Checkly vs Grafana Cloud
Checkly and Grafana Cloud are both uptime & monitoring tools. Checkly is aimed at developers, while Grafana Cloud is aimed at developers and enterprise. Grafana Cloud costs less, from $19/mo versus $24/mo for Checkly. Both have a free plan.
Synthetic monitoring as code with Playwright
Open-source observability dashboards
| Pricing | Freemium · $24 | Freemium · $19 |
| Starting price | $24/mo | $19/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | 14 days |
| Built for | Developers | Developers, Enterprise |
| Platforms | web | web |
| Country | DE · 2018 | US · 2014 |
| 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 Grafana Cloud if
Engineering teams comfortable with open-source observability who want control and lower cost.
- Open source with no lock-in
- Generous free cloud tier
- Visualizes almost any data source
Look elsewhere if: Teams wanting turnkey, fully integrated APM (Datadog, New Relic).
Checkly vs Grafana Cloud 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
Grafana Cloud
- Free$010k metrics series, 50 GB logs/traces, 3 users, 14-day retention
- Pro$19/moPlatform fee plus usage; 3 users included, then $8/user
- Enterprise$25,000/yrMinimum annual spend commit; custom retention
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
Grafana Cloud · Key features
- Dashboards over 150+ data sources
- Prometheus-compatible metrics (Mimir)
- Logs with Loki and traces with Tempo
- Alerting, on-call and incident response
- k6 load testing and synthetic monitoring
- Self-hosted open source or managed cloud
Cons
- More setup than Datadog
- Query languages to learn (PromQL, LogQL)
- Fragmented product surface
Checkly vs Grafana Cloud: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Checkly or Grafana Cloud?
Grafana Cloud starts at $19/mo and Checkly at $24/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Checkly and Grafana Cloud have a free plan?
Yes, both Checkly and Grafana Cloud have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.