How Diff Runs Work

A full run crawls every reachable page of your app. Most of the time, between one run and the next, most of those pages haven't changed. A diff run skips the unchanged ones: it works out which pages are different since your last successful run and re-crawls only those. You get the same navigation map and the same findings a full run produces, for a fraction of the time and credits.

When to use one

• Routine re-checks. After a merge, after a small fix, or just to keep the picture current — anywhere a full re-crawl would be overkill.
• Frequent runs on a budget. If you want to run often, diff runs keep the cost proportional to how much actually changed.

Do a full run instead when:

• it's the first run on an environment (there's nothing to diff against);
• a change touched a large part of the app (a framework upgrade, a redesign, a routing change), where "only the changed pages" is most of the app anyway;
• you want a clean, complete re-crawl for confidence before a release.

How to start one

Choose Diff run when you start a run, instead of a full run. Manta compares the target against your last successful run of that environment, identifies the pages that changed, and crawls those.

[Screenshot: the start-a-run form with the Diff run option selected]

Everything else about the run is the same — same starting URL, same credentials, same plain-English checks if you've set them.

What you get

The result looks like any other run: an updated navigation map and a list of findings with screenshots and reproduction steps. The only difference is that Manta spent its time on the parts of the app that moved.

[Screenshot: a completed diff run summary showing pages re-crawled vs skipped and the credit cost]

Tips

• The baseline is automatic — it's your last successful run of that environment. You don't pick it.
• A diff run is only as current as the last full run behind it. Do a full run periodically so the unchanged-page picture doesn't drift.
• Match the starting URL and credentials to the previous run so Manta is comparing like with like.

What to try next

• How to Review a Run — turning findings into fixes.
• How to Manage Credits and Billing — where diff runs save you the most.

Start a free run and see what it turns up.