If you are reading this, you are probably looking at AccessiBe's pricing page and wondering whether the same outcome is possible for less money and with fewer ethical compromises. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is the rest of this post.
We will compare AccessiBe to AriaWAI on five things buyers actually care about: price, features, honesty about what overlay widgets can deliver, install effort, and what happens when you want to cancel.
What AccessiBe is, briefly
AccessiBe sells an "AI-powered" accessibility overlay. You add a script tag to your site, and a floating button gives visitors controls for font size, contrast, dyslexia fonts, and similar adjustments. AccessiBe also markets a backend service that claims to remediate accessibility issues automatically.
AccessiBe has been the subject of several lawsuits and a 2022 FTC settlement over deceptive marketing claims about its AI's ability to deliver legal compliance. The product itself works as a visitor-facing toolbar. The marketing around it is the problem.
Side-by-side comparison
| | AccessiBe | AriaWAI | | --- | --- | --- | | Entry price | $49 per month, billed annually | £0 forever, or £29 per month | | White-label price | $490 per month | £29 per month | | Multi-site agency price | $490 per site per month | £299 per month for 25 sites | | Toolbar controls | 30+ claimed | 14 (the ones visitors actually use) | | Install method | One script tag | One script tag | | WCAG scan included | Add-on | Built in on every paid plan | | VPAT export | Not available | Built in on Pro plan | | Compliance claim | "WCAG and ADA compliance" | None. Overlays cannot deliver compliance and we say so | | FTC settlements | Yes (2024, $1M) | Never | | Free tier | Trial only | Forever free for one site | | Data residency | United States | European Union (Germany) |
The price difference is the headline. AccessiBe's white-label tier costs more in one month than AriaWAI's white-label tier costs in fourteen months.
On the compliance claim
AccessiBe's home page once read "make your website ADA and WCAG compliant in 48 hours." It does not say that anymore. The FTC fined them $1 million in January 2024 for that claim, among others. The settlement requires AccessiBe to stop saying overlays deliver compliance.
This is the most important thing to understand about overlay widgets. No overlay widget can make a website WCAG compliant. Compliance lives in your underlying HTML, your image alt text, your form labels, your focus order, your ARIA usage, and your keyboard navigation. A floating button that adjusts font size cannot fix any of those things. It is a user preference layer on top of whatever is already there.
The widget is still useful. Visitors who need bigger text get bigger text. Visitors who prefer high contrast get high contrast. That is real value. It is not, and never was, compliance.
AriaWAI says this on the home page and in the FAQ. We say it because it is true and because pretending otherwise is what gets vendors fined. If you need a more thorough explanation, read Do Accessibility Overlay Widgets Make Your Site WCAG Compliant?.
Features that matter
The 30-versus-14 control count is misleading. Most overlay vendors pad their feature lists with toggles users do not engage with. AriaWAI ships the controls that real visitor analytics show people actually click:
- Font size and weight
- High contrast and dark mode
- Dyslexia-friendly font
- Text-to-speech
- Pause animations
- Large cursor and keyboard focus ring
- Letter and word spacing
- Highlight links and headings
- Reading line guide
- Image alt-text tooltips
- Colour blindness filters
- Mute autoplay sounds
Two features matter more than the rest, and AccessiBe charges separately for both:
Built-in scan reports. Every paid AriaWAI plan includes a WCAG scan that flags real issues in your markup, sorted by severity. AccessiBe charges a separate add-on. This is the actual path to compliance: see what is broken, fix it. The widget is a comfort layer for users while you work through the list.
VPAT and accessibility statement generator. The AriaWAI Pro plan generates a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template based on your scan results. Procurement teams ask for these. AccessiBe charges for VPATs separately or routes the request to a paid services team.
Install effort
Both products install with one <script> tag. The integration time is identical. The difference shows up later.
AriaWAI's widget is coded to fail open. If our license API is unreachable, the toolbar still loads and visitors are not blocked. AccessiBe's widget has had multiple incidents where outages caused widgets to break on customer sites.
AriaWAI also publishes a brand override attribute on the Agency plan, so the floating button reads "Accessibility by [your agency]" instead of "AriaWAI" or "AccessiBe." AccessiBe charges $490 a month for the equivalent.
What happens if you cancel
This is the part nobody covers in comparison posts. Cancelling AccessiBe requires emailing support. Refunds within the annual term are not standard. Several customer reports describe two-to-four-week cancellation timelines.
AriaWAI cancels in your dashboard with one click. You keep the service until the end of your billing period. The 30-day refund applies to first-time paid signups for any reason, no email required.
When AccessiBe might actually be the right choice
There are two cases where we would not argue you should switch:
- You already have a multi-year AccessiBe contract you cannot exit. Wait until renewal.
- You need a US-based vendor for procurement reasons and your buyer specifically refuses to work with a UK or EU-hosted SaaS. AriaWAI hosts in the European Union.
In every other case, the financial argument for switching is strong, and the integrity argument is stronger.
How to switch
If you want to try the comparison yourself:
- Sign up for the free AriaWAI tier (app.ariawai.com/signup). No card.
- Replace the AccessiBe
<script>tag on your site with the AriaWAI tag from your dashboard. - Run the built-in scan report on your homepage. AccessiBe charges separately for this.
- Cancel your AccessiBe subscription before the renewal date.
Most teams switch in under fifteen minutes.
The bottom line
You can keep paying $590 a month for a product whose vendor has been fined for false advertising, or you can pay £29 a month for a product whose vendor refuses to make claims it cannot back up. The choice is yours.
AriaWAI is built on the premise that honest software wins eventually. We think you have the same instinct, which is why you are reading a comparison post and not just clicking the renewal email.