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Cross-environment compare

Compare completed crawls across different hosts (for example staging vs production) with path-aligned matching. Same-site deploy diffs remain free; cross-environment compare requires a paid plan.

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Deploy diff vs cross-environment compare

Signal Diff offers two comparison modes. Pick the one that matches your question.

Mode When to use Plan
Deploy diff Track changes on the same monitored site between runs—after a deploy, schedule tick, or CI build on that sitemap. Appears automatically on run reports and supports a manual baseline override. Free (signed in)
Cross-environment compare Diff two runs on different sites or hosts—for example staging.example.com vs www.example.com—using path-aligned matching. Paid

Deploy diffs join URLs by full normalized URL on one site. Cross-environment compare strips the host and aligns pages by path only, so /about on staging matches /about on production even when domains differ. See Baselines and diffs for deploy-diff behavior.

Path matching rules

Cross-environment compare uses path-aligned keys so equivalent pages line up across hosts:

  • Path only — Host, scheme, and port are ignored. Only the URL path is used for alignment.
  • Query strings stripped — /products?id=1 and /products?id=2 both normalize to /products.
  • Lowercase paths — Paths are compared case-insensitively.
  • Trailing slashes trimmed — /blog/ and /blog match the same key.

Findings and page fields are compared only on paths present in both runs. The diff card shows path coverage counts when one environment has URLs the other lacks.

Paths that exist on only one side appear in coverage metrics but do not produce cross-environment new/resolved finding rows for the missing side.

Using the compare page

Open My Projects and use a project's compare shortcuts, or open manual compare for unassigned sites. Pick a left and right completed run, then click Compare.

Default: latest complete run per site

When you select a site, Signal Diff pre-selects that site’s most recent completed run. This default makes “staging latest vs production latest” a one-click workflow once both sites have history.

Override runs

Use the Run dropdown on each side to compare older deploys—for example before a release candidate promotion. Left and right must be different job IDs.

Reading results

Results use the same diff card layout as deploy diffs, framed for environments: new findings on the right vs left, resolved issues, URLs changed, and path coverage. Headlines such as “New findings on paths shared across environments” summarize cross-host impact.

Projects (Dev / Test / Prod)

On paid plans you can define projects—named products with monitored site environments such as Dev, Test, and Prod. Manage them on Projects.

  • Each project lists member sites with environment labels (for example Dev, Test, Prod).
  • On the compare page, choosing a project pre-fills left and right sites and their latest complete runs.
  • Preset buttons (when configured) apply common pairs—such as Dev vs Prod—in one click.

Projects do not run crawls themselves; they are shortcuts for picking sites and runs you already have in history. You still need completed runs on each environment site before comparing.

Retention and compare sources

Only retained completed runs appear in compare pickers. On all plans, runs older than 30 days (UTC, from completion) are pruned—you cannot open them or select them as a compare source.

If a run you need as left or right baseline has aged out, run a fresh crawl on that site first. Cross-environment compare does not bypass retention; pruned jobs are unavailable to the API.

Same rules apply to deploy-diff baselines. See Baselines and diffs — run history and Plans and limits.

Next steps