A question came up on Twitter regarding how Googlebot sees a page and whether the fetch and render within Google Search Console is the most accurate or if using the cache view from within the Google search results is more accurate.

John Mueller answered, and he said that fetch and render will be the closest.  If Googlebot can see it in the render, then it would be indexable.

He does add that cache is simply the straight HTML, so it doesn’t necessarily render the page properly, as it would if fetch & render is used.

Of course, this doesn’t work if the site is not your own.  In those cases, you are stuck with either using Google’s cache to check, or use a Googlebot spoofer, although be aware that some sites do block those spoofing Googlebot.  But cache is an easy way to spot check pages, especially competitor pages, when you do not have access to the account in Google Search Console.