modsignal vs Distill.io
A Distill alternative without the selector maintenance.
Distill is a power tool: extensions, CSS selectors, regex conditions. modsignal does the same job with a sentence — and the alert comes back with evidence, not a diff to decode.
Try modsignal freeThe changelog announced the v1 REST API sunsets on March 31, 2027.
Distill.io has earned its 400,000-plus extension users. Local, in-browser monitoring is genuinely clever, and for technical individuals who enjoy tuning selectors and conditions, it's a capable instrument. The friction shows up over time: selectors silently break when sites re-render, conditions need regex, cloud checks on the free plan run every six hours, and the whole setup lives in one person's browser profile rather than with a team.
modsignal trades that control panel for a sentence. Describe the change that matters — "alert me when this changelog announces a breaking API change" — and the semantic tier reads each new version of the page against your words. There's nothing to re-select when the markup changes, because modsignal isn't watching markup; it's reading the page the way you would.
Everything runs in the cloud on every plan, alerts carry their own evidence (the sentence, the before/after, a confidence score), and monitors belong to a team, not a browser. If Distill's power-user machinery is what you left — or what you never wanted to learn — this is the other way to do it.
Distill.io vs modsignal, side by side
Competitor details verified against public pricing pages and reviews in July 2026 — check their site for current numbers.
| Distill.io | modsignal | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Browser extension; pick elements with CSS/XPath selectors, add regex conditions | Paste a URL, write a plain-language prompt. No selectors to break |
| Where checks run | Local monitors in your browser (free: 25) plus limited cloud monitors (free: 5, 6-hour interval) | Cloud on every plan — checks run whether your laptop is open or not |
| Detection model | Text/element diff against selected regions, with condition rules | Exact diff, semantic AI judgment against your prompt, or full browser rendering — chosen per monitor |
| What an alert looks like | Change notification with a diff view | One sentence stating what changed, with before/after evidence and a confidence score |
| Pricing | Free tier, then Starter $15/mo, Professional $35/mo | Free tier (3 monitors, daily), then Pro $25/mo for 25 monitors, every 15 min, 5 teammates |
| Teams | Oriented around individual power users | Teammates on every plan; monitors and alert history are shared |
Choose Distill.io if
- You want local, in-browser monitoring that never sends the page to anyone's cloud.
- You enjoy precise selector-level control and your target pages are stable enough to keep selectors alive.
- You need SMS alerting or its specific extension workflows.
Choose modsignal if
- You've rebuilt the same broken selector twice and would rather write a sentence once.
- Monitoring belongs to your team, not to whoever's browser the extension lives in.
- You want alerts that judge meaning — a changed price, a new clause — not any change inside a box you drew.
Set up the monitor that stays quiet.
Write the prompt, set the interval and get the first alert when something actually changes. Free plan, no credit card.