Still manual after 10 years
Headway has always required you to write changelog entries by hand. That was fine in 2015. Herald reads your merged GitHub PRs and drafts the entry for you. The same update takes 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes.
Headway Alternative
Headway got you started. Herald gets you further.
Headway has been doing changelogs since 2015. Herald builds on everything it got right — and adds native GitHub integration, AI-powered drafts, and a subscriber base that actually grows. Same simplicity. A decade of progress.
Free 14-day trial · No credit card · Cancel anytime
Why teams outgrow Headway
No GitHub integration
Headway has no connection to your GitHub repos. Your entire shipping history is in your pull requests — and none of it flows into Headway automatically. Herald connects to GitHub natively. Merge a PR, get a draft.
Not much has changed
Headway's product looks nearly identical to how it looked five years ago. The market has moved — AI, analytics, subscriber segmentation, embeddable widgets with read tracking. Herald is built for how developer teams communicate in 2026.
Herald vs Headway — side by side
| Feature | Herald | Headway |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $19/mo | $29/mo |
| Pricing model | Flat per seat | Flat |
| Native GitHub integration | — | |
| Private repos | Team+ | — |
| AI changelog drafts | — | |
| Embeddable widget | ||
| Email subscribers | ||
| User segmentation / groups | Team+ | — |
| Analytics dashboard | Team+ | — |
| Custom domain | Team+ | |
| Full white-label | Studio | — |
| Self-hostable / open source | — | |
| Active development | Unclear |
Built for teams that ship on GitHub
GitHub-native PR reading
Every merged PR surfaces in your Herald dashboard. No manual entry. No copy-paste. No forgetting.
AI-powered drafts
AI reads your PR data and writes a clean, human-readable changelog entry. Review and publish — or just publish.
Subscriber analytics
Track subscriber growth, view counts, and read rates. Know what's landing. Headway shows you nothing. (Team+ plan)
Open source
MIT-licensed and self-hostable. Run Herald on your own infra. The cloud version saves you the ops.
What Headway got right
Headway proved that changelog tools don't need to be complex. Clean editor, simple embed, flat pricing — these are the right defaults. Herald keeps all of it. The difference is what Herald adds: GitHub as the source of truth, AI to handle the writing, and analytics to close the loop. You don't lose simplicity. You gain a decade of progress.
Herald is for you if...
- You use GitHub and want your changelog to write itself from your PRs
- You've been on Headway for a while but want more from your changelog
- You want an embeddable widget with actual analytics
- You want subscribers and read tracking, not just a public page
- You want a tool that's actively shipping features
If you're happy with Headway's simplicity and don't use GitHub, Headway will serve you fine. If you want more — Herald is ready.
Skip the migration. Start fresh — automatically.
No markdown exports. No CSV imports. No migration tool. Herald connects to your repo and uses AI to generate a full release history from your merged PRs. You get a populated changelog with real context — not an empty page waiting to be backfilled.
- Paste your public GitHub repo path (or upgrade to Team+ for private).
- Herald reads your merged PR history and drafts entries with AI.
- Review, edit, and publish — or just publish.
- Your subscribers get your first release email.
Starting from the repo beats copy-pasting. Your new changelog has real context instead of rewritten summaries.
Your changelog.
Now with a decade of progress.
Headway got you started. Herald takes you further. Free 14-day trial, no credit card.
Self-hosting is always free. MIT licensed.