Checkly vs Datadog
Checkly and Datadog are both uptime & monitoring tools. Checkly is aimed at developers, while Datadog is aimed at enterprise and developers. Datadog costs less, from $18/mo versus $24/mo for Checkly. Both have a free plan.
| Pricing | Freemium · $24 | Freemium · $18 |
| Starting price | $24/mo | $18/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | 14 days |
| Built for | Developers | Enterprise, Developers |
| Platforms | web | web |
| Country | DE · 2018 | US · 2010 |
| Rating | — | — |
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).
Choose Datadog if
Scale-ups and enterprises running complex cloud infrastructure with budget for observability.
- Broadest observability coverage in one tool
- Excellent dashboards and correlation
- 900+ integrations
Look elsewhere if: Startups and small teams (Grafana Cloud free, Better Stack, Sentry).
Checkly vs Datadog pricing
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
Datadog
- Free$0Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention
- Infrastructure Pro$18/host/moOn-demand; $15 billed annually
- Infrastructure Enterprise$27/host/moOn-demand; $23 billed annually
- APM$36/host/moOn-demand; $31 billed annually with Infrastructure
- Log Management$0.10/GB ingestedIngest only; indexing billed separately
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
Datadog · Key features
- Infrastructure metrics and host maps
- APM, distributed tracing and continuous profiler
- Log management with pipelines and archives
- RUM, session replay and synthetic monitoring
- Security monitoring and cloud SIEM
- Incident management and Bits AI
Cons
- Expensive and complex pricing
- Costs grow with hosts and log volume
- Easy to overspend on custom metrics
Checkly vs Datadog: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Checkly or Datadog?
Datadog starts at $18/mo and Checkly at $24/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Checkly and Datadog have a free plan?
Yes, both Checkly and Datadog have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.