10 Best Free Tools to Monitor Website Changes

Website monitoring tools, are tools that let you keep an eye on changes to your website or other websites on the internet.

Web page change monitoring tools are at the top of their game in today’s constantly shifting digital world, where web pages are much more dynamic and can change several times per day.

I regularly use web monitoring tools in my daily life for a few tasks:

1. Monitoring my websites
2. Monitoring my competitors’ websites
3. Finding the latest online bargains and discounts

Let me explain in a little more detail.

As a blogger and website owner, I use web page monitoring tools to track my websites to make sure there are no technical issues.

I have written before about tools that help you monitor if your website is down, but other problems can arise when running a website too.

These types of tools help me to relax knowing if there’s an accidental or deliberate change to my website, such as caching issues or if I am hacked and my website is defaced, I will be notified straight away – automatically.

If my website is broken or down then I am losing out on potential customers, these tools help me to mitigate this risk by checking if there are any changes to my website.

These tools provide are also great for monitoring my competitors. I can be notified straight away if they change their sales pages, redesign their website, or edit the copy on a blog post.

Finally, I use these types of tools to help me in my personal life too, with the recent global supply chain issues I have used these applications to let me know when out-of-stock items are back in stock.

If you have ever tried to buy an in-demand product from a website or you have been waiting for there to be a sale on something you have had your eye on for a while you can use web page monitoring tools to help you grab it.

Journalists can use them to monitor social media profiles or company websites for stories too.

Whatever you want to accomplish with these web page monitoring tools, I’ve got you covered.

I’m going to show you some free tools for monitoring changes on a variety of websites.

Visualping

Visualping is one of the best free website monitoring tools. You can use it to monitor changes to any website, including your own or your competitor’s websites.

Visualping is a great tool for keeping track of your website’s progress because it is very easy to use and its base-level plan is free. To use Visualping, simply enter the URL of the web page you want to monitor into the Visualping dashboard. You can then choose how often you want Visualping to check for changes to the web page.

You can also choose to receive an email notification when a change is detected or you can view the changes in the Visualping dashboard. All of their features are included in a clean and simple interface, making it very easy to keep track of changes.

According to its website, 85% of Fortune 500 companies use Visualping and more than 1.5 million people worldwide use it every day to perform 5 billion visual inspections.

• Individual plans begin at $14/month for 25 checks per day or 1,000 checks per month. It also offers Pay Per Use alternatives.
• Business plans start at $140/month for 500 checks per day. With their Business edition, you may send your contacts 1-to-1 invitations to visit your workplace and access the software. You can create 5 invites for coworkers to each workspace. In addition to that onboarding and training are also offered.

Visualping offers a 30% discount on all personal and business plans when paid annually and reimburses all unused months.

Pros

• The free plan allows you to send two checks every day or 65 per month, whereas the premium plans double this limit.
• Visual-compare monitors the visual features of a page, and it offers alerts in easy-to-read pictures with highlighted modifications.
• Excellent proxy service
• This extension enables users to do things like log in to password-protected sites, receive alerts for particular terms, and turn on/off JavaScript.
• Dedicated account manager and additional perks on business plans like extra services, demonstrations, and training for employees.

Cons

• The free tier does not come close to the amount of data that some of its rivals listed below provide.

Wachete

Wachete has a lot more to offer than many of the other content monitoring solutions on this list. Its most distinguishing feature is that it can monitor password-protected sites as well as dynamic and JavaScript-heavy websites, which puts it ahead of simpler tools that can only handle straightforward static pages.

You can monitor modifications on pages that require a click or an input, track URLs from various locations, and even keep an eye on specific elements within a page rather than the whole thing. Wachete provides real-time or summary notifications via email as well as alerts through its mobile application, so you can stay on top of changes whether you are at your desk or on the go.

It can record and archive web content and historic modifications for up to six months, which is genuinely useful if you need to go back and track when a specific change was made. The free plan allows you to monitor five web pages, which is enough for most casual users who just want to keep an eye on price drops or job listings.

Pros

• Monitors password-protected and JavaScript-heavy websites, which many competitors cannot.
• Can track specific elements on a page rather than monitoring the whole thing.
• Archives up to six months of historical changes.
• Mobile app notifications keep you updated on the go.
• Free plan allows monitoring of five pages with no time limit.

Cons

• Fewer integrations available compared to tools like Distill.io or PageCrawl.io.
• The free plan is quite limited for anyone monitoring more than a handful of pages.
• The interface is not as polished or intuitive as some of the other tools on this list.

Versionista

Versionista is a solid and reliable tool for monitoring both static and dynamic websites. It supports web pages, PDFs, and other documents, and stands out for its ability to create filters to skip irrelevant content changes, which cuts down on false positives and keeps your notifications meaningful.

You can adjust monitoring frequency, toggle JavaScript support, set a proxy address, and more when creating a monitor. Versionista displays colour-coded comparisons to highlight exactly what has changed, making it easy to spot modifications at a glance. It also supports team collaboration, with administrators able to manage users and assign access to projects.

Prices for monitoring start at $19 per month for 20 URLs and 1,860 browser crawls per month. If you want to add team members and generate personalised reports, Versionista’s plans begin at $139 per month.

Pros

• Colour-coded change comparisons make it easy to spot exactly what has changed.
• Useful filters let you skip irrelevant changes and cut down on notification noise.
• Supports PDFs and documents as well as standard web pages.
• Team collaboration features built in at higher tiers.
• Enterprise Managed Services available for larger organisations needing bespoke support.

Cons

• The free plan is limited to 5 URLs and 465 browser crawls per month, with no support for advanced features like page area selectors or regex.
• No middle-ground pricing between the $19 solo plan and the $139 team plan, which is a big jump.
• The interface is less user-friendly than some competing tools, particularly Visualping.
• No mobile app for on-the-go notifications.

Fluxguard

Fluxguard is a powerful website monitoring tool with one feature that sets it apart from everything else on this list: built-in Google Lighthouse Audits. This means you can not only track changes to a web page but also evaluate how those changes affect your site’s SEO and performance scores, which is a genuinely useful addition for bloggers and website owners who care about search rankings.

Beyond that, Fluxguard lets you automate actions like submitting forms, set up filters for notifications, use proxy networks for monitoring from different locations, and send alerts via Slack and webhooks as well as email. It is a more technically capable tool than some of the others here, and it shows.

The free plan is one of the more generous on this list, allowing you to monitor 50 pages per month with support for three versions per page and immediate or daily alerts. Paid plans start at $99 per month for monitoring up to 10,000 pages at five-minute intervals, with team plans starting at $199 per month.

Pros

• Built-in Google Lighthouse Audits let you track SEO and performance impact alongside content changes.
• Generous free plan covering 50 pages per month.
• Slack and webhook integrations for flexible alerting.
• Supports proxy networks for monitoring from different locations.
• Business plan includes unlimited archives, compliance assistance, and concierge onboarding.

Cons

• The interface is not as beginner-friendly as tools like Visualping or ChangeTower.
• Paid plans are on the expensive side, starting at $99 per month.
• The advanced features have a learning curve that may put off casual users.
• No mobile app notifications.

Changetower

ChangeTower is a clean, cloud-based website monitoring tool that lets you keep an eye on up to three URLs for free. It can detect both visual changes and code-level modifications, and also checks a website’s availability so you get alerted if a page goes down entirely rather than just changes.

You can monitor keywords, track changes to page appearance, and receive real-time email notifications when something is detected. ChangeTower stores up to three months of historical data on the free plan, and you can export that data to a spreadsheet if you need to analyse it further. For teams, it supports shared notifications so multiple people can be alerted when a change is spotted.

ChangeTower is one of the simpler tools on this list, which makes it a good starting point if you are new to website monitoring and just want something straightforward to get going with.

Pros

• Clean and straightforward interface, ideal for beginners.
• Monitors both visual changes and underlying code changes.
• Includes availability monitoring so you are alerted if a page goes down.
• Free plan covers three URLs with three months of historical data.
• Shared team notifications available.

Cons

The paid plans are less competitively priced given the feature set on offer.

The free plan is limited to just three URLs, which is fewer than most competing tools.

Lacks the advanced filtering and customisation options of tools like Versionista or Distill.io.

No mobile app for push notifications.

Fewer integration options compared to PageCrawl.io or Distill.io.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is not technically a website monitoring tool in the same sense as the others on this list, but it deserves a mention because it is completely free, requires no setup beyond a Google account, and millions of people who could benefit from it have never thought to use it this way.

Google Alerts monitors the web for new content matching keywords you specify and sends you an email when it finds something. The most obvious use case is brand monitoring. If you set up an alert for your own name or your website’s name, you will be notified whenever someone mentions you in a new piece of content, whether that is a blog post, a news article, or a forum discussion.

For bloggers and website owners this is genuinely useful. You can monitor mentions of your brand, keep tabs on what is being written about your competitors, track discussions around topics you cover on your blog, or get alerted when new content appears around your target keywords.

It is worth being clear about what Google Alerts cannot do. It will not monitor a specific page for changes the way that Visualping or Distill.io can. It monitors the broader web for new indexed content rather than watching a URL for modifications. But for brand monitoring, competitor tracking, and staying on top of your niche, it is a powerful free tool that takes about two minutes to set up.

Pros

• Completely free with no usage limits.
• No software to install, just a Google account and a few minutes to set up.
• Great for brand monitoring, competitor tracking, and niche topic alerts.
• Sends alerts directly to your email inbox on a schedule you choose.
• Covers news, blogs, forums, and web content across the whole of Google’s index.

Cons

• Cannot monitor a specific URL for page-level changes, which is what most tools on this list do.
• Alert quality can be inconsistent, with some relevant mentions missed and occasional irrelevant results included.
• No dashboard or archive of past alerts beyond what arrives in your inbox.
• Limited customisation compared to dedicated monitoring tools.
• Works best as a complement to one of the other tools on this list rather than a standalone solution.

Distill.io

It’s a feature-rich tool for tracking website changes. It has cloud as well as local monitors, unlike the other tools, which makes it unique. It also supports automating processes such as signing in, exporting data, utilizing custom proxies, monitoring document changes such as PDFs, and managing versions.

For individuals, the most basic plan is $15 per month with a 10-minute cloud tracking interval. The Flexi plan begins at $80 per month and has customizable restrictions if you want a more comprehensive solution.

Pros

• With the generous free plan, you may utilize 5 monitors in the cloud and 20 monitors on your local machine every 6 hours and 1000 checks monthly.
• Complex conditions allow the merger of numerous criteria to create more sophisticated filtering, which can be used to generate alerts without producing false positives.
• It does include unlimited phone push notifications, unlike other plans (paying subscriptions).

Cons

• Unlike Visualping and Versionista, Distill.io does not allow for team collaboration.

Pagecrawl.io

Another useful solution for monitoring web page changes is PageCrawl.io, which I discovered recently. In terms of insights, PageCrawl.io enables the tracking of numerous elements on a webpage.

You may share a tracked page with friends or coworkers, visualize findings as graphs, send notifications to email or Slack, export data, and much more using this tool

For monitoring 100 pages or URLs with 15-minute tracking ability, PageCrawl.io offers monthly plans starting at $8. For an enterprise plan, you can start at $30 per month for tracking 500 pages with a 5-minute page tracking capacity.

The most generous free plan, allows tracking 16 pages (or URLs) with one check per page each day, or 480 free checks per month.

Google Sheets integration helps you keep track of your monitored URLs.

Zapier integration allows you to connect to other applications and automate your monitoring process – a feature that many of the previously mentioned tools lack.

Hexowatch

Hexowatch is one of the most capable website monitoring tools to have emerged in recent years, and it is a strong contender for the top spot on this list. What makes Hexowatch stand out is the sheer number of ways it can monitor a page. Most tools track visual or code changes and leave it at that. Hexowatch offers seven different monitor types, meaning you can choose exactly what kind of change you want to be alerted about rather than being flooded with notifications every time a banner ad rotates.

The seven monitor types are visual, HTML, keyword, technology, availability, sitemap, and RSS. This level of granularity is genuinely useful. If you only want to know when a competitor changes the copy on their pricing page, you set up a keyword monitor. If you want to know when they add or remove a technology from their stack, there is a monitor for that too.

Hexowatch also integrates with a wide range of third-party tools including Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets, and email, so you can route alerts wherever suits you best. It supports proxy monitoring for checking pages from different geographic locations, and it keeps a full archive of every change it detects so you can go back and review the history at any point.

The free plan is fairly limited, offering five monitors checked every 24 hours. But the paid plans are competitively priced and represent good value given the feature set on offer. Plans start at around $14 per month for more frequent checks and a higher number of monitors.

Pros

• Seven different monitor types give you far more control over what triggers an alert than most competing tools.
• Full change archive lets you review historical changes at any time.
• Integrates with Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets, and more.
• Proxy monitoring allows you to check pages from different locations.
• Competitively priced paid plans relative to the feature set.

Cons

• The free plan is quite limited with only five monitors checked once every 24 hours.
• The range of options can feel overwhelming if you just want a simple setup.
• Some of the more advanced monitor types require a bit of time to configure correctly.
• Occasional false positives have been reported, particularly with visual monitoring on pages that change dynamically.

Little Warden (Honourable Mention)

It is worth being upfront about one thing: Little Warden is not a free tool. Unlike most of the other options on this list, Little Warden is a paid service from the start. But it earns its place here because it is one of the most comprehensive website monitoring tools available, and it is specifically designed with bloggers, SEOs, and website owners in mind rather than general users.

Where most monitoring tools tell you when a page has changed, Little Warden tells you exactly what kind of change has occurred across more than 30 specific checks. These include things that could seriously damage your site’s search rankings or security if left unnoticed, such as:

• Domain Name Expiration
• SSL Certificate Expiration
• Title Tag Changes
• META Description Changes
• Robots.txt Changes
• Canonical Tag Changes
• Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Changes
• Malware Detection
• XML Sitemap Changes
• IP Address Changes

For anyone running a serious website where an unnoticed technical change could cost you traffic or rankings, Little Warden is well worth the investment. Plans start at $34.99 per month for monitoring 20 URLs.

Pros

• Monitors over 30 specific technical checks that other tools simply do not cover.
• Particularly valuable for SEOs who need to catch technical changes before they affect rankings.
• Malware detection adds an extra layer of security monitoring.
• Email alerts are clear and specific about exactly what has changed.
• Purpose-built for website owners and SEO professionals rather than general users.

Cons

The range of checks, while comprehensive, may be more than most bloggers need.mail whenever something on your site changes. Prices start at $34.99 per month for monitoring 20 URLs for changes.

No free plan at all, which puts it out of reach for casual users.

Starting price of $34.99 per month is higher than most of the other tools on this list.

Focused specifically on your own websites rather than monitoring competitor sites.

Less useful for the price-tracking and competitor monitoring use cases described at the start of this article.