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changedetection.io Review

Worth it

Should I use changedetection.io?

Best and simplest way to monitor websites for changes, change detection, website checker, webpage change monitoring and webpage change detection tool - with alerts and notifications! - changedetection.io

· 1 month ago

Buy if you need to watch pages for price drops, restocks, or content edits — the free self-hosted version or $8.99/mo hosted plan covers it. Skip it if you need downtime/uptime monitoring or enterprise SLAs; that is a different tool category.

Confidence

Medium. Based on 20+ public sources including GitHub, Opensource.com, SourceForge, and third-party comparisons; no aggregate review rating or named corporate customers found.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support qualityNo support evidence in sources
  • Security posture

Pricing

Free

Self-hosted (open source)

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes
Hosted cloud$8.99/month

Best for

  • Shoppers tracking restocks and price drops
  • Self-hosters
  • Journalists watching page edits
  • Devs wiring webhook alerts

Not for

  • Teams needing uptime/downtime monitoring — wrong tool class
  • Buyers requiring SLAs or enterprise support
  • Non-technical users on tricky sites unwilling to tinker

Gotchas - check before you buy

medium

Pricing confusion: official $8.99/mo, a third-party lists $6.99/mo for 50 URLs — verify current tiers

medium

Self-hosting isn't free in practice: updates, hosting, debugging are on you

medium

XSS CVE-2025-52558 patched July 2025 — keep self-hosted instances updated

low

Hosted entry tier reportedly caps at 50 monitored URLs

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free, open-source, and self-hostable
  • Hosted plan $8.99/mo — claims half the price of rivals
  • Alerts via Discord, Telegram, Slack, email, webhooks
  • Built-in restock detection for single product pages
  • ~30k GitHub stars, actively maintained

Cons

  • Hard to track data not in RSS feeds, like some prices and stock
  • No public security page found
  • Self-hosting adds real maintenance: updates, hosting, troubleshooting

Sources & method

- 10 sources - One patched XSS (CVE-2025-52558, July 2025); no security page found.

official x2review x5security x2news x1
  • XSS vulnerability CVE-2025-52558, Patched in the July 2025 release alongside ARMv7 and JSON DB fixes.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • Free

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Free self-host; $8.99/mo claims half competitors' price
  • Ease of use: 4/5. Reviewed as simple; awkward sites take setup
  • Feature depth: 4/5. Proxies, restock detection, many notification channels
  • Support quality. No support evidence in sources
  • Security posture: 3/5. One patched XSS CVE; no public security page
  • $8.99/mo Starting price Hosted cloud plan; self-hosting is free
  • Yes Free tier Open-source, self-hosted version
  • ~30k GitHub stars Per March 2026 coverage

Pricing

Self-hosted (open source)

Free

  • Full monitoring and alert features
  • You host and maintain it

Hosted cloud

$8.99/month

  • Hosted proxies included
  • Official support included

Security

One patched XSS (CVE-2025-52558, July 2025); no security page found.

  • XSS vulnerability CVE-2025-52558Patched in the July 2025 release alongside ARMv7 and JSON DB fixes.⁷

What users say

Users call it simple, capable, and effectively free; the recurring complaint is tracking data that isn't cleanly structured.

“ChangeDetection.io checks websites so you don't have to.”
Awesome F/OSS review
“a simple yet highly capable, open source solution for website change detection and notification”
Opensource.com
“it is difficult to track information that is not included in the RSS feed, such as product prices and stock”
Gigazine review
Full analysis

Based on 20+ public sources including GitHub, Opensource.com, SourceForge, and third-party comparisons; no aggregate review rating or named corporate customers found.

Free, open-source website change monitoring; great for restock and price alerts. Skip it for uptime/SLA-grade enterprise monitoring.

Methodology

Based on 20+ public sources including GitHub, Opensource.com, SourceForge, and third-party comparisons; no aggregate review rating or named corporate customers found.

Read how a report is made.

Sources

  1. changedetection.io GitHub repositorygithub.com
    official
  2. Restock detection guidechangedetection.io
    official
  3. Security pagechangedetection.io
    security
  4. Get change alerts from any website with this open source toolopensource.com
    review
  5. A review of changedetection.io, a free, self-hostable monitoring toolgigazine.net
    review
  6. Notify Me vs. changedetection.io: Monitoring Showdownnotify-me.rs
    review
  7. Feature release update (CVE-2025-52558 patch)reddit.com
    security
  8. Best Open-Source Website Change Detection Toolspagecrawl.io
    review
  9. The 7 Best Free Website Change Detection Tools in 2026visualping.io
    review
  10. Self-Hosted Website Change Monitoring with 30k Starsdarkwebinformer.com
    news

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