Distill.io is the power user's change detector. It runs either in your own browser — free, private, and as often as you like — or in its cloud, where the limits and the bill begin. The trade-off between those two modes is the whole review.
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Is Distill.io worth it?
The local browser extension is one of the best free tools in this category and worth installing regardless. The cloud service is capable but its check allowances are modest for the price, and the interface asks more of you than most competitors. Worth it if you value control and privacy over convenience.
Distill.io watches web pages for changes and alerts you when they happen. Its distinguishing feature is that it can do this in two entirely different places: locally in your browser via an extension, or remotely in its cloud.
Local monitoring is free, keeps everything on your machine, and can reach pages behind a login because it uses your existing browser session. The obvious limitation is that it only runs while your browser is open.
Cloud monitoring runs whether your machine is on or not, which is what most people actually need — and that is where the plans, check limits and pricing appear.
It gives you more control over what counts as a change than almost anything else in this category.
The browser extension monitors pages on your own machine at no cost and with no data leaving it. For personal watching, this is hard to beat and rarely acknowledged by competitors.
Because local monitoring uses your own browser session, it can watch pages that require authentication without you handing over credentials. Very few hosted tools can do this at all.
Select elements visually or by CSS/XPath, then apply conditions — alert only if a number drops below a threshold, or if text matches a pattern. This is the power-user feature that keeps people on it.
Choose which layer to compare. Source comparison in particular catches changes that never appear visually.
Watch lists sync between browsers and the cloud service, so local and remote monitoring are not entirely separate worlds.
Email, push, SMS on some tiers, webhooks and integrations, with per-watch control over what fires.
Free locally, metered in the cloud. Cloud plans are priced by how many checks you consume, so frequency drives cost here too.
| Mode | Price | Monitors | Runs when browser closed? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local extension | $0 | Generous | No | Private, can reach logged-in pages |
| Cloud free | $0 | A handful | Yes | Low check allowance |
| Cloud paid | From ~$8/mo | Scales by tier | Yes | Check allowance is the real limit |
Monitoring vendors change plan limits and prices frequently and without announcement. Every figure here carries a "verify on their site" caveat and you should take it seriously before making a decision on cost.
Distill.io beats us on two things we simply do not do: local, private monitoring in your own browser, and pages behind a login. If either matters, install the extension — it is free and it is good.
For cloud watching, the difference is the metering. Our plans give you a number of watched pages and an interval that runs indefinitely, rather than a check allowance to spend, and the same account also covers uptime, certificates, domains, heartbeats and status pages. We are also considerably more opinionated: fewer knobs, faster setup, and noise filtered out by default rather than configured away.
Every recorded change is compared word by word and kept with a before-and-after image. This is the real output, shown with worked example data.
Price fell from $49 to $39, and an annual discount was added.
The item is available again and the basket button returned.
A new subprocessor was added in another jurisdiction.
The free plan sends to one email address. Every paid plan adds the chat and webhook channels below, with 2 to 10 destinations depending on the plan. However many alerts you receive, the price does not change — nothing here is metered or charged per alert.
There are no voice calls and no SMS. If a phone call at 3am is a hard requirement, say so before you subscribe — we would rather tell you now than refund you later.
The browser extension for local monitoring is free and generous. Cloud monitoring has a limited free tier and paid plans from roughly $8/month. Verify current allowances on their site.
Local runs inside your browser: free, private, able to reach logged-in pages, but only while the browser is open. Cloud runs on their servers whether your machine is on or not, and is where check limits and pricing apply.
Yes, in local mode, because it uses your existing browser session. This is one of its genuine advantages — most hosted tools cannot do this without you sharing credentials.
Yes, and it is one of the better implementations. You can alert only when a number crosses a threshold or text matches a pattern, rather than on any change at all.
No. It is a content change detector. Availability, certificates and domain expiry need a separate tool.
Yes — the conditional alerting suits it well, since you usually want to know when a price drops below a number rather than every time it moves. Frequency is limited by your cloud check allowance.
Steeper than most. The power comes from selectors and conditions, and getting a watch exactly right takes some fiddling. That is a fair trade if you want the control, and a poor one if you do not.
Local monitoring uses your real browser, so yes by definition. Cloud rendering depends on the plan and configuration — verify on their site for your intended use.
Last updated August 2026 · Written by Amit Gupta, founder of MonitoringDaddy
Free plan, no card. For private local monitoring, Distill's extension is genuinely better and free.