Datadog Synthetic Monitoring vs Pingdom

From $5 per 1k API test runs / 12 USD per 1k browser test runs (indicative)

From $10 per month (indicative, Synthetic starter)

Priced per test run and separately for browser versus API. Costs land inside a wider Datadog contract that is rarely small.

Transaction checks and RUM are priced separately from basic uptime checks and add up.

14-day trial.

30-day trial.

Category standard

Datadog · since 2019

Widely used

SolarWinds · since 2007

• Correlation with APM traces and logs makes root-cause analysis dramatically faster.
• Private locations let you monitor internal services behind the firewall.
• Recorded browser tests are authorable by people who do not write code.

• Very large global probe network with a long operating history.
• Simple to set up for basic availability monitoring.
• Combines synthetic checks with real-user monitoring.

• Only worth it if you are already a Datadog customer; standalone it is expensive.
• Datadog billing complexity is a well-known source of budget surprises.
• The recorder produces tests that are harder to version and review than code.

• Feature development has been slow under SolarWinds ownership.
• Transaction-check authoring is dated compared to code-first alternatives.
• Pricing is no longer competitive against newer entrants.

Existing Datadog customers who want monitoring in the same pane as their observability data.

Organisations wanting an established name for straightforward uptime monitoring.