Sneaker Monitors Explained: How Restock Alerts Work

A monitor is software that watches store websites around the clock and sends an alert the moment a product goes live, restocks or changes. For limited sneakers, cards and retail items that sell out in seconds, the monitor often helps decide who gets one. This guide explains how monitors work, the main types, where people get them, and their limits.

How a monitor works#

A monitor repeats the same check over and over:

1. It requests a page or data feed from a store: a product page, a search result, a category or the store's product data.
2. It compares the answer with the last check. Is there a new product, a new size, a price change, or stock where there wasn't any?
3. If something changed, it sends an alert, usually a Discord message with the product, price, sizes and a link. Some monitors also start bot tasks automatically.

Most alerts arrive through Discord webhooks, which Discord describes as a way to send automated messages to a channel. That's why so much of reselling runs through Discord servers.

Types of monitors#

• Restock monitors watch known products for stock coming back.
• New-product monitors watch a whole store or category for listings that weren't there before. Shopify stores are commonly monitored this way.
• Keyword monitors filter alerts to products matching words you choose, such as a model name.
• Product ID monitors watch a specific product ID: an Amazon ASIN, a Target TCIN, a Walmart ID or a store SKU.
• Price monitors alert you when a price drops below a level you set.
• In-store tools, offered by some groups, track stock numbers or scan store inventory for local pickup.

Where people get monitors#

Cook groups#

Most resellers get monitors as part of a cook group membership: dozens of channels, each posting alerts for a store or region. A typical group advertises 24/7 monitors and restock alerts, alongside release information and support. Our guide to cook groups explains what else they include and what they cost.

Bots' own monitors#

Bots have monitors built in, set up in different ways:

• Task-group monitors. In Prism, each task group has one monitor with its own input, proxies and delay. Refract's monitor takes a product ID and an optional maximum price.
• Server-side monitors. Some bot makers run monitors on their own servers and ping your tasks when something drops. Stellar calls this server-side monitoring, and Valor's Automations create and start tasks when its monitors spot a launch or restock. This saves your own proxies and data.

Our guide to how sneaker bots work explains how monitors fit into a bot setup.

Standalone monitor services#

Some companies sell monitors on their own, mostly to cook groups that want alerts in their servers. Zephyr Monitors, for example, sends notifications to the buyer's Discord server, with a minimum subscription of $10 a month under its terms. Open-source monitor scripts also exist, but you have to run and maintain them yourself, ideally on a machine that stays on all the time.

Monitor delay: the speed trade-off#

Monitor delay is how long a monitor waits between checks, usually set in milliseconds. A shorter delay spots stock sooner, but it sends more requests, which uses more proxy data and raises the chance of being rate-limited or blocked by the store. A longer delay is gentler but slower. Bots let you set it per store and often suggest values.

Monitors also use proxies, which cost money. Refract recommends at least one monitor proxy per product it watches, and Stellar recommends ISP proxies for monitoring, which are usually billed per IP rather than per gigabyte. Our guide to proxy types explains the difference.

What monitors can't do#

• They can't guarantee you'll get the item. On hyped drops, stock can sell out in seconds, often before a manual buyer finishes checkout.
• Alerts can be false. Pages change for reasons unrelated to stock, such as new images or reviews, and checks can return incomplete data when a store is under heavy load.
• Alerts can be late. Every step, from the check to Discord delivering the message, adds time.
• Stores fight back. Retailers protect their sites against heavy automated traffic, and a monitor that gets blocked goes quiet.

Judging a monitor#

When comparing cook groups or monitor services, ask:

1. Which stores and regions does it cover, and does that match where you buy?
2. How fast are its alerts on real drops? Members' success posts and timestamps help.
3. How noisy is it? Too many false alerts and you'll start ignoring it.
4. How does it link? Direct product or cart links save seconds.
5. What does it cost, and is it included in a group you already pay for?

Monitors matter most on first-come releases. For draws, see our guides to sneaker raffles and Nike SNKRS.

Monitors on OOSClub#

OOSClub lists cook groups, bots and standalone monitors on the monitors hub and cook groups hub, with what each says it covers, its prices and the date we last checked them. For services that check out for you, see our guide to ACO services.