Better Stack vs Checkly
Better Stack and Checkly are both uptime & monitoring tools aimed at developers. Checkly costs less, from $24/mo versus $30/mo for Better Stack. Both have a free plan.
Uptime, incident management and logs
Synthetic monitoring as code with Playwright
| Pricing | Freemium · $30 | Freemium · $24 |
| Starting price | $30/mo | $24/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Built for | Developers | Developers |
| Platforms | web | web |
| Country | CZ · 2021 | DE · 2018 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Better Stack if
Startups and small engineering teams who want monitoring, incidents and logs without three vendors.
- Polished all-in-one for small and mid teams
- Generous free plan
- Fast checks and reliable alerting
Look elsewhere if: Large enterprises with complex observability needs (Datadog, Grafana Enterprise).
Choose Checkly if
Engineering teams using Playwright.
- Tests and monitoring unified
- Developer-first workflow
- Playwright native
Look elsewhere if: Non-technical uptime monitoring (Better Stack).
Better Stack vs Checkly pricing
Better Stack
- Free$010 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page, 3 GB logs
- Responder$34/mo$29/mo billed yearly; uptime + telemetry seat
- Telemetry Nano$30/moEU region ($45 US); 40 GB logs/traces/metrics
- Telemetry Micro$120/moEU region ($180 US); 160 GB each
Checkly
- Hobby$010 uptime monitors; 10k API, 1k browser runs/mo
- Starter$24/moBilled annually; 50 monitors; 25k API, 3k browser runs
- Team$64/moBilled annually; 75 monitors; 100k API, 12k browser runs
- EnterpriseCustomCustom monitors, 1-sec frequency
Better Stack · Key features
- Uptime, SSL, DNS and heartbeat monitors with fast intervals
- Incident management with on-call rotations and escalations
- Beautiful hosted status pages
- Log management with SQL and live tail
- Metrics, dashboards and OpenTelemetry support
- Phone, SMS, Slack and Teams alerting
Cons
- Not as deep as Datadog for APM
- Usage pricing on logs needs monitoring
- On-call features simpler than PagerDuty
Checkly · Key features
- Playwright browser checks
- API checks with assertions
- Monitoring as code via CLI
- CI/CD integration
- Global and private locations
- OpenTelemetry traces
Cons
- Requires coding
- Run-based pricing
- Not a full observability suite
Better Stack vs Checkly: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Better Stack or Checkly?
Checkly starts at $24/mo and Better Stack at $30/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Better Stack and Checkly have a free plan?
Yes, both Better Stack and Checkly have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.