The Distill.io alternative for monitoring whole sections
Built for sections, not single pages
- A section is one project, not a monitor per page: Distill’s plans count monitors, from 5 cloud monitors on the free plan to 500 and up on Flexi. A MeshArc project covers a site or a section through its sitemap, up to 5,000 pages a run on Starter and 50,000 on Growth.
- New pages are watched as they appear: Distill’s crawler can list a site’s pages and flag URLs added or removed, and you then add a monitor for each page to watch. Here a page published tomorrow is part of the next run.
- Noise is removed before comparing: consent banners, rotating widgets and “last updated” stamps never raise an alert, and a run that reached under 90% of the site holds its removals back.
- Changes as data, not only alerts: field-level diffs of titles, dates and prices, sent to Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat or email, and to one of 18 destinations.
Distill.io pricing and MeshArc pricing
Distill’s plans count monitors and checks. MeshArc’s count credits for the pages it reads, and a page that has not changed costs nothing.
| Distill.io | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 cloud monitors (25 with local ones), checked every 6 hours in the cloud | 1,000 credits once, 2 projects of up to 500 pages a run |
| Paid plans | Starter $15, Professional $35, Flexi from $80 a month | Starter $29, Growth $99, Scale $349 a month |
| What a plan counts | Monitors: 50, 150 or 500 and up | Credits for the pages read, by how they were read |
| Fastest cloud check | Every 10, 5 or 2 minutes, by plan | Hourly |
| Unchanged pages | Each check counts toward the plan’s cloud checks | Free |
What each one does
| Distill.io | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Check a page from your own browser | Yes, with local monitors in the extension | No: every check runs on our servers |
| Checks every few minutes | Yes, every 2 minutes on Flexi | No: hourly at most |
| SMS alerts | Yes, on paid plans | No |
| A whole section from its sitemap | Its crawler lists the pages; each watched page is a monitor | Yes, one project, every page compared each run |
| Changes delivered to a database or warehouse | By webhook | 18 destinations |
Where Distill.io is the better choice
If you watch a handful of pages and want to know within minutes, or need a page checked from inside your own logged-in browser, Distill is the better fit, and its free plan covers a few cloud monitors. MeshArc is for sections of hundreds or thousands of pages, checked hourly or daily, with the changes going into your data.
Move a site over, keep the fast ones
- Group your monitors by site: one project per site or section replaces a monitor per page.
- Use the sitemap for scope: new pages join the next run on their own.
- Connect your alerts: Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat, email or a signed webhook.
- Keep Distill for the fast ones: a page you need to hear about within minutes can stay where it is.
What teams watch with it
Comparing with someone else?
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Distill.io alternative?
For a few pages checked within minutes, Visualping and changedetection.io work much as Distill does. For whole sections of a site, with the changes sent to your database as well as your inbox, MeshArc.
Is Distill Web Monitor free?
Its free plan includes 5 cloud monitors, 25 counting local ones in the extension, with cloud checks every 6 hours and 1,000 cloud checks a month. Paid plans start at $15 a month. Figures from distill.io/pricing, read on 1 October 2026.
Can I monitor a website without a browser extension?
Yes. Distill’s cloud monitors run without your browser, and MeshArc has no extension at all: every check runs on its servers, on the schedule you set.
Can Distill monitor a whole website?
Its crawler can list a site’s pages and tell you when URLs are added or removed; watching what changes on those pages takes a monitor for each. MeshArc compares every page of a section on every run.
Watch a whole section at once
One project instead of a monitor per page.