AccessGuard vs Pope Tech for agency audits
Pope Tech monitors many sites with the WAVE engine and is popular in higher education. AccessGuard focuses on audits you send to clients, with a fix for each finding.
Which one fits
Pope Tech suits organisations monitoring many sites of their own on a schedule. AccessGuard suits agencies that audit client sites and report to each client.
- Choose Pope Tech if
- You monitor many sites of your own organisation on a schedule.
- You want the WAVE engine your team already knows.
- You also need course content checks in Canvas.
- Choose AccessGuard if
- You audit sites for clients and send each one a report under your agency's name.
- You want a suggested code fix for each finding.
- You want WCAG 2.2 checks from axe-core plus AccessGuard's own rules.
Side by side
| What you need | AccessGuard | Pope Tech |
|---|---|---|
| Automated WCAG checks Pope Tech uses WAVE; AccessGuard uses axe-core plus its own checks | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduled scans Daily, weekly or monthly on AccessGuard paid plans | Yes | Yes |
| Crawls many pages In AccessGuard you choose the pages to audit | No | Yes |
| Every site in one list | Yes | Yes |
| Suggested code fix per finding AI fixes on AccessGuard paid plans | Yes | No |
| Canvas course content checks A separate Pope Tech product | No | Yes |
| Public pricing and a free tier | Yes | Yes |
Where Pope Tech is better
- Monitoring at scale
- Pope Tech scans many pages and sites on a schedule and groups them for large organisations.
- Trusted engine
- It is built on WAVE from WebAIM, which many accessibility teams already use.
- Education focus
- It checks Canvas course content and offers training popular with universities.
Pricing
Prices change. Check each vendor's page before you decide.
- AccessGuard
- Free audit of any page without an account, and 3 free credits when you sign up. Plans from €14.99 a month. See pricing
- Pope Tech
- Pope Tech listed a free plan for one website up to 25 pages, and paid website plans from $25 a month billed annually, on 13 September 2026. Source (Pope Tech pricing, opens in new tab)
Questions
Is AccessGuard a Pope Tech alternative for universities?
Not for central monitoring of thousands of pages today, since AccessGuard doesn't crawl sites. It fits agencies that build and audit sites for institutions and want the key pages rescanned on a schedule.
Do the tools find the same issues?
They use different engines and rules, so results overlap but aren't identical. Neither can test every WCAG criterion automatically.
Can I brand reports for my clients?
AccessGuard reports carry your agency's name at the top and name the client. That is the core of how agencies use it.
Related
- AccessGuard vs WAVE
Use WAVE while you build and review a page. Use AccessGuard when you audit client sites repeatedly and need a report you can send.
- AccessGuard vs axe DevTools
Use axe in your development workflow and tests. Use AccessGuard to audit live client sites and hand clients a report.
- Color contrast checker
Measures text and control colors on the rendered page against the WCAG 2.2 AA ratios, and flags links that differ from text by color alone.
- Headings and landmarks checker
Checks that pages have a clear heading outline, a main landmark and a way to skip repeated navigation.
- Form labels checker
Finds inputs without labels, placeholders used as the only label, and fields that don't say what they collect.
Try AccessGuard on a client page
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