Checkly vs Datadog, Pingdom, and New Relic: Synthetic Monitoring Comparison

Synthetic monitoring is a crowded category. Checkly, Datadog Synthetics, Pingdom, and New Relic all run scheduled checks against your application and alert you when things break. The differences lie in depth, developer experience, pricing model, and how well synthetic monitoring integrates with everything else in your observability stack.

This comparison is direct and specific. No vendor-speak, no "it depends" without elaboration.

Quick Summary

Checkly

What It Does Well

Monitoring as Code is the standout feature. No other synthetic monitoring tool in this comparison makes MaC as first-class as Checkly does. The CLI is good, the TypeScript constructs are well-designed, and the GitHub Actions integration works cleanly. If you want your monitors version-controlled and deployed like application code, Checkly is the clear choice.

Playwright-first for browser checks. Checkly uses Playwright natively. Your developers already know Playwright. The tests they write for local testing can run in Checkly with minimal changes. Contrast this with Selenium-based tools where you're fighting WebDriver quirks and maintaining a different testing paradigm.

Purpose-built interface. Because Checkly only does synthetic monitoring, its UI is uncluttered. Finding a failing check, reading the failure details, and getting to the actual error takes fewer clicks than in Datadog or New Relic, where synthetic monitoring is one tab among dozens.

API check depth. Setup scripts, teardown scripts, multi-step patterns with environment variable passing, JSON path assertions — Checkly's API checks cover complex authentication flows and chained requests without requiring you to build it in a browser check.

Weaknesses

No observability context. When a check fails, Checkly tells you the HTTP response was 500. It doesn't show you the server-side traces, the slow database query, or the log lines that explain why. You have to pivot to a separate tool (Datadog, Grafana, whatever you're using) to diagnose. This is the fundamental tradeoff: a purpose-built tool is better at its job but narrower in scope.

Pricing scales with check runs. On high-frequency monitoring (1-minute checks from 5 locations = 7,200 check runs/day), costs add up. Teams monitoring 50+ endpoints at high frequency need to model costs carefully.

No log-based alerts. Checkly only knows about what it probes. It can't alert you because your error rate in logs spiked; it can only alert you when its checks fail.

Pricing

• Free: 3 checks, 10,000 check runs/month
• Team ($80/month): 100 checks, 500,000 check runs/month
• Enterprise: custom, volume discounts, private locations

Check runs are consumed per execution per location. A check running every 5 minutes from 3 locations consumes ~26,000 check runs/month.

Datadog Synthetics

What It Does Well

Integrated observability. If you're already using Datadog for metrics, traces, and logs, Datadog Synthetics is compelling because everything lives in one place. A failing synthetic check links directly to the service's APM data, the relevant log lines, and the infrastructure metrics at the time of failure. The correlation is automatic.

Broad check types. Datadog supports API checks, multi-step API checks, browser checks (Playwright), TCP checks, SSL checks, DNS checks, gRPC checks, and WebSocket checks. More coverage types than Checkly.

Alerting integration. Datadog's alerting system is mature and flexible — composite monitors, anomaly detection, threshold adjustment, and notification routing to virtually any destination. If you have complex alerting requirements, Datadog's monitor system is more powerful than Checkly's alert channels.

Global locations. 50+ locations including private locations where you deploy a Datadog agent in your own infrastructure to test internal services.

Weaknesses

Only compelling if you're in the Datadog ecosystem. Datadog Synthetics as a standalone product doesn't make sense economically. Datadog's pricing is consumption-based across all products — you're paying for APM, log indexing, infrastructure monitoring, and synthetics together. If you don't use the rest of Datadog, the synthetics cost is unreasonable.

No monitoring as code native experience. Datadog has a Terraform provider for synthetics, and you can manage monitors via API, but it's not as smooth as Checkly's CLI. Version-controlling Datadog synthetics requires more infrastructure setup.

Complex pricing. Datadog's pricing is notoriously hard to model in advance. Synthetic tests are priced per test run, but rates vary by test type, location, and plan tier. Budget overruns are common for teams that don't model usage carefully.

UI complexity. Datadog's UI is powerful but dense. Navigating to synthetic monitoring, then to a specific check, then to a specific failure requires more clicks than a purpose-built tool.

Pricing

Datadog Synthetics pricing (as of 2024):

• API tests: ~$5 per 10,000 test runs
• Browser tests: ~$12 per 1,000 test runs
• Multi-step API tests: ~$5 per 10,000 test runs

These rates apply on top of your existing Datadog subscription. No standalone free tier for Synthetics.

Pingdom

What It Does Well

Simplicity. Pingdom is the oldest tool here and it shows — not in a bad way for simple use cases. Setting up an uptime check for a URL takes 2 minutes. If you need to know whether your homepage is reachable and responding in under 3 seconds, Pingdom does that without any learning curve.

Page speed monitoring. Pingdom includes a real browser test that measures page load performance — load time, page size, request count, waterfall charts. This is different from what Checkly and Datadog call "browser checks" — it's more like a synthetic page speed benchmark.

Pricing clarity. Pingdom's pricing tiers are simple: pay per check. No consumption complexity, no surprise invoices.

Weaknesses

Shallow API monitoring. Pingdom's API checks support basic assertions (status code, response time, contains string). No JSON path assertions, no setup scripts, no dynamic token support without workarounds. For anything beyond "does this URL return 200," Pingdom falls short.

Outdated browser scripting. Pingdom's transaction checks (browser automation) use a proprietary scripting system that predates Playwright and Selenium. The scripts are less expressive, harder to debug, and don't benefit from the modern browser automation ecosystem.

No monitoring as code. No CLI, no TypeScript constructs, no CI/CD integration beyond webhook triggers.

No multi-step API checks. If your monitoring needs involve authenticated API flows or chained requests, Pingdom can't do it.

Pricing

• Starter ($15/month): 10 uptime checks, 1 transaction check
• Standard ($39/month): 50 uptime checks, 5 transaction checks
• Advanced ($69/month): 100 uptime checks, 10 transaction checks

Pingdom is cheapest for simple uptime monitoring. Transaction checks (browser automation) are where costs scale.

New Relic Synthetics

What It Does Well

Observability integration. Like Datadog, New Relic Synthetics pairs well with the broader New Relic platform. Synthetic failures correlate with APM data, error traces, and infrastructure metrics in one dashboard.

Scripted API monitors. New Relic's scripted API monitors support complex flows using JavaScript with the $http module. Multi-step API chains, authentication flows, and custom assertions are possible.

Private locations. Run monitors from inside your own infrastructure using the New Relic Synthetics job manager. Useful for monitoring internal services and staging environments behind a firewall.

Free tier. New Relic's free tier includes 100 synthetic monitor checks per month, which is enough to evaluate the product.

Weaknesses

Selenium-based browser checks. New Relic's scripted browser checks use Selenium WebDriver, not Playwright. This is a meaningful drawback: Selenium is slower, more brittle, and less aligned with how modern frontend testing works. Your developers likely know Playwright; they'll have to switch mental models for New Relic browser checks.

Only compelling in the New Relic ecosystem. Same issue as Datadog — if you're not already paying for New Relic APM, using their synthetics standalone doesn't make financial sense.

UI density. New Relic has undergone multiple redesigns and the interface remains complex. Finding specific synthetic monitor results requires navigating a deep menu structure.

Pricing

New Relic uses a data ingest + user seat model:

• Free: 100GB ingest/month, 1 full user
• Standard: $99/month per user plus data costs
• Synthetic monitor runs are included in data ingest pricing

The cost model is hard to compare directly with Checkly or Pingdom without knowing your total New Relic usage.

When to Choose Each

Choose Checkly if:

• You want monitoring as code with version control and CI/CD integration
• Your team already writes Playwright tests and you want to reuse that investment
• You want a best-in-class standalone synthetic monitoring tool without paying for a full observability platform
• You're a developer-first team that values CLI tooling and TypeScript over GUI configuration

Choose Datadog Synthetics if:

• You're already using Datadog for APM, logs, and infrastructure monitoring
• You need synthetic failures to correlate directly with server-side traces
• You have complex alerting requirements that benefit from Datadog's monitor system
• Budget is not a primary constraint

Choose Pingdom if:

• You need simple uptime monitoring and don't want to invest time in a more complex tool
• Your monitoring requirements are purely "is this URL up and fast"
• You want the cheapest option for basic checks with no API monitoring needs

Choose New Relic Synthetics if:

• You're an existing New Relic customer and want synthetic monitoring in your existing platform
• You need private location monitors integrated with your New Relic dashboards
• You can tolerate Selenium for browser checks

The Bottom Line

For teams building and maintaining APIs and web applications, Checkly is the most capable standalone synthetic monitoring tool. The monitoring-as-code workflow is genuinely differentiated, the Playwright integration is the right technical choice, and the pricing is predictable.

For teams deeply invested in Datadog or New Relic, their respective synthetic monitoring products win on integration, not on monitoring capability.

For teams with simple uptime needs and limited budget, Pingdom is fine.

The decision is usually not "which has better monitoring features" but "which fits into our existing tooling and team workflow." If you don't have an existing observability platform, start with Checkly. If you do, evaluate whether the integration value of staying in one platform outweighs Checkly's superior developer experience.