How to Get Notified When an Appointment Slot Opens Up

Passport renewals, visa interviews, driving tests, specialist doctors: the booking page says "No appointments available" almost every time you look. Slots do open, when someone cancels or a new batch is released, and they are gone within minutes.

Refreshing the page twenty times a day is miserable. This guide shows how to let a monitor do the refreshing and send you one alert when a slot appears.

How slot alerts work

Nearly every booking page has a message it shows when nothing is free:

• "No appointments available"
• "There are currently no slots"
• "Aucun créneau disponible"
• "Keine Termine verfügbar"

When a slot opens, that message goes away and a calendar or list of times shows up instead. So the thing to watch is the "nothing available" message disappearing. Watching for "the page changed" is a bad idea here: booking pages are full of dates, session tokens and banners that change on every load, and you would get alerts all day.

Set up an appointment alert with Site Spy

Step 1: Find a URL that shows availability without logging in

This is the step that decides whether it will work at all.

1. Open the booking site and click through to the page that shows availability for your office, service or doctor.
2. Copy the URL from the address bar.
3. Open it in a private or incognito window. If you see the same "no appointments" page without clicking anything, you have a URL you can watch.

Many booking systems put the location and service in the URL, so this works more often than you might expect. If the private window lands you on a start page or a login screen, read the limits section below before going further.

Step 2: Create a free account and add the page

Sign up (no credit card), then paste the URL on the watches page and press Find What to Watch. Site Spy shows you a picture of the page. Click the area where the "no appointments" message or the calendar appears, or drag a box around it, then press Track This Element.

Step 3: Tell it which message means "nothing yet"

Open the watch's settings (the gear icon on the watch row) and find Waiting For Text To Clear. Paste the message exactly as the page shows it:

No appointments available

Then turn on Alert only when it clears. Nothing is sent while that message is on the page. When it disappears, you get one alert, and nothing else from that page.

Use the page's own language and wording. If the site has more than one "nothing free" message, put each on its own line. The field also accepts a regular expression, such as /no (appointments|slots) available/i.

Step 4: Get the alert somewhere you'll see it quickly

For appointments, speed matters more than anything else. Email works, but Telegram or browser push usually reach you faster. Both are included on every plan, as are webhooks to Discord, Slack and 90+ other services. Set them up on the notifications page.

Step 5: Pick a check interval that matches how fast slots go

• Free: every hour. Enough for calendars that release new slots in batches, such as a clinic that opens next month's bookings.
• Starter (EUR 4 a month): every 10 minutes.
• Pro (EUR 8 a month): every minute on up to 10 pages. Cancellation slots at busy passport offices, visa centres and test centres are often taken within minutes, so this is where Pro earns its price.

See pricing.

What people use it for

• Passport and ID card appointments at city halls and prefectures (French rendez-vous pages are a common one)
• Visa and residence permit appointments at consulates and visa centres
• Driving test cancellations
• Doctors, dentists and specialists whose booking pages are public
• Restaurant tables, campsites and classes that open bookings on a schedule

When this won't work

Booking systems are some of the hardest pages to monitor. Know the limits before you rely on it:

• You have to log in to see slots. Site Spy checks pages as a logged-out visitor. Login steps can be set up through the API on Pro, but there is no dashboard editor for them yet, and some booking systems block automated logins anyway.
• Availability only appears after a multi-step form. If you must pick a service, then a location, then a date, and the URL never changes, there is no single page to watch. The API's browser steps can sometimes click through it (Pro), but not always.
• Captchas and bot protection. Some government and visa systems use captchas or anti-bot services. Site Spy moves to heavier fetch methods when a site blocks it, but some still refuse. The watch then shows a "blocked" badge and you get an email, so you know to go back to checking by hand.
• Queue pages. Systems that put every visitor in a waiting room will show the queue page, not the slots.
• It won't book for you. Site Spy only alerts you. You still have to open the page and book quickly. Automated booking is against the rules on most of these sites anyway.
• Read the site's terms. Some booking services forbid automated checking. A check every few minutes is gentle compared to a bot, but it's your call.

FAQ

Can Site Spy book the appointment for me?

No. It sends you an alert when the "no appointments" message disappears. You book it yourself.

How quickly will I know when a slot opens?

Within one check interval, plus a few seconds to send the alert. That's up to an hour on Free, 10 minutes on Starter, and about a minute on Pro for up to 10 pages.

Will I get false alarms?

With Alert only when it clears on, you are alerted only when your "no appointments" text is gone. If the site rewords the message, that also counts as "gone", so you may occasionally get an alert with no slot behind it. Update the text in the watch's settings when that happens. If the page stops loading or blocks us, the watch reports that as a failure and emails you.

Can I watch several offices at once?

Yes, one watch per office or service. The free plan covers 2. Starter covers 25, checked every 10 minutes.

Is it free?

Yes, for 2 pages checked hourly, with every alert channel. Paid plans start at EUR 4 a month.

Related guides

• Back in stock alerts for any online shop, which uses the same "wait for the message to go away" setup
• How to track price drops on any product page
• How to monitor any website for changes

Create a free account and set up your first appointment alert.