Is Fluxguard Free for Monitoring Web Pages?
Yes. Fluxguard has a free plan for an estimated three sites, but page count, crawl frequency, history, and credits determine whether it fits.
Yes. Fluxguard lists a Free (Gyroscope) plan at $0 per month, with an allowance estimated at three sites per month. That estimate assumes roughly 10 pages per site crawled once daily, so it is not a universal page limit. Your actual usage depends on the number of pages and crawl frequency.
The free plan includes Chrome crawling, visual, HTML, and text change detection, instant or daily alerts, translation into English, three stored versions per page, and one user. See Fluxguard’s pricing page for current plan details and its FAQ for credit and history rules.
What “three sites per month” means
Fluxguard’s published site allowance is a modeled estimate based on around 10 pages per site and one crawl per page each day. The system uses credits, and a page crawl costs one credit. As a result, a site with more pages or more frequent checks can use credits faster than the example behind the three-site estimate.
Fluxguard’s FAQ gives this example: a 10-page site crawled daily uses 300 credits per month; twice-daily crawling uses 600. AI summaries, translation, enhanced proxies, email overviews, and AI-guided link harvesting can consume additional credits. Check the plan’s credit allowance and estimate your own page-crawl volume before relying on the headline site count.
What the Free plan includes
- Price: $0 per month.
- Coverage estimate: three sites per month, based on the pricing page’s roughly 10-pages-per-site, once-daily assumption.
- Change detection: visual, HTML, and text changes.
- Browser rendering: Google Chrome crawling. Fluxguard says it captures the rendered DOM after JavaScript runs.
- Alerts: instant or daily alerts.
- Translation: translation into English.
- History: three versions retained per page.
- Users: one user.
Fluxguard’s general guides describe other capabilities, including password-protected pages, form results, and interactive browser steps. Those guides explain product capabilities; they do not establish that every capability is included on the Free plan. Use the pricing page to check plan entitlements.
How to estimate whether Free is enough
- Count the pages you will monitor. Count individual URLs rather than assuming a site is one unit. For whole-site discovery, Fluxguard says it can extract up to 75 internal links per page per crawl and present up to 75 newly discovered links per monitored session; you choose which discovered URLs to activate.
- Choose a crawl schedule. Multiply the number of pages by the number of daily crawls and days in the month. For example, 10 pages checked once a day for 30 days is about 300 page crawls.
- Account for optional credit use. AI summaries, translation, enhanced proxies, email overviews, and AI-guided link harvesting can add credit consumption.
- Decide how much history and collaboration you need. Free stores three versions per page and supports one user. If you need longer history or multiple users, compare the paid tiers.
- Compare monitoring requirements. Decide whether visual, HTML, and text changes plus instant or daily alerts are sufficient, or whether you need features such as filters, proxy options, faster checks, or webhooks.
Free and paid plan comparison
| Plan | Published monthly price | Estimated sites | Versions per page | Users | Notable listed additions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free (Gyroscope) | $0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | Core Chrome, visual, HTML, and text monitoring |
| Standard (Periscope) | $110 | 25 | 25 | 3 | Custom page filters, network blocks, form submission tracking |
| Plus (Telescope) | $220 | 50 | 100 | 5 | Custom AI prompts, AI summaries, proxy network |
| Premium (Horoscope) | $550 | 100 | 100 | 10 | Consolidated AI email summaries, AI filtering, crawls as often as every five minutes, webhooks |
Site counts are estimates, not guaranteed page totals. The pricing page states that prices are in US dollars. Its paid plans start with a seven-day free trial and then bill monthly or yearly according to the selected option; it says customers may cancel at any time. The FAQ says cancellation prevents renewal after the billing period but unused credits are not refunded. Confirm current pricing and terms before subscribing, since plan details can change.
How Fluxguard monitors a page
Fluxguard says it uses headless Google Chrome and captures the rendered DOM after JavaScript executes. That lets it monitor rendered page content rather than relying only on the initial HTML response. Its materials describe visual or screenshot, text, and HTML monitoring. For site-wide discovery, a top-level URL can be crawled for internal links; discovered URLs are presented for you to activate.
Monitoring results can be affected by changes in page structure, dynamic content, login state, forms, and the time a page takes to render. If an important page requires a browser interaction or authentication, review Fluxguard’s relevant guide and verify that the chosen plan supports the required workflow.
When the free plan is a good fit
- You want to monitor a small set of pages on a daily schedule.
- One user and three historical versions per page are enough.
- Visual, HTML, and text change detection covers your use case.
- You can estimate your page-crawl and optional feature credit use.
When to consider a paid plan
Consider a paid tier if your page count or crawl frequency exceeds the free estimate, you need more history or user seats, or you require plan-specific capabilities such as custom filters, form tracking, AI summaries, proxy networking, more frequent crawling, or webhooks. Compare the actual allowance and features against your workload rather than choosing by site count alone.
ScreenshotNeo as an alternative for screenshots
If your goal is to capture pages as images or PDFs rather than continuously detect changes, try ScreenshotNeo first. It is a website screenshot API and MCP server: one GET request can return a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF. It is a different tool for a different job; the details below describe screenshot capture, not ongoing change monitoring.
ScreenshotNeo’s capture options include full-page screenshots with lazy images loaded, element capture by CSS selector, dark mode, 12 device presets or custom viewports, retina scale, PDF settings, HTML/CSS capture, custom CSS and JavaScript, clicks before capture, selector hiding, wait conditions, request and resource blocking, custom headers, cookies, user agents and Authorization, timezone and geolocation, transparent backgrounds, resizing, configurable cache TTL, signed image links, asynchronous jobs with signed webhooks, bulk capture of up to 100 URLs per call, a usage API, and an OpenAPI spec. Parameters used by other screenshot APIs also work. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for MCP clients including Claude and Cursor.
Cookie and consent banners, newsletter popups, and chat widgets can be removed before capture, with each cleanup step configurable. Only clean shots are billed: bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits cost nothing, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing status. Every feature is available on every plan. The Free plan includes 1,000 screenshots a month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 screenshots, with higher tiers of $15 for 15,000, $39 for 60,000, $99 for 250,000, and $249 for 1,000,000. Yearly billing gives two months free.
One-call screenshot example
See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for setup and options. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your key and set the target URL:
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpCookie banners, popups, and chat widgets are removed before the shot; bot checks, blank pages, and failed loads are never billed; an MCP server lets AI agents take screenshots; and 1,000 screenshots a month are free with no card, with paid plans starting at $5 for 3,000. Sign up free for ScreenshotNeo.
Troubleshooting monitoring estimates
The free allowance runs out sooner than expected
Cause: The three-site figure is based on an estimated page count and once-daily checks; each page crawl costs a credit, and some optional features use additional credits.
Fix: Count active page URLs, include crawl frequency and the number of days, then add any optional credit-consuming features to your estimate. Remove pages you do not need to monitor or reduce crawl frequency if the plan allows.
A site appears to have more pages than the estimate
Cause: A site is not a fixed number of monitored pages. Link discovery can surface many candidate URLs, and you choose which to activate.
Fix: Review discovered links and activate only the URLs that matter. Estimate based on active page crawls, not just the number of domains.
A visual change alert appears without an obvious content change
Cause: Visual monitoring reflects the rendered page. Dynamic elements, rotating content, timestamps, or layout changes may alter the rendered result.
Fix: Inspect the captured versions and check whether the changing element is expected. If your plan supports custom page filters, evaluate whether filtering can reduce irrelevant changes.
The page differs from what you see in your browser
Cause: The rendered result can depend on JavaScript, authentication, form state, or interactive steps.
Fix: Confirm the page can be reached in the configured crawl context. Consult Fluxguard’s guides for protected pages and browser interactions, then verify that the relevant capability is included in your plan.
FAQ
Is Fluxguard free indefinitely?
The pricing page lists Free at $0 per month. Paid plans have a separate seven-day trial and billing terms.
Does Free mean three pages?
No. The published estimate is three sites per month, modeled at about 10 pages per site crawled daily. Actual page capacity depends on credit use.
How many page versions does Free keep?
Three versions per page. Fluxguard’s FAQ says history retention reverts to the Free allowance if a subscriber unsubscribes.
Can I use Free with a team?
The pricing page lists one user on Free. The paid tiers list three, five, and ten users respectively.
Is Fluxguard a screenshot API?
Fluxguard describes browser-based web page monitoring with visual, HTML, and text change detection. For one-off screenshot or PDF capture through an API, see ScreenshotNeo’s documentation.
