Lighthouse CI
Lighthouse CI
Role
Lab-grade scoring tool — runs Google Lighthouse on the PR preview URL and reports the four pillars: Accessibility, Performance, Best Practices, SEO. Posted as a comment on every PR. Sits alongside axe-core and Pa11y as the three-tool a11y stack; its perf score also complements Vercel Speed Insights RUM (lab vs real-user).
Free tier
- Unlimited — Apache-2.0 OSS (
@lhci/cli,treosh/lighthouse-ci-actionfor GitHub Actions) - Hosted Lighthouse CI Server is free + self-hostable
- No account, no rate limit on the action itself
Card / subscription required?
NO. OSS, runs in the existing GitHub Actions runner.
How CI consumes it
- name: Lighthouse CI
uses: treosh/lighthouse-ci-action@v11
with:
urls: |
${{ env.PREVIEW_URL }}
${{ env.PREVIEW_URL }}/about
uploadArtifacts: true
temporaryPublicStorage: true
configPath: ./lighthouserc.json
// lighthouserc.json
{
"ci": {
"assert": {
"assertions": {
"categories:accessibility": ["error", { "minScore": 1.0 }],
"categories:performance": ["error", { "minScore": 0.9 }],
"categories:best-practices":["error", { "minScore": 0.95 }],
"categories:seo": ["error", { "minScore": 1.0 }]
}
}
}
}
A11y category is set to require 100 (1.0) — any violation
fails the PR.
What it catches (beyond axe + Pa11y)
- Score-based view (a11y score, not just pass/fail)
- Perf budget enforcement (LCP, TBT, CLS in a lab environment)
- SEO baseline (meta description, robots, hreflang)
- Best-practices category — HTTPS, console errors, deprecated APIs, PWA icons
Alternatives
- WebPageTest — broader, but free tier is rate-limited.
- Calibre — paid only.
- DebugBear — free 100 page audits/mo, similar function, paid past that.
Swap cost
Low — Lighthouse is the underlying tool everyone runs. Dropping the
treosh action and running @lhci/cli directly is a one-line change.
Why this is our pick
Free, OSS, posts the score directly as a PR comment so reviewers see deltas at a glance. Rounds out the three-tool a11y stack with a score view (axe + Pa11y give violations only). Its perf score also gives us a lab snapshot per PR — Speed Insights gives the real-user picture once shipped.