8 min read
Website Change Tracker vs changedetection.io
The short answer
changedetection.io is free, open source, and genuinely good. If you are technical, already run a server, and are happy to maintain it, use it and do not pay anyone. Website Change Tracker is a managed cloud tool, so there is nothing to host, patch, or watch over. You are not really choosing between two feature sets. You are deciding whether you want to run a piece of software or have someone run it for you.
Who wrote this, and what that means
Website Change Tracker is our product, and we are comparing it to a free one. That is a conflict of interest, so here is the short version up front: if you are technical and will self-host, changedetection.io is the better answer and you should not give us money.
Everything we say about changedetection.io can be checked against its own repository and documentation, which are linked in the sources at the end of this page.
This is a hosting decision, not a feature comparison
Most comparisons in this category try to turn a hosting choice into a feature war, because a feature war is easier to write and lets the vendor win it. That is not honest, so we will not do it.
changedetection.io is open source software that you run yourself. Point it at as many pages as your server will handle and it costs nothing beyond the server. You own the data, you can read the code, and you can change it when it does not do what you want. For a certain kind of user that combination is unbeatable, and no managed product is going to out-compete free and modifiable.
What you take on in exchange is operations. The container has to stay up. It has to be upgraded. When it breaks you find out either because you were watching it, or because you quietly stopped receiving alerts and did not notice. That second failure is the expensive one, because a monitor that has silently died looks exactly like a page that has not changed.
That is the whole trade. Everything below is detail.
What each one actually costs
The sticker prices mislead in both directions, so it is worth being concrete.
| Website Change Tracker | changedetection.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Free plan, then Starter at $30/mo, Pro at $150/mo, Business at $350/mo | Free and open source |
| Infrastructure | None. We run it | A server. A small VPS covers modest use |
| Setup | Paste a URL | Docker, configuration, notification wiring |
| Ongoing work | None | Upgrades, uptime, and checking that the monitor still runs |
| Who holds the data | We hold the snapshots | You do, entirely |
| Extensibility | What we ship | The source code |
The honest accounting: changedetection.io is free in money and not free in attention. Whether that is a good deal depends on what your attention is worth and whether you enjoy this kind of work. Plenty of people genuinely do, and for them it is not a cost at all.
Where changedetection.io is the better choice
We would rather say this clearly than have you find it out after paying us.
- You already run a server, and one more container is nothing to you.
- You want to watch a large number of pages, and would rather spend on hardware than on a subscription.
- The data needs to stay on infrastructure you control, whether for policy or preference.
- You want to change how it behaves, and the source code is right there.
- You are comfortable being the person who notices when the monitor stops.
Where we are the better choice
The case for paying us is narrower than the previous version of this page pretended. It comes down to who is responsible when the monitor fails.
If the pages you watch matter to your work, the monitor is part of your operations, and a self-hosted monitor is one more thing that can fail without telling you. We run it, we notice, and when it breaks it is our problem rather than your Tuesday evening.
Then there is setup. You paste a URL and describe the change you care about in plain English, such as 'alert me when the price drops'. No Docker, no selector to write, nothing to wire together. Whether that is worth 30 dollars a month depends on how you value an evening.
Last is the record. Every check is saved with a timestamp, so showing what a page said on a given date is a lookup rather than an excavation. You can build that on top of changedetection.io. It is simply more of the same work.
How to decide, in one question
Ask yourself honestly: in six months, will you still be maintaining this?
If the answer is yes and the thought does not bother you, self-host. changedetection.io is good software, it is free, and we would rather you used it than paid us for something you did not need.
If the honest answer is that you would let it rot, and the pages you are watching are ones your work depends on, then the maintenance was never really free, and a managed tool is the cheaper option. Ours, or somebody else's.