People look for a Beamer alternative for three reasons, and which one you have decides where you should look.
- The bill went up. Beamer meters by monthly active users, and MAU counts everyone who loads a page carrying its script, not everyone who reads an update. Traffic growth moves you up a tier whether or not anyone read anything.
- You are paying for modules you do not use. Changelog, feedback, NPS, in-app notifications and push are sold together, with feedback and NPS as paid add-ons on top.
- It does not cover your app. Beamer is a script embedded in a web page. If your product is an iOS or Android app, the update most of your users see is your store listing, and no web widget touches it.
If your reason is 1 or 2, the alternatives below are drop-in replacements. If it is 3, you need something different, and it is covered at the end.
What Beamer costs today
For a baseline, checked on 21 August 2026 against Beamer's pricing page:
| Plan | Monthly | MAU included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1,000 |
| Starter | $59 | 5,000 |
| Pro | $119 | 10,000 |
| Scale | $299 | 50,000 |
Annual billing is lower. Extra capacity is sold in 5,000 MAU bundles at $50/month. Comments, reactions and basic segmentation begin at Pro; advanced segmentation at Scale. Feedback and NPS are separate add-ons.
The number worth calculating before anything else: what you pay at three times your current traffic. On an MAU model that is roughly three times the bill for the same amount of writing.
The alternatives
Headway, if you want the cheapest real changelog
Headway publishes two plans as of 21 August 2026: Free, and Pro at $29/month. Pro adds white-labelling, a custom domain, Slack and Twitter integrations, team management, scheduled publishing and privacy controls. The published pricing carries no MAU limit, which is the whole argument for it.
Pick it if you want a changelog page and a widget, and nothing else.
Do not pick it if you need segmentation, in-app notifications beyond the changelog, or a feedback loop. Headway does not sell those, which is why it costs $29.
More in Headway alternatives.
AnnounceKit, if MAU pricing is the problem
AnnounceKit charges per project rather than per user. As of 21 August 2026: Essentials $89/month, Growth $149/month, Scale $399/month, 15 percent off annually, plus an NPS-only plan at $49/month. All plans advertise unlimited posts, visitors and subscribers.
Segmentation, feature requests and advanced analytics start at Growth. Multi-language, custom CSS and SSO start at Scale.
Pick it if you have high traffic and low willingness to be metered by it. At 50,000 MAU, flat per-project pricing is straightforwardly cheaper.
Do not pick it if you need multi-language and cannot justify the Scale tier, or if your traffic is small enough that the entry price is worse than Beamer's.
Featurebase, if the changelog is the end of a feedback loop
Featurebase bundles helpdesk, feedback board, help center, roadmap and changelog in one subscription. As of 21 August 2026, pricing is per seat billed yearly: Free for one seat, Growth $29, Professional $59, Enterprise $99, with AI resolutions billed at $0.49 each.
Pick it if you already want a public feedback board. An announcement that closes the request it came from is the best-converting changelog entry there is, and having both in one product makes that a link rather than a copy-paste.
Do not pick it if you only want a changelog. Per-seat pricing across a suite adds up fast, and you would be buying a helpdesk to get a widget.
GitHub Releases, if your users are developers
Free, versioned, and reviewed alongside the code. Tools like release-drafter assemble the notes from merged pull requests, so the changelog is a by-product of the work rather than a separate chore.
Pick it if you sell to developers. A well-kept releases page reads as more credible to that audience than any widget.
Do not pick it if your users are not on GitHub, or if you need to reach someone inside the product.
ReleaseCat, if your product is an app
We build this, so read it as a description rather than a recommendation.
ReleaseCat is not a Beamer replacement and does not embed anything in your web app. It connects to App Store Connect and the Google Play Developer API and manages the store side of a release: the What's New text for each version, translated into the languages you ship in and checked against each store's limit, plus listing metadata, screenshots, pricing, submission for review, and phased or staged rollout, with an iOS and Android pair releasable together from one page.
Pick it if your release notes end up in a store listing and you currently retype them in two consoles.
Do not pick it if you ship a web product. You want one of the four above.
Free for two apps; paid plans are $19 and $49 a month. Pricing.
Compared on the criteria that decide it
| Beamer | Headway | AnnounceKit | Featurebase | ReleaseCat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priced by | MAU | Flat | Per project | Per seat | Flat |
| Entry paid price | $59/mo | $29/mo | $89/mo | $29/seat/mo | $19/mo |
| Free tier | 1,000 MAU | Yes | Trial only | 1 seat | 2 apps |
| In-app widget | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Multiple products | Yes | Yes | Per project | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-language | Yes | Not published | Scale tier | Professional tier | Every store language |
| Segmentation | Pro tier | No | Growth tier | Yes | Not applicable |
| Comments and reactions | Pro tier | Not published | Yes | Yes | No |
| Feedback board | Paid add-on | No | Growth tier | Core | No |
| Analytics | Basic, more on Pro | Not published | Advanced on Growth | Yes | Store reviews |
| iOS / Android release notes | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Checked on 21 August 2026 against each vendor's published pricing page. "Not published" means the vendor's own pages did not state it clearly, not that the feature is missing. Tier contents change; confirm before you commit.
Questions worth asking before you switch
What does the bill look like at 3x? This is the whole reason most people are reading this page. Run it for every candidate, not just the one you are leaving.
How many products do you actually have? Per-project pricing is excellent for one product and punishing for five. MAU pricing is the reverse. Count first.
Is the widget the surface your users are on? If a meaningful share of your usage is in a native app, a web widget reaches the smaller half of your audience. That is not an argument against buying one, but it is an argument for knowing it.
Can you export what you have written? Ask before you migrate in, not when you migrate out. Years of changelog entries are content you own.
Where does multi-language sit? It is the feature most likely to be several tiers above where you expect.
If you are comparing us specifically
We wrote a longer piece on where the two products overlap and where they do not: ReleaseCat vs Beamer. The short version is that they are not competitors, and a team shipping a web product and mobile apps generally ends up with one of each.
For the wider field, including the free options, see best changelog tools.
Keep reading
Best Changelog Tools for SaaS Teams
A practical comparison of changelog tools, from a markdown file in your repo to hosted widgets and app store release notes, with verified pricing and where each one stops working.
Best Headway Alternatives for SaaS Product Updates
Headway is the cheapest real changelog tool, so people leave it for capability rather than price. Here is what each alternative adds, and what it costs.
ReleaseCat vs Beamer: Which Changelog Tool Is Right for You?
An honest comparison of two tools that are often searched together but solve different problems, and how to tell which one your team actually needs.
How to Build an In-App Changelog Users Actually Read
Why users ignore changelogs, how long an update should be, and how to use screenshots, segmentation and reactions without turning your product into a newsletter.