Pricing & Feature Change Monitor

Watch a list of public pricing and feature pages. On each run the Actor fetches the HTML (Cheerio — no browser), normalizes the text, compares a SHA-256 hash to the last snapshot, and writes a structured dataset row: baseline, unchanged, changed, or error.

Store: apify.com/frqnk/pricing-feature-change-monitor

When to use it

• Competitive intel: notice when a SaaS competitor changes price or feature copy
• Agent workflows: schedule checks and branch only when status === "changed"
• Lightweight monitoring without login scraping or headless browsers

Limitations (honest)

• Public pages only — no logins, cookies, or authenticated dashboards
• Cheerio / static HTML — works best on server-rendered marketing pages. Heavy SPA shells (empty HTML until JavaScript runs) may need a browser-based Actor later; this one does not use Playwright
• Noise filters reduce false positives from timestamps/counters but are not perfect
• Diffs are text-based heuristics (changeType / severity), not a full visual QA tool

How it works

1. Fetch each URL with Crawlee CheerioCrawler
2. Normalize HTML (script/style stripped; optional contentSelector; optional noise stripping)
3. Hash normalized text (SHA-256) and load the previous snapshot from a named Key-Value store
4. Emit a dataset row and charge PPE only when the rules below say so

Situation	Dataset	PPE
First seen, emitBaseline: true	baseline row	No charge
First seen, emitBaseline: false	No row (state saved)	No charge
Same hash	unchanged	url-check
Different hash	changed + diff snippets	url-check + change-detected
Fetch / process failure	error	No charge

Demos & Store auto-tests: keep emitBaseline: true so the first run produces rows quickly.
Production schedules on the same URLs: you can set emitBaseline: false if you only want unchanged / changed after the first silent snapshot.

Input example

{
  "urls": [
    "https://stripe.com/pricing",
    "https://github.com/pricing"
  ],
  "contentSelector": "main",
  "profile": "pricing",
  "ignoreNoise": true,
  "minChangePercent": 1,
  "stateStoreName": "pricing-feature-change-state",
  "emitBaseline": true,
  "maxConcurrency": 5
}

Field	Default	Notes
urls	(required)	Public pages to monitor
contentSelector	main	Region hashed; falls back to body
profile	pricing	Heuristic for changeType / severity
ignoreNoise	true	Strip dates / “Updated: …” / counters
minChangePercent	1	Influences severity banding
stateStoreName	pricing-feature-change-state	Named KV for snapshots across runs
emitBaseline	true	Emit first-seen rows (never charged)
maxConcurrency	5	Parallel fetches

Output example (changed row)

{
  "url": "https://stripe.com/pricing",
  "status": "changed",
  "changed": true,
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-20T15:00:00.000Z",
  "previousCheckedAt": "2026-09-19T15:00:00.000Z",
  "contentHash": "452029c4…",
  "previousHash": "a1b2c3d4…",
  "changeType": "pricing",
  "severity": "major",
  "addedText": ["Pro plan costs $49 per month."],
  "removedText": ["Pro plan costs $29 per month."],
  "diffSnippet": "- Pro plan costs $29 per month.\n+ Pro plan costs $49 per month.",
  "httpStatus": 200,
  "errorCode": null
}

status: baseline | unchanged | changed | error

Pricing (pay-per-event)

Configured on this Actor:

Event	Price	When
apify-actor-start	platform default	Actor starts
url-check (primary)	$0.002	Successful fetch + compare (unchanged or changed)
change-detected	$0.04	Meaningful hash change

Baselines and errors are never charged. Platform usage for paying users is handled under Apify’s PPE rules (creator share / costs — see Apify monetization docs).

Run from an agent or API

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const run = await client.actor('frqnk/pricing-feature-change-monitor').call({
  urls: [
    'https://stripe.com/pricing',
    'https://github.com/pricing',
  ],
  profile: 'pricing',
  ignoreNoise: true,
  emitBaseline: false,
  stateStoreName: 'pricing-feature-change-state',
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
const changes = items.filter((row) => row.status === 'changed');
console.log(changes);

Or open the Actor in Console, paste URLs, and click Start. For recurring checks, add an Apify Schedule (daily/hourly) on the same stateStoreName.

Permissions

Limited permissions: public HTTP(S) fetches plus the run dataset and named KV store. No login automation, no residential-proxy requirement for typical public marketing pages.

Support

Issues and feature requests: open a discussion on the Store page or contact the publisher via Apify.

License

Apache-2.0