head to head · open source
changedetection.io vs toapi
changedetection.io has 34,312 GitHub stars, 2,064 forks, 385 open issues and last shipped today. toapi has 3,555 stars, 241 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. changedetection.io leads on adoption by 865% (34,312 vs 3,555 stars). changedetection.io is written in Python under Apache-2.0; toapi is written in Python under MIT. changedetection.io has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, toapi 7%. changedetection.io was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| changedetection.io | toapi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 241 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick changedetection.io if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick toapi if
- You want the toapi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and toapi fits your workflow better
About changedetection.io
changedetection.io is an open source website change detection and web page monitoring tool written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It watches URLs, detects when their content changes, and sends alerts through channels such as Discord, Email, Slack, Telegram, and Webhook. The project lives in the Data & Analytics / Data Extraction & Web Scraping ecosystem, carries more than 34,000 stars and 2,000 forks on GitHub, and has been developed for roughly six years. It is designed to be self hosted, and the same codebase also backs a hosted subscription service offered by the maintainers.…
read the full changedetection.io overview →
About toapi
toapi Turn any website into a JSON API — declaratively. toapi lets you point at a web page, declare the fields you want with CSS selectors, and get back a clean JSON API. No crawler to babysit, no database to maintain — pages are fetched and parsed on demand, with built‑in caching. Install Requires Python 3.10+. Quickstart Run it: Then visit and you get: How it works 1. Route — @api.route("/posts", "/news") maps your API path to a source URL. 2. Fetch — pages are fetched with requests (or a headless browser if you pass browser= ) and cached in memory. 3. Parse — each Item extracts fields with CSS selectors via ht…
read the full toapi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is changedetection.io or toapi more popular?
changedetection.io has 34,312 GitHub stars and toapi has 3,555. changedetection.io has the larger community by that measure.
Are changedetection.io and toapi free?
Both are open source. changedetection.io is licensed under Apache-2.0 and toapi under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between changedetection.io and toapi?
changedetection.io is written in Python and toapi in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, changedetection.io or toapi?
Choose changedetection.io if you want the larger community (34,312 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose toapi if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.