changedetection

ChangeDetection

Website change monitoring with automatic alerts. Point it at any URL and it notifies you when the page content changes — useful for tracking price drops, stock availability, policy updates, job postings, or anything on the web that doesn't have an RSS feed.

When to run this over alternatives like Visualping or built-in browser features: ChangeDetection is self-hosted, stores full history, supports complex filtering (XPath, CSS selectors, regex), and integrates with nearly every notification service via Apprise. It also handles JavaScript-heavy sites that simpler HTTP-polling tools can't reach.

Architecture

Browser
  │
  └─► changedetection :5000  ──► changedetection-playwright :3000 (JS rendering)
                         │
                         └─► flaresolverr :8191 (Cloudflare bypass)

Container	Image	Role
changedetection	lscr.io/linuxserver/changedetection.io	Main app and web UI
changedetection-playwright	dgtlmoon/sockpuppetbrowser	Headless Chromium for JS-rendered pages

Fetch methods — when to use each:

Method	When to use
HTTP (default)	Simple HTML pages, APIs, RSS feeds
Playwright/Chrome	Pages that require JavaScript to render content
FlareSolverr	Cloudflare-protected sites that block scraping

Networks

Network	Type	Purpose
changedetection	internal bridge	Allows the main container to reach playwright by service name
flaresolverr	external	Shared with the FlareSolverr stack; allows http://flaresolverr:8191 to resolve
traefik	external	Traefik ingress — required so Traefik can reach the container on its traefik network IP

Prerequisites

1. Traefik deployed first — it creates the external traefik network this stack depends on.

2. FlareSolverr stack deployed — it creates the external flaresolverr network. If deploying without FlareSolverr, remove the flaresolverr network entries from compose.yaml.

3. Host storage directory:

   mkdir -p /mnt/SSD/Containers/changedetection
   chown -R 3001:3001 /mnt/SSD/Containers/changedetection

Quick Start

cp example.env .env
# Edit .env as needed
docker compose up -d

Open https://<CHANGEDETECTION_DOMAIN> (or http://<host-ip>:5000 directly).

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
TZ	America/New_York	Container timezone
CHANGEDETECTION_DOMAIN	—	Traefik domain (e.g. changedetection.virtuallyboring.com)
CHANGEDETECTION_PORT	5000	Host port the UI is exposed on (fallback; Traefik is primary)

Variables hardcoded in compose.yaml (rarely need changing):

Variable	Service	Description
PUID / PGID	changedetection	Run as UID/GID 3001
BASE_URL	changedetection	Uncomment only if behind a reverse proxy with a subpath
PLAYWRIGHT_DRIVER_URL	changedetection	WebSocket URL of the browser sidecar
DEFAULT_LAUNCH_ARGS	changedetection-playwright	Chrome launch flags

FlareSolverr Integration

After deploying, configure the Flaresolverr URL in the UI:

Settings → General → Requests → FlareSolverr API URL

http://flaresolverr:8191

Per-watch, select FlareSolverr as the fetch method for any Cloudflare-protected site.

Notifications

ChangeDetection uses Apprise for notifications. Configure URLs under Settings → Notifications. Common examples:

# Discord
discord://webhook_id/webhook_token

# Gotify
gotify://hostname/token

# Email (SMTP)
mailto://user:password@smtp.host/to@address

Storage

Data	Host path
Config and watch data	/mnt/SSD/Containers/changedetection/

Maintenance

# Update images
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

# Backup (stops briefly)
docker compose down
tar -czf changedetection-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /mnt/SSD/Containers/changedetection
docker compose up -d