The best Distill.io alternative

No. You recreate the URLs you monitor today in SiteGauge, map any Distill.io selectors to SiteGauge ignore rules and keyword alerts, and reconnect your alert channels. Most teams migrate in under an afternoon, and you can run both tools in parallel for a cycle to confirm SiteGauge catches the same changes before you cancel Distill.io.

Your Distill.io history stays in Distill.io until you cancel, so export anything you need to keep first. SiteGauge starts a fresh baseline the moment you add a page and builds its own change history from there, with retention that scales by plan.

Yes, and it is the safest way to migrate. Point both tools at the same pages for one or two billing cycles, compare what each catches, then cut over to SiteGauge once you are confident nothing is missed.

Yes, particularly if you want AI change summaries, importance scoring, reliable always-on cloud monitoring of bot-protected sites, and team governance with audit-grade evidence (Business and Enterprise plans). Distill.io remains the better pick if you specifically need a native mobile or desktop app or cross-browser extensions, which SiteGauge does not offer (SiteGauge does ship a Chrome extension and native Discord, Teams and SMS alerts).

Yes. Distill.io's free plan includes 25 total monitors, but only 5 of those are cloud monitors that run 24/7; the other 20 are local monitors that only work while your browser is open with the extension active. Its free plan allows 1,000 checks a month at a 6-hour minimum interval, with email alerts and up to 100 phone push alerts a month. For comparison, SiteGauge's free plan covers 5 monitors with 150 checks a month at a daily interval, email alerts and AI summaries.

Distill.io has a free tier, then Starter at $15/month (50 monitors, 10-min interval), Professional at $35/month (150 monitors, 5-min interval), and Flexi at $80+/month (500+ monitors, 2-min interval) with usage-based overage. Annual billing gives a 20% discount.

Partly. Distill.io added AI change summaries in 2026 with a basic AI importance flag, but they are limited to the top Flexi and Enterprise plans and cloud monitors only, and it still offers no change categorisation and no smart noise filtering. On its lower tiers you rely on conditions and triggers alone, whereas SiteGauge provides categorised AI summaries with importance scores across its paid plans.

Partly. Distill.io's API is available on its Enterprise plan only, on request, while its broad integrations (Slack, Discord, MS Teams, webhooks, SMS, and push notifications) and JSON/CSV import-export are on regular plans. SiteGauge matches much of this with a read/write API, a Chrome extension, and native Slack, Teams, Discord, Telegram, SMS and webhooks; Distill.io's genuine edge is its wider platform reach, namely native mobile and desktop apps, which SiteGauge does not offer.

To a degree: Distill.io's local monitors run in your own browser using your existing session and IP, which lets them see logged-in or block-restricted pages, but those monitors only run while your browser is open. SiteGauge instead uses cloud residential rendering to handle bot-protected sites without needing a local browser.

No. Distill.io keeps only a shallow version history (around 10-20 changes on paid tiers) and offers no tamper-evident, signed audit-evidence export. SiteGauge retains up to 3 years of history on Business and offers tamper-evident audit evidence (Ed25519 signature checkable on a public verify page, plus an RFC-3161 timestamp when the timestamp authority is reachable; Business and Enterprise plans), which matters for compliance use cases.

Partially. Flexi plans add team sharing and centralised billing, and the Enterprise plan adds an Admin Console with Admin and User roles, shared workspaces and per-workspace edit access. There is no read-only viewer role, and plans below Enterprise have no role model. SiteGauge provides Owner/Admin/Member editor roles plus unlimited free read-only viewers, which is better suited to sharing results widely across a team or with clients.

Yes, and for most switchers it is the biggest change of habit. Instead of opening a raw diff to work out what happened, you get a plain-English AI summary that says what changed, categorises it (pricing, messaging, product or SEO), and scores how important it is, with before/after visual and text diffs underneath. Routine, low-importance edits are still logged, without spending an AI pass on them.

Yes. If you tracked pricing pages in your old tool, point SiteGauge at the same URLs: it detects changes to prices, plan structure, and CTA copy, then sends an alert with an AI summary explaining exactly what shifted, plus before/after screenshots so you can see the change visually.

Yes, and it is the easiest way to test a migration: the free plan ($0) monitors up to 5 pages with daily checks, AI change summaries, and email alerts plus an RSS change feed, no credit card required. Recreate a handful of your monitors on it, compare results side by side, and upgrade only when you are ready to move the rest.

Often. If bot-protected pages kept failing in your previous tool, test them early in your migration: when an ordinary fetch is blocked, SiteGauge can switch to a residential browser, which reaches many pages behind Cloudflare or Akamai. It is not guaranteed: some heavily protected sites still block capture, and these renders use a monthly allowance on each self-serve plan. Most monitors never need this, so it is reserved for the pages that do.

Yes, on the Business and Enterprise plans, and it is usually a capability you gain in the move rather than carry over. SiteGauge exports signed, tamper-evident evidence of a change, using an Ed25519 signature (with an RFC-3161 trusted timestamp attached when the timestamp authority is reachable), packaged as a downloadable bundle with a public verification page that anyone can check against our published key. That makes it a fit for compliance and legal teams.

Email alerts and an RSS change feed are on every plan, including Free. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, Google Chat, webhooks, SMS and Google Sheets are available on Standard and above, so you can reconnect the channels you used before rather than changing how your team hears about changes. Zapier (via webhooks today; native app pending directory listing) and n8n (via webhooks) reach thousands of other apps, and the built-in MCP server connects your AI assistant.

Yes. SiteGauge ships an MCP server, so AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor can connect to your account, create monitors, read change history and pull exactly what changed on a page. During a migration that is a quick way to recreate monitors: connect once by signing in, with no API key to copy and paste, then ask your assistant to create monitors for the pages on your old list.

Yes. SiteGauge importance-scores every change, and you can set an alert filter so you only hear about the changes that matter, such as a competitor's price or pricing-page edit, while routine tweaks are still logged quietly. If alert noise was part of why you are leaving your current tool, set the filter up as you migrate rather than after.

Paid plans include a set number of editors plus unlimited free read-only viewers. If your previous tool charged per seat, this usually changes who you invite: bring the whole team or your clients in as free viewers, and pay only for the people who edit monitors.

Yes. Unlimited free viewers on every paid plan, tag-scoped digests and up to 3 workspaces on Pro (10 on Business), and competitor monitoring make SiteGauge well suited to agencies moving client monitoring across from another tool, and to reporting results back without paying per seat for people who only view.