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Should I Use changedetection.io?

changedetection.io·Analyzed 9 hours ago··Based on 10 sources

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!

Worth it

Worth it

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.

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

Confidence: Medium

$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

Value for money5

Free self-host; $8.99/mo claims half competitors' price

Ease of use4

Reviewed as simple; awkward sites take setup

Feature depth4

Proxies, restock detection, many notification channels

Security posture3

One patched XSS CVE; no public security page

Pros

  • Free, open-source, and self-hostable
  • Hosted plan $8.99/mo — claims half the price of rivals¹
  • Alerts via Discord, Telegram, Slack, email, webhooks
  • Built-in restock detection for single product pages²
  • ~30k GitHub stars, actively maintained10

Cons

  • Hard to track data not in RSS feeds, like some prices and stock
  • No public security page found³
  • Self-hosting adds real maintenance: updates, hosting, troubleshooting

Gotchas

  • mediumPricing confusion: official $8.99/mo, a third-party lists $6.99/mo for 50 URLs — verify current tiers
  • mediumSelf-hosting isn't free in practice: updates, hosting, debugging are on you
  • mediumXSS CVE-2025-52558 patched July 2025 — keep self-hosted instances updated
  • lowHosted entry tier reportedly caps at 50 monitored URLs

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

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.

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

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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.

Sources

  1. official
  2. Restock detection guidechangedetection.io
    official
  3. Security pagechangedetection.io
    security
  4. review
  5. review
  6. review
  7. security
  8. review
  9. review
  10. news

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