Why free graders exist
Every well-known free grader is operated by a company that sells something else — ad management software or agency services. The grader's business job is to produce a score alarming enough that you book the call. That doesn't make the score fake, but it shapes the product: broad enough to run on any account, shallow enough to finish in seconds, and always ending at a contact form.
What a free score can't tell you
A grade like “C+ on account structure” gives you nothing to do on Monday morning. The questions that actually matter are specific: which keywords spent money without converting, which conversion tag stopped firing in March, which negative keyword is blocking a search that used to convert. Answering those requires reading your keyword-level and conversion-action-level data and naming names — which is exactly what Advestigate's findings do, along with a conservative dollar estimate of what each problem costs per month.
There's also the incentive question. Advestigate has no agency arm and no management suite to upsell: the report is the product, access is read-only, and if your account comes back healthy, the report says so.
| Feature | Advestigate | Free graders |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $25/mo | Free |
| Names exact keywords, campaigns, tags | ||
| Estimated monthly cost per finding | ||
| Conversion tracking integrity checks | Rarely | |
| Re-run weekly to track progress | Usually limited | |
| Ends with a recommendation, not a sales call | ||
| Good first taste of what auditing is |
A fair sequence, honestly
Run a free grader first — it's free. If it flags nothing and your results feel fine, stop there. If it alarms you, or if your spend is over roughly $1,000/month (where a single leaking setting costs more than a year of Advestigate), run a real audit before you either panic or sign an agency retainer based on a lead magnet's score.