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How to Monitor Any Website for Changes — Free Setup Guide

#webdev #tutorial #productivity #api

Knowing when a webpage changes can save you hours, catch opportunities, and protect your business. Here's how to set up automated monitoring for free.

Why Monitor Websites?

Competitive Intelligence — Your competitor changes pricing at 2 AM. You find out 3 weeks later. Meanwhile, you've lost deals. Automated monitoring catches it in hours.

Job Hunting — Top companies post on their own careers page days before LinkedIn. Monitor the page, apply first, stand out.

Product Restocks — Limited GPUs, sneakers, consoles. Being 5 minutes early is the difference between "Add to Cart" and "Sold Out."

Legal/Compliance — Terms of service change without notice. Automated screenshots create a timestamped paper trail.

The Simple Approach

Most monitoring tools use a 4-step process:

  1. Capture — Screenshot the target URL
  2. Compare — Pixel-diff against the previous capture
  3. Filter — Ignore noise (ads, timestamps, rendering differences)
  4. Alert — Notify you with before/after visuals

Set Up Free Monitoring in 60 Seconds

Step 1: Get an API Key 

# Free at https://api.16761.tech/signup
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Step 2: Create a Monitor 

curl -X POST https://api.16761.tech/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://competitor.com/pricing",
    "name": "Competitor Pricing Page",
    "frequency": "daily",
    "email": "alerts@yourcompany.com"
  }'
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Step 3: That's It

The system checks automatically. When a change >0.5% is detected (filtering out rendering noise), you get an alert with a screenshot.

Advanced: Monitor Specific Sections

Don't want alerts every time a sidebar ad rotates? Use CSS selectors:

{
  "url": "https://competitor.com/pricing",
  "selector": "#pricing-table",
  "frequency": "hourly"
}
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This monitors only the pricing table, ignoring everything else on the page.

Web Dashboard

Don't want to use cURL? There's a web UI at api.16761.tech/watch where you can create and manage monitors visually.

What It Costs

Plan Monitors Check Frequency Price
Free 2 Daily $0
Pro 20 Hourly $9/mo
Business 100 Every 15 min $29/mo

For comparison: Visualping charges $14-199/mo, ChangeTower charges $29-249/mo.

Common Monitoring Setups

SaaS founder tracking 3 competitors:

  • Monitor each competitor's pricing page (daily)
  • Monitor their changelog/blog for feature releases (daily)
  • Cost: Free (6 monitors fits in 2 accounts, or $9/mo for Pro)

Job seeker targeting FAANG:

  • Monitor Google, Apple, Meta careers pages (filtered by role)
  • Cost: Free (2 monitors)

Sneaker reseller:

  • Monitor 15 product pages on Nike, Adidas, New Balance
  • Hourly checks to catch restocks fast
  • Cost: $9/mo Pro

Get started: api.16761.tech/signup

Landing page with full details: 16761.tech/watch

Questions? Drop a comment.

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