# Website Content Fingerprint & Change Detector (`quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint`) Actor

Fingerprint public web pages with SHA-256, compare previous hashes, and capture redirects, response timing, metadata, security headers, and lightweight page-structure signals.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint.md
- **Developed by:** [Rafael Barreto Haddad](https://apify.com/quanmatrix) (community)
- **Categories:** Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.68 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Website Content Fingerprint & Change Detector

Create a compact technical fingerprint of public web pages and compare it with a previous SHA-256 hash to detect content changes. Each result combines HTTP status, redirect chain, response timing, page metadata, content hash, security headers, and lightweight page-structure signals.

### Why use this Actor

Website monitoring often needs more than “the page changed.” This Actor gives you both a deterministic content fingerprint and enough surrounding context to decide what happened, without requiring a heavyweight browser for every check.

### Key features

- Generates a SHA-256 fingerprint from the fetched response body.
- Compares against a supplied previous hash and returns `changed` when available.
- Captures HTTP status, final URL, redirect chain, response time, content type, and response size.
- Extracts title, meta description, canonical, robots meta, Open Graph, and Twitter/X metadata from HTML.
- Counts H1/H2 headings and approximate page words.
- Captures common HTTP security headers.
- Blocks credentials in URLs, unsafe ports, private IP ranges, and unsafe redirects.
- Produces one deterministic dataset record per input URL.

### Input

```json
{
  "urls": ["https://example.com"],
  "previous_hashes": {
    "https://example.com": "previous-sha256-value"
  }
}
```

### Output

Each result includes the requested/final URL, status code, response time, redirect chain, content type and size, SHA-256 hash, previous hash, change status, selected security headers, and extracted page metadata.

### Example

```json
{
  "requested_url": "https://example.com",
  "status_code": 200,
  "sha256": "...",
  "previous_sha256": "...",
  "changed": true,
  "page": {"title": "Example Domain", "h1_count": 1}
}
```

### Use cases

- Website content-change monitoring
- Compliance and policy-page watches
- Competitor page monitoring
- Technical regression checks
- Editorial change detection
- Building low-cost prechecks before expensive browser crawls

### Pricing

Pay per result. The current price is **$0.002 per checked URL**, or **$2 per 1,000 results**.

### Limitations

- A SHA-256 change identifies byte-level content change, not semantic importance.
- Dynamic timestamps, ads, personalization, or rotating markup can change the hash even when the main meaning is unchanged.
- JavaScript-rendered content is not executed by this lightweight fetcher.
- Response bodies are capped for predictable resource usage.
- Authentication, CAPTCHAs, and anti-bot systems are not bypassed.

### Responsible use

Use the Actor on public pages you are allowed to monitor. It does not access private networks or bypass access controls.

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

HTTP/HTTPS URLs to inspect.

## `previous_hashes` (type: `object`):

Optional map of URL to previous SHA-256 hash for change detection.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://example.com"
  ],
  "previous_hashes": {}
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

No description

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,quanmatrix/website-content-fingerprint"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/TgsNOkEASi8OaAiJa/builds/alcm9T0XS5Yg9UnyQ/openapi.json