# Website Change Monitor with AI Alerts (`subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor`) Actor

Website change detection for competitor pricing, plans and policy pages. Each run returns only real changes, explained by AI with a severity score and a suggested action. Ignores cookie banners, timestamps and other noise. Schedule it daily and send alerts by webhook.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [Subtle Pluto](https://apify.com/subtle_pluto) (community)
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 page checks

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

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

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
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.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## 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.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Website Change Monitor with AI Alerts

**Know the moment a competitor changes their pricing, plans, or policies, and know whether it matters.** Add the pages you care about, schedule a daily run, and get only real changes, each explained in plain English with a severity score, why it matters, and a suggested action.

Most page monitors email you a screenshot every time a cookie banner moves. This one ignores the noise and tells you what actually changed.

### What you get for every change

- **What changed**, in one or two plain sentences with the actual numbers
- **Severity from 1 to 5**, where 5 means act today
- **Category**: pricing, policy, product, people, contact, or content
- **Why it matters**, tied to the topics you said you care about
- **Suggested action**, one short line
- **The exact lines added and removed**, so you can verify everything yourself

### Sample output

```json
{
  "status": "changed",
  "label": "Competitor pricing",
  "url": "https://competitor.example/pricing",
  "severity": 5,
  "category": "pricing",
  "summary": "Pro plan rose from $99 to $129 a month. Starter is unchanged at $29.",
  "whyItMatters": "A 30% increase on the plan that competes with yours, which you flagged as a priority.",
  "suggestedAction": "Review your Pro pricing and tell sales this week.",
  "added": ["Pro plan $129 per month"],
  "removed": ["Pro plan $99 per month"],
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-23T09:00:04+00:00",
  "previousCheckedAt": "2026-10-22T09:00:03+00:00"
}
```

### Who uses it

- **Founders and product teams** tracking competitor pricing pages and feature lists
- **Marketing and sales teams** watching competitor messaging, offers, and free trials
- **Agencies** monitoring client and competitor sites for unexpected changes
- **Compliance and operations teams** watching terms, refund, and shipping policies
- **AI agents and automations** that need a clean, structured feed of what changed on the web

### How to monitor a website for changes

1. Paste the pages you want to watch into **Pages to watch**. Add a label to any page under User data, for example `{"label": "Competitor pricing"}`.
2. Type what you care about into **What do you care about?**, for example `price, free trial, enterprise plan`.
3. Click **Start** once. The first run saves a baseline snapshot of each page.
4. Open **Schedules** and run it daily, or hourly for fast-moving pages. Every later run compares each page to its last snapshot.
5. Optional: add a webhook URL to push changes straight into Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n, or your own app.

### Why it has fewer false alarms

- **Cookie and consent banners are removed** before comparing.
- **Timestamps, "5 minutes ago" text, session IDs, and long tokens are ignored.**
- **Lines that only moved position are not counted as changes.**
- **Tiny edits are ignored** below a threshold you control (40 characters by default).
- **Block pages are caught.** If a site serves a bot check instead of content, the page is marked `blocked`, never saved as a fake change, and you are not charged for it.
- **The AI marks noise as noise.** Rotating testimonials, counters, and ad slots come back as `noise`, and you are not charged for them.

### Pricing

You pay only for work that succeeded:

| Event | Price |
| --- | --- |
| Page check (each page, each run, fetched successfully) | $0.005 |
| Meaningful change found and explained | $0.05 |

Twenty pages checked every day costs about $3 a month before changes. Pages that are blocked, missing, or skipped by robots.txt are never charged.

### Output statuses

| Status | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| `baseline` | First check of this page. The snapshot is saved for future runs. |
| `unchanged` | Nothing meaningful changed since the last run. |
| `changed` | A meaningful change, with the full explanation. |
| `noise` | Something moved, but the AI judged it meaningless. Not charged as a change. |
| `blocked` | The site served a bot check or block page. Not charged. |
| `skipped-robots` | The site's robots.txt does not allow automated checks. Not charged. |
| `error` | The page could not be loaded (for example a 404). Not charged. |

A run summary with every change, sorted by severity, is saved to the key-value store record `OUTPUT`.

### Good to know

- Snapshots are saved in a named key-value store in your own Apify account (`ai-change-monitor-state` by default). Use a different store name to keep separate watch lists apart.
- The Actor respects each site's robots.txt and never tries to get past logins or CAPTCHAs. Only watch pages you are allowed to view.
- The **CSS selector** option lets you watch one part of a page, such as `#pricing`, which cuts noise even further.
- Pages that build their content entirely with JavaScript after loading may show little text. Point the selector at a server-rendered page, or tell us in the Issues tab and we will look at it.

### FAQ

#### How do I monitor a website for changes?

Add the page URLs, type what you care about, and click Start once to save a baseline. Then schedule the Actor, daily works well. Each run compares every page with its last snapshot and returns only real changes.

#### Can it track competitor price changes?

Yes. Point it at a competitor's pricing page and add "price" under What do you care about. Changes that touch price get a higher severity and a plain-English summary of what moved.

#### How is this different from a website change detection extension?

Browser extensions run only while your browser is open. This runs in the cloud on your schedule, ignores cookie banners, timestamps and rotating tokens, and explains each change instead of only flagging it.

#### Can I get website change alerts in Slack or email?

Yes. Add a webhook URL and every run that finds changes POSTs them as JSON. Connect it to Slack, Zapier, Make or n8n, or use Apify's built-in integrations.

#### Does it work on every website?

It reads each page's HTML and respects robots.txt. Pages built entirely with JavaScript may show little text. Sites that serve a bot check are marked blocked and are never charged.

### More tools from Subtle Pluto

- [Hiring Signals from Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby](https://apify.com/subtle_pluto/hiring-signal-feed): a ranked list of target accounts that are hiring now, with a why-now note and an opener.
- [Shopify Competitor Price Tracker](https://apify.com/subtle_pluto/shopify-catalog-watch): every price change, sale, sellout and launch on competitor Shopify stores.
- [Google Review Responder: AI Reply Generator](https://apify.com/subtle_pluto/google-review-responder): new Google reviews for every location, with AI-drafted owner replies and low-star alerts.

### Support

Open an issue on the Issues tab. We aim to reply the same day.

# Actor input Schema

## `pages` (type: `array`):

The pages to check on every run. Schedule this Actor (daily works well) and each run compares every page to its last snapshot. Add a label to any page under User data, for example {"label": "Competitor pricing"}.

## `watchFor` (type: `string`):

Plain words, comma separated. Changes that touch these topics get a higher severity, for example: price, free trial, enterprise plan, refund policy.

## `cssSelector` (type: `string`):

Optional. Watch one region, such as #pricing or main article. Leave empty to watch the whole page.

## `minChangeChars` (type: `integer`):

Changes smaller than this are treated as typos or noise.

## `useAI` (type: `boolean`):

When on, each change gets a plain-English summary, a severity from 1 to 5, why it matters, and a suggested action. When off, or when no AI key is available, built-in rules describe the change instead.

## `onlyChanges` (type: `boolean`):

When on, the dataset holds only changed pages. When off, every page gets a status row (baseline, unchanged, changed, blocked).

## `ignoreVolatileText` (type: `boolean`):

Strips clock times, 'x minutes ago' text, session IDs and long tokens before comparing, so they never trigger false alerts.

## `notifyWebhookUrl` (type: `string`):

If set, the run POSTs a JSON list of changed pages here when anything changes. Works with Zapier, Make, n8n, Slack workflows and your own API.

## `anthropicApiKey` (type: `string`):

Optional. Leave empty to use the built-in AI. Add your own key only if you prefer to run summaries on your own Anthropic account.

## `maxPages` (type: `integer`):

A safety cap on how many pages one run checks.

## `maxConcurrency` (type: `integer`):

How many pages are fetched in parallel.

## `stateStoreName` (type: `string`):

Snapshots live in this named key-value store in your account. Use a different name to keep separate watch lists apart.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "pages": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.apify.com/pricing"
    }
  ],
  "watchFor": "price, plan, free trial",
  "minChangeChars": 40,
  "useAI": true,
  "onlyChanges": false,
  "ignoreVolatileText": true,
  "maxPages": 200,
  "maxConcurrency": 5,
  "stateStoreName": "ai-change-monitor-state"
}
```

# 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 = {
    "pages": [
        {
            "url": "https://www.apify.com/pricing"
        }
    ],
    "watchFor": "price, plan, free trial"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor").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 = {
    "pages": [{ "url": "https://www.apify.com/pricing" }],
    "watchFor": "price, plan, free trial",
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor").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 '{
  "pages": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.apify.com/pricing"
    }
  ],
  "watchFor": "price, plan, free trial"
}' |
apify call subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,subtle_pluto/ai-website-change-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

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/6X4SbP1MVgE5I1dtO/builds/buCJlezA2qt2xa2gC/openapi.json