so ive been trying to get more into DX chasing lately and someone at the club mentioned i should be watching the cluster spots more closely. i already had a QRZ account so i started using their logbook and spot features but then a buddy told me DXwatch is better for real time stuff. now im running both and honestly im not sure if im just duplicating everything or if there's actually a reason to use both at the same time.

like QRZ seems to pull from a bunch of different clusters already? or does it filter things differently than DXwatch does. i cant really tell. sometimes i see a spot on DXwatch that doesnt show up on QRZ for a few minutes and sometimes its the other way around. my setup is pretty basic, just running WSJT-X for FT8 and monitoring 20m mostly, maybe 17m in the evenings.

is there a reason experienced DXers keep multiple cluster windows open or am i overthinking this whole thing

not redundant at all honestly. they pull from overlapping but not identical sources. DXwatch aggregates from a wider net of cluster nodes in my experience and tends to be a bit snappier for certain parts of the world - i notice it picks up JA and VK spots faster than QRZ does for some reason, maybe just the nodes they prioritize. QRZ spotting is convenient if you're already in their ecosystem and the integration with their callsign lookup is genuinely nice when you want to quickly see if you need a contact for a new entity.

for FT8 on 20m you might also want to look at pskreporter running in the background, different beast but it shows propagation in a way the cluster spots dont really capture. anyway yeah keep both open, they dont cost anything and the few seconds difference in spot timing can actually matter when a rare one shows up and the pileup forms fast.

i just use the DX cluster tab in Log4OM and it pulls from whatever server i point it at, never really thought about which one is better lol. but yeah pskreporter is what the other guy said, thats the one i check when im trying to figure out if my signal is actually getting out before i start calling anyone