Honest Comparison
SEO Pulse vs
Detailed SEO Extension
Both are free, well-regarded Chrome extensions for on-page SEO checks. Here's an accurate, feature-by-feature look at where they're similar and where they differ.
SEO PulseVS
Detailed
Giving credit where it's due
What Detailed SEO Extension does well
Detailed has built a loyal following of roughly 450,000 weekly users and a 4.9-star rating for good reason. Built by Glen Allsopp of Detailed.com, it's a genuinely free, fast, no-nonsense tool with some features SEO Pulse doesn't have.
User agent switching
Detailed lets you change your browser's user agent to view a page as Googlebot or other agents, directly from the Advanced tab. SEO Pulse doesn't currently offer this.
People Also Asked extraction
Detailed can extract the "People Also Asked" box from Google search results, including multiple nested levels, as a research tool. SEO Pulse doesn't have a comparable feature.
Duplicate content finder
Highlight any text on a page and Detailed will help you find duplicates of it elsewhere on the web — useful for catching scraped or copied content. SEO Pulse doesn't include this.
Hreflang reciprocal checking exists in both tools. Detailed's Schema > Hreflang tab checks whether a referenced page also references the current page back — a feature SEO Pulse also has. Worth noting clearly since it's a less common feature most extensions skip entirely.
The core difference
Tab-by-tab review
vs one prioritised list
Both tools surface a similar range of on-page data. The difference is what happens after the data loads.
Detailed SEO Extension
1Open the Overview tab — read title, meta, robots, canonical
2Click into Headings tab — manually scan H1–H6 structure
3Click into Schema tab — review structured data visually
4Click into Schema > Hreflang — check alternates separately
5Click into Images tab — scan for missing alt text yourself
6Click into Links tab — review nofollow / dofollow manually
7You decide what's actually wrong — no ranking, no fix hints
SEO Pulse
1Open the extension — Issues Tab shows everything found, ranked
2Critical issues listed first, with plain-English fix suggestions
3Each issue links directly to the relevant tab for more detail
4That's it — no tab-hopping required to know what to fix first
Feature-by-feature
Full comparison
| Feature | SEO Pulse | Detailed SEO Extension |
|---|---|---|
| Core philosophy | ||
| Prioritised Issues list (severity-ranked) | ✓ 85+ checks | — manual tab review |
| Plain-English fix suggestions | ✓ | — |
| Page-type-aware checks (product, blog, etc.) | ✓ | — |
| On-page basics | ||
| Title, meta description, robots tag | ✓ | ✓ |
| Canonical detection | ✓ + outside-head, multiple | ✓ |
| Heading hierarchy view | ✓ | ✓ visually indented |
| X-Robots-Tag header check | ✓ via GET request | ✓ |
| Rendering & JavaScript | ||
| SSR vs JS-rendered badge per signal | ✓ unique | — reads rendered DOM only |
| Raw HTML vs rendered DOM side-by-side | ✓ JS Compare | — |
| Schema & structured data | ||
| Schema viewer | ✓ | ✓ |
| Schema validation (errors/warnings) | ✓ | — viewer only, not a validator |
| JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa all detected | ✓ all three | JSON-LD focus |
| Hreflang | ||
| Hreflang tag viewer | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reciprocal return-link check | ✓ | ✓ |
| HTTP status per alternate URL | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crawlability & indexability | ||
| Robots.txt parser + URL tester | ✓ interactive tester | link to file only |
| AI bot access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) | ✓ 20 bots checked | — |
| Sitemap discovery | ✓ recursive, 3 levels deep | guessed common paths only* |
| Server probes (404, www, HTTPS, case) | ✓ 5 live probes | — |
| Redirects | ||
| Redirect chain tracking | ✓ real-time icon badge | — |
| 301 vs 302 distinction in chain | ✓ | — |
| Other | ||
| Core Web Vitals display | ✓ + CrUX Vis link | — |
| Google Search Console data in-popup | ✓ | — |
| Scripts & tracking tool detection | ✓ 21 tools | — |
| Export as HTML report | ✓ | — |
| User agent switching | — | ✓ |
| People Also Asked extraction | — | ✓ |
| Duplicate content finder (highlighted text) | — | ✓ |
| Right-click shortcuts to Ahrefs/Moz/SEMrush | ✓ | ✓ |
| Image export as CSV | via full report export | ✓ dedicated button |
| Price & access | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Account required | No | No |
| Feature gating / paid tier | None | None |
*Per independent third-party review: Detailed's robots.txt and sitemap shortcuts guess common file locations rather than confirming they exist — if the guessed path is wrong, the link leads to a 404.
The three biggest gaps
Where the difference actually matters
No prioritised issue list
Detailed presents accurate data across separate tabs — Overview, Headings, Schema, Images, Links — but you have to click through each one and decide for yourself what's actually wrong and what to fix first. There's no severity ranking and no consolidated list.
No SSR vs JS detection
An independent review of Detailed explicitly notes it's "limited for dynamic frameworks (data may need refresh on Next.js / React sites)" because it reads the rendered page, not the raw server HTML. SEO Pulse fetches both and shows you exactly which signals are JavaScript-dependent.
No AI bot visibility
Detailed has no feature for checking AI crawler access — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and others aren't covered at all. SEO Pulse checks 20 bots against your robots.txt for the current URL.
FAQ
Common questions
Is Detailed SEO Extension free? +
Yes. Detailed SEO Extension, built by Glen Allsopp of Detailed.com, is completely free with no paid tier, no account requirement, and no feature gating — it's been free since launch and the developer has publicly committed to keeping it that way. SEO Pulse takes the same approach: full feature set from install, no account, no paywall.
Does Detailed SEO Extension have an Issues Tab? +
No. Detailed presents data across separate tabs — Overview, Headings, Schema, Images, Links, and Advanced — and you review each tab individually to spot problems yourself. It doesn't rank issues by severity or generate a consolidated, prioritised list. SEO Pulse's Issues Tab surfaces 85+ checks in one severity-ranked list with plain-English fix suggestions.
Does Detailed SEO Extension detect AI crawlers like GPTBot? +
No, Detailed SEO Extension does not include AI bot access detection. SEO Pulse's AI Bot Access feature checks robots.txt against 20 crawlers including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot, and more, showing allowed or blocked status for the current page URL.
Does Detailed show what search engines see vs what JavaScript renders? +
No. Detailed SEO Extension reads the page as your browser renders it and does not distinguish between server-rendered (raw HTML) and JavaScript-rendered content. An independent review notes this as a known limitation on dynamic frameworks like React and Next.js. SEO Pulse fetches the raw HTML separately from the rendered DOM and labels every key signal — title, canonical, schema, hreflang — as SSR or JS-rendered. See the JS Compare feature for the full side-by-side comparison.
Does Detailed check robots.txt against specific crawlers? +
Detailed links to the robots.txt file (guessing common locations rather than confirming the path) but doesn't parse rules per crawler or offer an interactive URL tester. SEO Pulse's Robots.txt Checker parses the file with syntax highlighting and lets you test any URL against the rules for any user-agent.
Should I use both extensions?
There's no conflict in running both — Detailed's user agent switching and People Also Asked extraction are genuinely useful features SEO Pulse doesn't currently have. Many SEOs run a small stack of complementary extensions rather than relying on just one.
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