AI answer.
Does Lighthouse evaluate AI visibility?
No. Lighthouse wasn't designed for that; it measures the technical quality of an individual page. Visibility in answer engines depends on signals Lighthouse doesn't observe: brand mentions, presence in the corpus, how the model describes you. For that you need a tool like Inspeccia.
Is it worth using both?
Yes. Lighthouse to ensure the page is technically sound —fast, accessible, crawlable—, which is a necessary base. Inspeccia to see whether that base translates into presence in AI answers. One solves technical quality; the other, visibility. They're different layers of the same goal.
Sources
- Google / Chrome for Developers — "Lighthouse overview" (categories and how it works). Official documentation.
- Inspeccia — How the AI-visibility analysis works. inspeccia.com.
The page is healthy. Does AI name you?
In every analysis we ask ChatGPT three real questions about your industry and report how it describes you and which competitors it places you against. A technical audit doesn't reach that far.