Checkly vs Grafana Synthetic Monitoring

From $40 per month (indicative, Team plan by check runs)

Free tier available

Priced by check runs; browser checks cost more than API checks, and frequency multiplies the bill.

Cheap if you already run Grafana Cloud; results are plain Prometheus metrics you already know how to use.

Free plan with a monthly check-run allowance covering a small site.

Included in the Grafana Cloud free tier with a monthly check allowance.

Widely used

Checkly · since 2018

Established

Grafana Labs · since 2021

• One Playwright script serves as both an E2E test and a production monitor.
• Monitoring-as-code fits GitOps workflows and code review.
• Excellent developer experience and clear, published pricing.

• Results are Prometheus metrics, so alerting and dashboards use tools you already have.
• Same k6 scripts serve load testing and synthetic monitoring.
• Good free tier within Grafana Cloud.

• Playwright-centric; teams on other frameworks get less benefit.
• Browser checks at high frequency across many locations get expensive.
• Not a full observability platform — no APM or log management.

• Assumes you are in the Grafana ecosystem; standalone it makes little sense.
• Browser checks are less mature than Datadog's or Checkly's.
• Fewer probe locations than the dedicated vendors.

Engineering teams already using Playwright who want production journeys monitored.

Teams already running Grafana Cloud and k6.