Happy Valley

Checkly vs Instatus

Checkly and Instatus are both uptime & monitoring tools. Checkly is aimed at developers, while Instatus is aimed at small businesses and developers. Instatus costs less, from $20/mo versus $24/mo for Checkly. Both have a free plan.

Checkly

Synthetic monitoring as code with Playwright

Instatus

Fast, affordable status pages

PricingFreemium · $24Freemium · $20
Starting price$24/mo$20/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Built forDevelopersSmall businesses, Developers
Platformswebweb
CountryDE · 2018EG · 2020
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 Instatus if

Startups wanting affordable status pages.

  • Cheap
  • Beautiful
  • Fast

Look elsewhere if: Enterprises standardized on Atlassian.

Checkly vs Instatus 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

Instatus

  • Starter$015 monitors, 2-min checks, 5 team members, 200 subscribers
  • Pro$20/mo$15/mo billed annually; 50 monitors, custom domain, 5,000 subs
  • Business$300/mo$225/mo billed annually; 1,000 monitors, SAML SSO
  • EnterpriseCustomSCIM, 99.99% uptime SLA, custom contracts

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

Instatus · Key features

  • Status pages
  • Subscriber notifications
  • Monitoring
  • Incident updates
  • Integrations
  • Custom domain

Cons

  • Smaller vendor
  • Fewer enterprise features
  • Monitoring basic

Checkly vs Instatus: FAQ

Which is cheaper, Checkly or Instatus?

Instatus starts at $20/mo and Checkly at $24/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.

Do Checkly and Instatus have a free plan?

Yes, both Checkly and Instatus have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Which is better for small businesses, Checkly or Instatus?

Instatus lists small businesses as a core audience, while Checkly is aimed more at developers.

Not sure yet?