SpecStream vs Visualping vs Distill vs Hexowatch: web monitoring tools compared (2026)

We make SpecStream. The prices and limits of Visualping, Distill and Hexowatch below are copied from their own pages on November 12, 2026, with a link to each.

Visualping, Distill and Hexowatch watch pages you choose and alert you when a page changes. You pay by pages or monitors and by checks: Visualping's Personal plan starts at $14 a month for 1,000 checks across 10 pages, and Distill's Starter plan is $15 a month. SpecStream watches facts. You describe the records and the facts you track in plain words, SpecStream finds the pages, reruns the request on your schedule and delivers only the rows that are new or changed, each value with the page it was read on. Building the table costs 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row. Each recheck costs half the row rate for a new or changed row and 1¢ for a row that comes back unchanged. New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.

The four side by side

	SpecStream	Visualping	Distill	Hexowatch
What you set up	A request in plain words: the records, the conditions each must meet, the facts on each row	A page to watch, up to the plan's page count	A monitor per page, up to the plan's monitor count	A page, with what matters said in plain words
Who finds the pages	SpecStream, and new matches arrive as new rows	You	You	You
What a change holds	Each changed fact, its value before and now, and the page it was read on	A change on the page	A change on the page	An alert that explains what changed on the page
How often	Hourly to yearly	Every 60 min on Free, every 2 min on Personal 10K and Business	Every 6 hours in the cloud on Free, every 2 minutes on Flexi	See its pricing page
What you pay for	Delivered rows: 5¢, 15¢ or $1 each; on a recheck, half the rate for a new or changed row and 1¢ for an unchanged one	Checks and pages: $14 a month for 1,000 checks across 10 pages, up to $350 a month for 50,000 checks across 500 pages	Monitors and cloud checks: $15, $35 or from $80 a month	Plans by users: Plus includes 3, Scale includes 10
Free start	$10 of credit, no card, and one list kept up to date	150 checks a month across 5 pages, no credit card	25 monitors, 5 of them in the cloud, with 1,000 cloud checks a month	Starts free with no card

Visualping

Visualping watches a page and sends you what changed on it. Its pricing page counts checks: "A check happens every time Visualping visits a page to check it for changes," and "one page, monitored daily, would use up to 31 checks per month." Checks do not roll over, and "If you run out of checks, monitoring pauses until your monthly allowance resets or you move to a larger plan."

Plan	Price	Checks a month	Pages	Most frequent check
Free	$0	150	5	Every 60 min
Personal 1K	$14 a month	1,000	10	Every 15 min
Personal 5K	$35 a month	5,000	20	Every 5 min
Personal 10K	$70 a month	10,000	40	Every 2 min
Business 20K	$140 a month	20,000	200	Every 2 min
Business 50K	$350 a month	50,000	500	Every 2 min

Structured data from the pages you monitor is in Visualping's Solutions tier, sold by custom quote through its sales team.

Distill

Distill watches pages from its cloud or from your own browser and desktop. Its pricing page says "Monitors either run using a browser extension, desktop app (locally) or in cloud using Distill's servers," and browser checks are unlimited while cloud checks are counted: "In cloud, checks are counted in units of 10 seconds."

Plan	Price	Monitors	Most frequent cloud check	Cloud checks a month
Free	$0	25, 5 in the cloud	Every 6 hours	1,000
Starter	$15 a month	50	Every 10 minutes	30,000
Professional	$35 a month	150	Every 5 minutes	100,000
Flexi	From $80 a month	500 and more	Every 2 minutes	200,000 and more

Hexowatch

Hexowatch lists 13 monitoring types. Hexowatch OR:ON describes itself this way: "Paste a page, say what matters in plain words, and get alerts that explain what changed." It starts free with no card, its Plus plan includes 3 users and Scale includes 10.

SpecStream: a scheduled table feed

A page watcher tells you a page moved. Your team still opens the page to find out which fact moved with it, and a competitor's new page, a new store or a new filing never reaches you until someone adds it. SpecStream starts from the facts:

1. Describe the table. In the workspace or from an agent connected over MCP, write what you track: "the paid plans of these 12 project management tools, with plan name, monthly price per seat and seat limit." SpecStream reads it back as conditions and facts you can edit.
2. Approve the price. The quote shows the most the first run can cost. Nothing runs before you approve it.
3. Get the rows. Each value comes with the URL of the page it was read on and the time it was read.
4. Schedule it. Choose Watch for new ones on the list, or ask your agent, and set the cadence (hourly to yearly), your timezone, a maximum per run and a maximum per month. A run that would go past a limit or the balance is blocked: nothing runs and nothing is charged. Missed runs are never bought later.
5. Choose where changes go. New and changed rows go to a Slack channel, email, Google Sheets, HubSpot and the other connected tools, or a signed webhook (monitor.found).

Each run labels every row new, changed, no longer a match, or not readable this time. A changed value shows its earlier value and the page where the new one was seen. Values that did not change keep the date they were first read, and a page that could not be read leaves its row as it was, so a failed fetch never shows up as a price cut. See keeping data up to date and monitoring.

What it costs to watch 40 competitor plans every day

Say you track 40 paid plans across your competitors, each on its own pricing page, checked once a day.

• Visualping: 40 pages checked daily use up to 1,240 checks a month. Personal 1K holds 10 pages and Personal 5K holds 20, so the plan that fits is Personal 10K at $70 a month.
• Distill: 40 cloud monitors are past the Free plan's 5, so the plan that fits is Starter at $15 a month, with 30,000 cloud checks.
• SpecStream: the first run delivers 40 rows. At the 5¢ rate that is $2, and at the 15¢ rate it is $6, once. Each daily recheck that finds nothing new costs 40¢, so a quiet 30 day month costs $12. A plan that changes costs half its row rate on the day it changes, and arrives as the fact that changed, before and now. A weekly recheck of the same table costs 40¢ a week when nothing moves.

With SpecStream you also don't find or maintain the 40 pages: a competitor's new plan arrives as a new row on the next run.

Data SpecStream already holds

For some records you don't need a schedule of your own. Lists of records SpecStream already holds come with a monthly feed of the rows the source adds each week, from $19 a month. Signals such as US funding rounds, new executives and layoffs are each a request you can watch.

Try it

Sign up at specstream.ai, with $10 of credit and no card, describe the table you check by hand today, and turn it into a schedule. For agents, the MCP server is https://api.specstream.ai/mcp, and competitor monitoring with MCP has the prompts to paste. The full comparison with one page watcher is at SpecStream vs Visualping.