Comparison
RefreshPilot vs Auto Refresh Plus
Two extensions that do much the same job. This page is written to help you pick correctly, which sometimes means picking the other one.
The short answer
Choose Auto Refresh Plus
- You use Edge, Opera, Vivaldi or Brave. RefreshPilot is Chrome-only; Auto Refresh Plus runs on every Chromium browser.
- You want the longest track record. It has been shipping since 2014 and has over a million users and 22,000 ratings behind it.
- You want to trial the paid features before paying. It offers a 14-day free trial; RefreshPilot has no trial, only a free tier.
Choose RefreshPilot
- You are on Chrome and the yearly cost matters. PRO is $2.99 a year against $35.91 a year for their annual plan.
- You want the paid features without a subscription decision every month. One yearly charge unlocks everything at once.
- You want the behaviour written down. Every feature has a documentation page describing its defaults and its limits.
Most of the feature list is a tie
It would be easy to imply otherwise, so plainly: on the things people actually use these extensions for, the two are close to identical. Both do fixed, random and custom intervals; hard refresh; a visual countdown; keyword monitoring in found, lost and any-change modes; regex, XPath and CSS expressions; monitoring a chosen area of a page with a click-to-pick element selector; auto-clicking a match; email alerts; cross-device sync; and AI-assisted script generation. Both deliver webhooks to the same five destinations — a custom URL, Discord, Slack, Telegram and ntfy. If a specific one of those is your deciding factor, either extension will do it.
That is not a criticism of them or a boast for us. It is the honest state of two mature products solving the same problem.
Side by side
| RefreshPilot | Auto Refresh Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| The basics | ||
| Browsers | Chrome only (116+) | Chrome, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave — Firefox stated as planned |
| First released | 2026 | 2014 |
| Users | ~1,000 | 1,000,000+ on the Chrome Web Store |
| Store rating | 4.9 from 40+ ratings | 4.9 from 22,000 ratings |
| What it costs | ||
| Paid plan | $2.99 per year | $2.99/mo billed annually — $35.91 per year, or $3.99/mo monthly |
| Free trial of paid features | None — a free tier instead | 14 days |
| Free tier | Unlimited auto refresh, one keyword in found mode, desktop notifications | Basic features and basic monitoring, up to 3 devices |
| Refreshing | ||
| Fixed, random and custom intervals | Yes | Yes |
| Hard refresh, cache bypass | Yes | Yes |
| On-page countdown and toolbar badge | Yes | Yes |
| Weekly schedules | Yes — start and auto-stop on chosen weekdays | Not documented |
| Auto-start by URL pattern | Yes | Yes |
| Monitoring | ||
| Found, lost and any-change modes | Yes | Yes |
| Regex, XPath and CSS expressions | Yes | Yes |
| Boolean AND / OR / NOT expressions | Yes | Not documented |
| Watch part of a page, with element picker | Yes | Yes |
| Detect changes without a reload | Yes | Yes |
| Alerts and automation | ||
| Desktop notifications and sounds | Yes | Yes |
| Email alerts | Yes, on PRO | Yes, on paid |
| Webhooks | Custom JSON, Discord, Slack, Telegram, ntfy | Custom URL, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Ntfy |
| Auto-click the match | Yes | Yes |
| Custom scripts with AI generation | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-device sync | Yes | Yes, with named settings profiles |
“Not documented” means we could not find it described on their public site in August 2026 — treat it as unverified rather than absent.
The one difference that is not close
Both products advertise $2.99, which makes them look identically priced. They are not. Auto Refresh Plus charges $2.99 per month billed annually, which their pricing page totals as $35.91 per year, or $3.99 a month paid monthly. RefreshPilot PRO is $2.99 for a year. Over three years that is roughly $108 against $9.
What that buys is not identical either. Their paid tiers include settings profiles and device management that RefreshPilot has no equivalent of, and a 14-day trial to evaluate it. Whether the difference is worth 12× is a judgement only you can make about your own use.
How this page was put together
Every claim about Auto Refresh Plus was taken from their own website and Chrome Web Store listing in August 2026, at the version current then. Nothing here is inferred from a competitor teardown or a third-party blog. Where we could not confirm something on their site we wrote “not documented” rather than “no”, because a missing page is not evidence of a missing feature. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
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Contact supportIs RefreshPilot a drop-in replacement for Auto Refresh Plus?
On Chrome, for the common jobs — interval refreshing, keyword monitoring, notifications and webhooks — yes. Settings do not transfer between the two, so you would set your watches up again. If you use any browser other than Chrome, it is not a replacement at all, because RefreshPilot does not run there.
Which one is better?
Neither, in the abstract. Auto Refresh Plus is the safer pick for browser coverage, longevity and the reassurance of a very large user base. RefreshPilot is the cheaper pick by a wide margin on Chrome. The feature lists are close enough that price and browser support are the real deciders.
Why is RefreshPilot so much cheaper?
It is a newer and smaller product with a much lower cost base, and it is priced to earn users rather than to maximise revenue per user. That is a genuine advantage today and an honest risk to weigh: a product with 1,000 users has a shorter track record than one with a million.
Does Auto Refresh Plus have anything RefreshPilot lacks?
Yes. It runs on every Chromium browser rather than Chrome alone, it offers named settings profiles and explicit device management, and it has a 14-day trial of the paid features. It also has twelve more years of stability behind it.
Can I use both?
Technically yes, but two extensions reloading the same tab will fight each other. Pick one per browser profile.
Is the free tier enough on its own?
For plain auto refreshing, yes — that is free forever in RefreshPilot, with one keyword in found mode and desktop notifications. Multiple keywords, the expression prefixes, webhooks, email alerts and schedules are PRO.
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