New Relic Synthetic Monitoring vs StatusCake

Free tier available

From $24 per month (indicative, Superior)

The free tier is genuinely usable. Costs come from full-platform user seats rather than check volume.

SSL and domain expiry monitoring included on paid plans, which prevents a genuinely common outage cause.

100 GB of data ingest and one full-platform user free every month, permanently.

Free plan with unlimited uptime tests at 5-minute intervals.

Widely used

New Relic · since 2015

Established

StatusCake · since 2012

• The most generous permanent free tier of any major observability platform.
• Synthetics, APM, logs and RUM under one bill and one query language.
• Scripted browser monitors use standard Selenium-style JavaScript.

• SSL and domain expiry alerts prevent an entire class of self-inflicted outage.
• Many test locations even on cheaper plans.
• Simple and reliable.

• Per-user pricing for full-platform access surprises teams that want wide visibility.
• The interface is dense and takes time to navigate confidently.
• Synthetics is less differentiated than Datadog's correlation story.

• No scripted browser journeys.
• Interface is functional rather than pleasant.
• Limited integration with observability platforms.

Teams wanting an observability platform with monitoring included and a real free tier.

Small teams wanting broad availability coverage cheaply.