How reliable is Netletz?

Last updated: June 23, 2026

We'd rather you pick us because we're honest than because we sounded clever. So here is exactly what Netletz does, how fast it does it, and what it won't promise.

How often we re-alert (and why polling continues)

Every watcher runs in one of two modes. You can change the mode on the watcher's card.

• Trailing (default for gas, Amazon, metals, generic price drops, AI/URL watchers). After we send the first alert, we keep polling — but we only send another alert if the new value moves at least your chosen margin further in your favor. Default margin is 3%. Example: diesel watcher fires at $3.99. Next ticks at $3.97 and $3.95 are silent. At $3.87 (≥3% better) we alert again. If the price climbs back over $4 and later drops below again, that counts as a fresh event and alerts regardless of margin.
• Auto-pause (default for specific-date flights, specific campsite nights, job listings, storm alerts, listing-email watchers). After the first alert we stop polling entirely and the card shows a Re-arm button. Honest "no spam, no waste" — we don't burn ticks watching something you've already been told about.

A 2-tick confirmation gate and a 24-hour same-message dedupe sit on top of both modes as safety nets against page glitches and tracking-param noise.

How fast we alert you

Every watcher has a check interval you set when you create it (as fast as every hour on paid plans, every 30 min for campsite watchers). We poll your source on that interval — we do not stream. When a check sees your condition met, we send SMS, push, and an in-app card right after that check completes. End-to-end, expect to be alerted within one check interval of the change actually appearing on the source.

We do not promise "instant" or "in seconds" alerts. Anyone who does is either streaming a paid data feed (we aren't) or shading the truth.

What "verified" vs "best guess" means

Some sources publish structured data (a clear price tag in machine-readable HTML, a government weather feed). Some don't, and we scrape rendered pages. We score every read with a confidence level:

• Verified — two independent signals on the page agree (e.g. the visible buy-box price matches the page's structured price metadata). We trust this.
• Best guess — one weaker signal, like a price near "in stock" / "buy now" markers. We still show it, but it may be a related-product price or a promotional variant. We require two consecutive "verified" reads at your target before we alert, so you should not get false texts from this.
• Stale — the last successful read is more than 2× your check interval old. The card flags this so you don't mistake an old number for "right now."

Amazon prices (the most asked-about case)

Amazon's buy-box price changes by color, size, pack, coupons, and Subscribe & Save — often minute to minute. We track the exact variant (ASIN) you give us. If you paste a generic product link, we may track a different variant than the one you were looking at. Always copy the URL of the specific color / size you want.

What we won't promise

• No uptime SLA. We're a small service. We monitor ourselves (a canary texts our admins if checks stop running), but we don't credit your subscription if a tick slips by 30 minutes once a month.
• No guarantee on third-party sources. If Amazon or a recreation booking site changes their page, our adapter can miss a check until we update. The /status page and our admin health view tell us within minutes; we typically fix scraper drift the same day.
• No "watch literally anything." What we support well today is listed on the home page. AI/URL watchers can handle a long tail of cases, but accuracy degrades on unusual pages — confidence labels will tell you.

If something looks wrong

Hit the Check now icon on the watcher to force a fresh read. If the new number still doesn't match what you see, we want to know — reply to any Netletz email and a human will read it.

For incidents in progress, see /status.