Headway vs Beamer: Which Changelog Tool to Pick (2026)

Headway and Beamer both give you a changelog page and an in-app widget that tells users what is new. Headway keeps it simple: a free plan that already covers the basics, and one paid plan. Beamer is a fuller product-communication tool, priced by how many monthly active users see the widget.

Prices and plan details below were read from headwayapp.co and getbeamer.com/pricing in October 2026.

#The short answer

• Pick Headway if you want a clean changelog and widget at the lowest cost, and you do not need targeting or email notifications.
• Pick Beamer if you want to target announcements at user segments, send push or email notifications, or add feedback and NPS later.
• Pick neither if your real problem is writing the changelog in the first place. See the last section.

#Pricing

How the bill grows. Headway has one paid plan, so it does not grow. Beamer counts monthly active users (MAU) who load the widget. Past each plan's limit you can buy more MAU or move up a plan. If your app has 8,000 active users a month, you are past Starter's 5,000, so you buy extra MAU or move to Pro.

#Features

"Not listed" means the vendor's pricing page does not mention it. It may exist elsewhere in the product, so ask them if it matters to you.

#Where Headway wins

Price. Headway's free plan has unlimited changelogs, a public page, a widget and custom categories. Many small teams never need more. Pro adds a custom domain, whitelabel, all integrations and scheduled publishing for $29 a month, no matter how many users you have.

Simplicity. There is one decision to make: free or Pro. Nothing grows with your user count.

Privacy options. Pro can keep a changelog private or hidden from search engines, useful for internal tools or B2B products under NDA.

#Where Beamer wins

Targeting. Beamer can show different posts to different users. Basic segmentation comes with Pro, advanced segmentation and user activity with Scale.

Reaching people outside the widget. Email and push notifications on Pro and up mean users hear about a release even if they never open the widget.

Room to grow. Comments, reactions, multiple languages, and add-ons for feedback collection and NPS surveys. If you want one vendor for in-app announcements and feedback, Beamer offers that, at $99 a month per add-on.

#What both leave to you

Headway and Beamer publish what you write. Neither one writes it. After each release, someone still reads through the merged pull requests, decides what customers care about, and turns "refactor auth middleware" into a sentence a customer understands. For a small team shipping every week, that writing is the part that gets skipped.

#A third option if you ship from GitHub

ShipTell writes the changelog for you. It connects to GitHub, reads your merged pull requests (titles, descriptions and labels), and drafts customer-friendly release notes for you to edit and publish. It publishes to a public changelog page, an embeddable widget, email subscribers, and Slack or Discord.

ShipTell also includes a support inbox and a public roadmap with voting. When a release matches an open feature request, everyone who voted gets an email. Starter is $29 a month and Pro is $49 a month, with a 7-day free trial.

It is not the right pick if you only need a free changelog page (Headway's free plan is hard to beat), if you need MAU-based targeting like Beamer's, or if you do not use GitHub.

More comparisons:

• Beamer alternatives
• Headway alternatives
• Beamer vs LaunchNotes
• Headway vs Changelogfy
• Changelog tools for indie hackers