Distill.io is the veteran of web page monitoring. Its browser extension can watch almost anything — prices, stock, job boards, government pages — with visual element selection, and its cloud monitors keep checking after you close the laptop. For breadth of "watch this and tell me when it changes", Distill has few rivals.
The business model is a meter. Cloud checks are rationed by plan: Starter is $12/month, Pro $28/month, with monitor counts and check frequency both tiered — $144 to $336 a year, forever, to poll web pages. Hawkwatch moves the whole job onto hardware you already own: a $34 pay-once monitor with unlimited watchers, real headless Chromium, price-aware extraction and screenshot alerts. Here is the honest comparison.
What Distill does well
Distill has earned its decade of loyal users:
- The visual selector — point and click at any element in the extension; no CSS knowledge needed.
- Watches almost anything — not just shops: logins behind the extension, PDFs, feeds, arbitrary page regions.
- A real free local tier — the browser extension checks pages while your browser is open, at no cost.
- Mature alerting — email, SMS, Slack, webhooks, sound alarms, refined over many years.
If you need to monitor pages behind logins via your own browser session, Distill's extension approach handles cases a server-side tool cannot.
Where the subscription model hurts
The meter is the product. Free local monitoring only runs while your browser is open — which defeats the point of monitoring — and cloud plans ration both monitors and check frequency. Want more watchers or tighter intervals? Higher tier. $144/year for Starter, $336/year for Pro, forever: over three years that is $432–1,008 for polling pages your own machine could poll for free. Hawkwatch's only meter is your hardware.
Distill is also a generic change detector, which means for the most common use case — prices and stock — you are hand-selecting elements and getting "something changed" diffs. And your watchlist (every product you are hoping to buy, every competitor you track) lives in their cloud, subject to their plans and retention.
Hawkwatch: the pay-once alternative
Hawkwatch is a $34, one-time purchase. Watch any product page for price or stock changes. Unlimited watchers, your server. Hawkwatch is price-and-stock-native: automatic price extraction from JSON-LD Product/Offer data with og:price and microdata fallbacks, CSS-selector mode with locale-aware parsing ($1,299.00 and 1.299,00 EUR both work), stock tracking, headless Playwright Chromium for JS-heavy shops or plain HTTP for static ones, per-watcher schedules with jitter and backoff, BYO-SMTP email and webhook alerts with screenshots attached, and price history charts in local SQLite. Politeness is built in: identifying user agent, 5-minute interval floor, robots.txt warnings. $34 once, MIT source.
The source code is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/hawkwatch — free to build and run yourself, forever. Buying the packaged version on Whop gets you the signed installer, 1-click setup and updates. Either way, there is no account, no telemetry and no renewal date.
Head to head
| Hawkwatch | Distill | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $34 once | $12/mo Starter, $28/mo Pro |
| Cost over 3 years | $34 | ~$432–1,008 |
| Where your data lives | Your machine / your server | Their cloud (free tier = browser-open only) |
| Usage limits | None — unlimited use | Monitors & check frequency metered |
| Works offline | Yes | Extension while browser open |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Who should stay with Distill
Stay with Distill if you monitor pages behind personal logins (the extension rides your session — a genuinely hard trick), if you need SMS alerts as a managed service, or if the free browser-only tier honestly covers your needs. Those are real strengths Hawkwatch does not replicate.
Switch if your watchers are product pages: Hawkwatch parses prices from JSON-LD structured data automatically, tracks stock transitions, charts price history, and attaches a full-page screenshot of the exact moment things changed — unlimited watchers, on your schedule, on your box.
Making the switch
Step 1 — Buy once on Whop. One-time $34 for the packaged Windows installer with updates — Chromium download handled for you.
Step 2 — Run it anywhere. Desktop app with data in your user profile, or Docker on a $5 VPS with Chromium baked into the image.
Step 3 — Add a URL, get alerts. Hawkwatch auto-detects the price, checks on your schedule, and emails or webhooks you — screenshot included — when something moves.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/hawkwatch, always. The $34 buys the packaged installer, 1-click setup and updates instead of npm and a terminal.
Can I monitor Amazon with it?
Amazon's Terms of Service prohibit automated access, and Hawkwatch won't pretend otherwise — there's no proxy rotation or captcha solving, and there never will be. For Amazon, use their official Product Advertising API (or camelcamelcamel, which is free).
How does it stay polite to the sites I watch?
Checks identify themselves as HawkwatchBot/1.0, intervals floor at 5 minutes with jitter, checks run one at a time with exponential backoff, and adding a watcher warns you (non-blocking) if robots.txt disallows the path.
The bottom line
Subscriptions make sense when a service does ongoing work for you — hosting, syncing, multi-region infrastructure, human labor. They make much less sense when the work happens on your own hardware and the monthly bill is just a toll booth. Hawkwatch is our bet that for this job, most people are better served owning the tool: $34 once, distill Starter costs $144/year. Hawkwatch pays for itself in under 3 months — and it never bills you again.
Hawkwatch is part of OneTimeSuite — 56 desktop and self-hosted apps built on the same principle: your hardware does the work, so you should not pay rent on it. Every app is a one-time purchase with MIT-licensed source on GitHub, no accounts and no telemetry. Want everything at once? OneTimeSuite Complete bundles the whole suite for a single flat $997.
Try Hawkwatch — $34, one time
Signed installer on Whop, or build it free from the MIT source. Your call.
Browse the whole pay-once suite or all comparisons.