---
title: "Competitor website change tracking"
description: "Plainrival checks your competitors' pricing, product pages and changelogs every day, and keeps a dated before and after of every change."
url: "https://plainrival.com/features/website-change-tracking"
published: 2026-09-30
---

# Competitor website change tracking

Plainrival checks your competitors' pricing, product pages and changelogs every day, and keeps a dated before and after of every change.

Published 30 September 2026.

## What it does

Once a day, Plainrival checks the public pages you choose on each competitor's site, and reads their sitemaps so a new page shows up within a day. Each change is saved with the text before and after, a screenshot and the date. The ones that matter go into your [weekly brief](https://plainrival.com/features/weekly-brief).

- **Text, not pixels.** A cookie banner, a new date or a rotating testimonial doesn't count as a change.
- **Any language.** Sites in German, French or Spanish are summarised in English.
- **A history you can scroll.** See what a competitor said in June and what it says now.

## How it works

1. **Add a competitor.** Add their website and choose the pages to watch: pricing, homepage, product pages, changelog.
2. **Plainrival checks daily.** Unchanged pages are skipped. Changed ones are saved with a screenshot.
3. **Read what changed.** Each change gets a type and a score. The ones that matter say why and suggest one move.

## What it looks like

_Product preview: an illustrative example. Companies and changes are fictional._

Pricing pages get the same treatment, with old and new plans side by side: see [pricing tracking](https://plainrival.com/features/pricing-tracking).

## Questions

### Which pages does Plainrival check?

The public pages you choose, usually the homepage, pricing, product pages, changelog and blog. It also reads RSS feeds and sitemaps to catch new pages.

### How often are pages checked?

Once a day. Competitor websites rarely change more often, and the history stays precise to the day.

### Will I get a message for every small change?

No. Plainrival scores each change and drops the noise. The weekly brief shows at most 7 items; the rest stays in the change history.

### Does it work on pages that need JavaScript?

Yes. Plainrival reads plain HTML first and loads a page in a real browser only when it needs JavaScript.

### Is this allowed?

Plainrival only reads public pages any visitor can see. It respects robots.txt, identifies itself as PlainrivalBot, makes at most one request per second per site and never signs in.