SiteGauge vs Distill.io

It depends on what you weigh. Distill.io may carry a lower headline price, while SiteGauge bundles AI change categorisation and unlimited free viewer seats into its paid plans, and adds tamper-evident audit evidence on Business and Enterprise. If you would otherwise pay per seat or bolt on compliance tooling, SiteGauge is often better value despite a higher sticker price. The pricing tables above break down each tier.

We have not run a head-to-head test, so we will not claim one. SiteGauge checks with a four-stage pipeline, can capture desktop and mobile views, and can switch to a residential browser when a plain fetch is blocked, which reaches many bot-protected pages but not every one. For how Distill.io handles this, see the feature table and scorecard above, taken from our research on Distill.io's own pages. The surest test is to point both tools at the same pages for a few weeks.

Both monitor web pages for changes, but Distill.io is browser-extension-first with broad platform reach (extensions, mobile, desktop) and a strong visual selector, while SiteGauge is an AI-first cloud platform that categorises changes, scores their importance, and shows before/after visual diffs. Distill.io tells you that something changed; SiteGauge focuses on telling you what changed and whether it matters.

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.

SiteGauge is generally better for competitor monitoring because it adds AI categorisation (pricing/messaging/product/SEO), importance scoring, and before/after screenshot comparisons that speed up triage. Distill.io can reliably flag changes on competitor pages but leaves all interpretation to you.

Distill.io often wins for simple, single-user monitoring on a budget, thanks to its $15/month entry tier, free local monitors, browser extension, and mobile apps. SiteGauge is built more for AI-driven intelligence and team use than for the lightest hobbyist monitoring.

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.

SiteGauge is generally better for SEO teams because it natively tracks SEO/metadata changes, supports whole-domain sitemap-based monitoring, and bundles free SEO tools. Distill.io can monitor any element you manually select but has no dedicated SEO-metadata or domain-wide layer.

Yes. When a change is significant, SiteGauge reads it with AI and produces a plain-English summary that says what changed, categorises it (pricing, messaging, product or SEO), and scores how important it is, alongside before/after visual and text diffs. Routine, low-importance edits are still logged, without spending an AI pass on them. This is its core differentiator versus tools that only show a raw diff.

Yes. Point SiteGauge at any pricing page and it detects changes to prices, plan structure, and CTA copy, then sends an alert with an AI summary explaining exactly what shifted. It captures before/after screenshots so you can see the change visually.

Yes. SiteGauge has a free plan ($0) that monitors up to 5 pages with daily checks, AI change summaries, and email alerts plus an RSS change feed, no credit card required. Paid plans add more monitors, faster cadence, and team integrations.

Often. When an ordinary fetch is blocked, SiteGauge can switch to a residential browser, which reaches many bot-protected 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. 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. Most monitoring tools do not offer independently verifiable evidence, which makes SiteGauge 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. You can also connect Zapier (via webhooks today; native app pending directory listing) and n8n (via webhooks) to reach thousands of other apps, and drive everything from your AI assistant through the built-in MCP server.

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, without leaving your assistant. You connect once by signing in, with no API key to copy and paste.

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. It cuts alert noise sharply without hiding anything.

Paid plans include a set number of editors plus unlimited free read-only viewers, so you can share monitoring across a whole team or with clients without paying per seat for people who only need to view results.

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 managing monitoring across many clients and reporting results back to them.