changedetection.io

What is changedetection.io?

changedetection.io is an open source tool that watches web pages and tells you when their content changes. You add a URL, optionally narrow it to a specific element with a CSS selector or XPath, and it re-checks on a schedule — showing a word-, line-, or character-level diff and firing a notification when something you care about moves.

What is changedetection.io best for?

People who need to know the instant a specific page changes: bargain-hunters tracking prices and restocks, data journalists watching public records, ops teams monitoring competitor pages, terms-of-service updates, or job and ticket listings. It’s built for content-change alerts on your own infrastructure, not uptime checks.

What can changedetection.io do?

• Detect content changes with word, line, and character-level diffs, plus trigger-text and ignore-text rules
• Target exactly what matters with CSS selectors, XPath, JSONPath/jq, regex, and a visual point-and-click selector
• Render JavaScript-heavy pages through a bundled Chrome/Playwright browser, including login and form-filling browser steps
• Track prices and product restocks, monitor JSON APIs, and watch PDF text, size, and checksums
• Send alerts to 85+ services through Apprise — Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, Matrix, ntfy, Microsoft Teams, and generic webhooks, with Jinja2-templated messages
• Summarize or filter changes with AI models (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, or self-hosted Ollama)
• Schedule checks by timezone and time-of-day, and route requests through proxies (including Tor and commercial proxy providers)

Where does changedetection.io fall short?

• It watches content, not availability — it is not an uptime or status-page monitor. For “is my site up and responding,” a health-check tool like Uptime Kuma fits better.
• JavaScript-rendered sites need the separate Playwright/Chrome browser container running alongside the app; the lightweight default fetcher only sees static HTML, so single-page apps and scripted pages fail until you wire up the browser.
• Noisy or frequently-updated pages can generate false alerts, so you often have to tune ignore-text, filters, and check intervals before notifications become trustworthy.

Is changedetection.io free?

Yes — the self-hosted version is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, with unlimited monitors; you only pay for the server it runs on (a small VPS is enough for many pages). The makers also run an official hosted plan at $8.99/month that includes a managed Chrome browser and proxies if you’d rather not run it yourself.

What does changedetection.io replace?

changedetection.io is a self-hosted alternative to Visualping and Distill. It does the same watch-a-page-and-alert-me job, but you run unlimited monitors on your own infrastructure instead of paying per monitor and handing the pages you track to a cloud service.

FAQ

Is changedetection.io open source? Yes. It’s released under the Apache 2.0 license, and the full source is on GitHub. The self-hosted edition is genuinely free with no monitor limits.

Can I self-host changedetection.io for free? Yes. Run it with Docker, Docker Compose, or pip on Linux, Windows, or an ARM device like a Raspberry Pi. For JavaScript-heavy pages, add the companion Playwright/Chrome browser container.

Is changedetection.io a good Visualping alternative? For technical users, yes — you get unlimited monitors, selector-based targeting, and full data ownership without per-monitor fees. If you want a polished cloud UI with zero setup and screenshot-based visual diffs, a hosted service like Visualping may suit you better.

What do I need to run changedetection.io? A machine with Docker (or Python for a pip install). Static text and HTML monitoring works out of the box; add the Playwright browser container for sites that need JavaScript rendering.