Wakelog vs Headway
Headway (headwayapp.co) more or less defined the hosted-changelog category: a clean public page plus the little popover widget with an unread dot that half the SaaS industry now uses. If you're searching for a Headway alternative, it's usually for one of three reasons: the branding on the free tier, the price of removing it, or wanting to post updates from CI instead of a web form. Here's the honest comparison.
What Headway does well
- The widget pattern. Headway's popover-with-badge is the pattern everyone copies (including us). It's polished and battle-tested across thousands of sites.
- Team accounts. Paid plans support multiple authors — if several people write your updates, that matters.
- Track record. It has been around for years. Boring reliability is a real feature in a tool your marketing site embeds.
Where Wakelog is different
- Actually free. No branding ransom: your public page and widget carry no "powered by" requirement, and there's no paid tier holding features back.
- API-first. Posting an update is one
curlorwakelog post --from-gitat the end of a deploy script. Release webhooks can mirror your GitHub/GitLab releases automatically. Headway is built around writing in its web dashboard. - No email at signup, nothing tracking your readers. Username + password, and public pages ship zero cookies or analytics scripts.
- Import and exit. Paste your existing CHANGELOG.md to start with history, and export the whole thing back to markdown any time.
Side by side
| Feature | Wakelog | Headway |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — no paid tier at all right now | Free tier with Headway branding; paid plans for customization and teams (last we checked) |
| Signup | Username + password. No email address, ever | Email account required |
| Post from CI / API | Full API + CLI + GitHub/GitLab release webhooks — everything the UI does | Dashboard-centric; API posting isn’t part of the free offering (check current docs) |
| "What’s new" widget | Yes — popover with unread badge, one script tag, no tracking | Yes — the original popover; branding on free tier |
| Import existing history | Paste CHANGELOG.md, or import GitHub / GitLab / Codeberg Releases by URL | Manual re-entry (no changelog-file importer we know of) |
| Export / lock-in | Whole history back as markdown with one GET — no export request form | Check current docs before committing |
| Reader privacy | Zero cookies, zero scripts, zero analytics for your readers | Widget loads Headway’s scripts on your page |
| Team seats | Single account per project — no seats or roles yet | Yes, on paid plans |
When you should still pick Headway
- You need multiple team members writing updates with their own logins.
- You want a vendor with a long public track record and are happy paying for it.
Switching
There's no one-click Headway importer (their export options are theirs to offer), but if
you can get your entries into a markdown file — even a rough
keep-a-changelog-style list of
## Title — date sections — the import preview will
show you exactly how it lands before you sign up. Dates are preserved, so your history
stays your history. The changelog migration guide
covers the whole move, including keeping old permalinks alive.
Start your free changelog Preview yours without signing up →
Notes on Headway reflect their public pricing and feature pages when we last checked (updated 2026-07-31). If something here is outdated or unfair, it's a bug — we'll fix it. See also the full comparison · vs Beamer · vs LaunchNotes · vs AnnounceKit · vs Canny · vs GitHub Releases.