What should I use to monitor websites for changes and updates?

If you want to monitor websites for changes and updates, here are the main options depending on what you need:

1. Simple website change monitoring tools

Best for: non-technical users, getting email alerts when a page changes.

Popular tools:

• Distill.io
• Visualping
• Wachete
• ChangeTower
• PageCrawl

These can watch:

• Entire pages
• Specific sections of a page
• Text changes
• Visual changes
• Login-protected pages in some cases

2. RSS feeds / built-in update feeds

Best for: blogs, news sites, forums, and pages that already publish feeds.

Use:

• An RSS reader like Feedly, Inoreader, or Netvibes
• The site’s own RSS/Atom feed if available

This is usually the cleanest way to track updates without scraping.

3. Custom scripts or crawlers

Best for: developers or people monitoring many pages.

Use:

• Python scripts with requests, BeautifulSoup, or playwright
• Scheduled jobs with cron, GitHub Actions, or serverless functions
• Compare page hashes or parsed content to detect changes

This gives you more control, but requires setup.

4. Browser-based visual monitoring

Best for: pages where layout matters, or content loads dynamically.

Tools:

• Visualping
• Distill.io
• Wachete

These are good if text-only checks miss changes caused by JavaScript or rendered content.

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Quick recommendation

• Just want alerts on a few pages? Use Distill.io or Visualping
• Want feed-style updates? Use RSS + Feedly/Inoreader
• Need a custom solution at scale? Use a scripted monitor

If you tell me:

• how many sites/pages you want to track,
• whether they require login,
• and whether you want email, Slack, or SMS alerts,

I can recommend the best tool for your exact use case.