Sken.io gives you 14 days and 140 checks, then asks for a card. If you were using it to catch a restock, a ticket drop or a price cut, and you want a free sken.io alternative that runs in a browser tab with nothing to install, you have a few real choices. This page lists what each one gives you for $0, what the catch is, and which one to open first.
What Sken.io's trial covers
The Sken.io pricing page is clear about it. The trial lasts 14 days, includes 140 checks and every feature, with no card. After that, the cheapest plan is Basic at EUR 3 a month for 500 checks. There is no free tier that keeps going.
140 checks go quickly. A single page checked every hour uses 24 a day, so one monitor on an hourly schedule runs through the trial allowance in under six days.
The free options, side by side
| Tool | What you get free | The catch | Install needed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| AyeWatch | 3 lifetime runs across up to 3 topics | Runs do not renew; daily or slower | No, web and phone apps |
| Visualping | 5 pages, 150 checks a month | Hourly at best | No |
| PageCrawl.io | 6 pages, 220 checks a month | Fastest check every 60 minutes | No |
| OnWebChange | 3 trackers | Checked daily | No |
| Distill | 25 monitors, 5 in the cloud | Cloud checks every 6 hours; local ones need your browser open | Extension for local monitors |
| changedetection.io | Unlimited if you host it | You run a server | Yes, Docker or pip |
Free allowances from each vendor's site, checked October 2026.
Open AyeWatch first
AyeWatch is not the biggest free plan on that table. Its Free Preview is three monitoring runs in total, and they do not come back. So why start there?
Because it shows you something the others do not. Instead of boxing an area and waiting for the pixels to move, you write what you are waiting for: "Tell me when the large size is back in stock" or "Let me know if they announce a new season date." AyeWatch reads the page against that sentence and sends a short summary only when it fits. You find out in three runs whether that is the kind of alert you want.
Other things that work without paying:
- Push and the feed. Every plan, including Free Preview, gets push notifications and the in-app feed.
- Web, iOS and Android. Set up a monitor on a laptop and get the alert on your phone.
- More than pages. You can describe a topic, such as a game studio's next release, and AyeWatch searches news, blogs and forums for it. You can also follow an X profile or a subreddit.
Email, Slack, Discord and webhooks are paid features. If you keep going, Pro is $9 a month, and usage is counted in monitoring credits, so faster checks spend more.
Start a Free Preview on AyeWatch, no card needed.
When a bigger free plan wins
If you need a page checked many times a day for weeks without paying, AyeWatch's Free Preview will not last. Visualping's 150 checks a month or PageCrawl.io's 220 are the better free picks for that, and both run in the browser. OnWebChange works for a slow daily check.
When to just pay for Sken.io
If you liked Sken.io and the only problem is the trial ending, EUR 3 a month for 500 checks is hard to beat. You keep the visual side-by-side view, the Android app and the element removal that hides cookie bars. That is the honest answer for a few pages where you want to see exactly what moved.
Quick setup for a restock watch
- Open AyeWatch in a browser tab and create a free account.
- Paste the product page URL.
- Write the rule: "Alert me when this item can be added to the cart in size M."
- Pick a daily interval, which is what Free Preview allows.
- Install the phone app if you want the push alert in your pocket.
That is the whole thing. No extension, no selectors, no box to draw.