If you are searching for a Distill alternative to track competitors, you likely already run Distill, or are weighing it, and want to know whether a web page monitor covers competitor tracking. This post compares the two fairly. Distill is a strong, flexible page monitor, and for many people it is the right tool. Ephor is built for a narrower job.
Every Distill fact below comes from its pricing page, read on 2026-10-22 unless a different date is given. Plans change, so check the source before you buy.
What Distill does
Distill monitors web pages and other URLs for changes. A monitor can run in its browser extension or desktop app on your own device, or in the cloud on Distill's servers. Its pricing page says local monitors can check as often as every 5 seconds, and that browser-extension checks are unlimited, while cloud checks are counted against a monthly allowance in units of 10 seconds of check time.
| Limit | Free | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monitors | 25 (5 in cloud) | 50 | 150 | 500+ |
| Shortest cloud interval | 6 hours | 10 minutes | 5 minutes | 2 minutes |
| Cloud checks per month | 1,000 | 30,000 | 100,000 | 200,000+ |
| Email alerts per month | 30 | 2,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
When we checked on 2026-09-05, the page listed Starter at $15/month and Professional at $35/month. The same page lists SMS and push alerts, actions before a check (such as logging in) on paid tiers, captcha solving in premium plans, and a usage-based Flexi plan.
When Distill is enough
- You want speed. Cloud checks every 2 to 10 minutes on paid tiers, and every few seconds locally. Ephor collects a source at most every 24 hours on Starter and every 6 hours on Growth. If minutes matter, Distill wins.
- You want alerts. Email, push and SMS are built in. Ephor sends no competitor alerts; it is a dashboard you open.
- The page needs a login, a click or JavaScript. Distill can run actions before a check and monitors in a real browser. Ephor collects public sources only and does not run JavaScript.
- You track many pages cheaply. The free tier covers 25 monitors, and local checks are unlimited. Ephor starts at $29/month.
Where a page monitor stops
A page monitor answers "what changed on this URL?" Competitor tracking tends to ask more: which other public sources a competitor has (releases, job boards, package registries), whether a change is pricing or a footer edit, what the record looks like months later, and whether anything in your own numbers moved at the same time. Distill's pricing page lists 10 to 20 changes kept in each monitor's history on paid tiers. You can export and build the rest yourself; the question is whether you want to.
What Ephor does differently
- 23 collector types for public sources: websites and pricing pages, RSS and Atom feeds, GitHub, npm, PyPI, Docker Hub, job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby), Hacker News search and more.
- 180 days of source-linked history. Each change is stored with when Ephor observed it, the source URL, a category (pricing, product, hiring, SEO) and an evidence label.
- Your metrics alongside. Import daily revenue, orders or traffic by CSV or JSON and see competitor changes lined up against them. That is correlation, not cause, and the product says so.
What it does not do: no screenshots or visual diff, no cookie-banner or A/B-test handling, no logins, no alerts, and no check faster than every 6 hours.
How to decide
Use Distill if you want fast alerts on specific pages, need logins or browser actions, or want a generous free tier. Consider Ephor if you follow several competitors across more than their pricing page, want a 180-day record you can read back, and keep numbers of your own to compare against. Plenty of teams could reasonably run both.
Ephor has a 14-day no-card trial. Start the trial, or see the plans. Related: Visualping alternative for competitor tracking.