Checkly vs Instatus

Checkly is a synthetic monitoring platform from Berlin built on the idea of monitoring as code. Engineering teams write API checks and browser checks in JavaScript or TypeScript, using Playwright for browser flows, keep them in the same repository as the application, and deploy them with the Checkly CLI or Terraform.

The same checks run in CI against preview deployments before a release and then continuously from global locations after it, so a broken login or checkout flow is caught by a test first and by monitoring second. Assertions, retries, alert channels such as Slack, PagerDuty and email, multistep API checks and heartbeat monitors are available, and traces connect a failed check to backend spans through OpenTelemetry. A free Hobby plan includes a monthly quota of API and browser check runs; Starter and Team plans add runs, locations and collaboration, and Enterprise adds SSO and private locations inside your own network.

Checkly fits teams that already write Playwright tests and want one source of truth for end-to-end testing and production monitoring. It requires coding and is not a full observability suite, so it is a poor fit for non-technical teams who only want uptime pings. Better Stack and UptimeRobot are simpler for basic uptime and status pages, Datadog Synthetics suits teams already on Datadog, and Grafana Cloud offers synthetic monitoring inside its own stack.

Instatus is a hosted status page service for SaaS companies and online services. It lets teams publish a fast, branded page that shows the health of each component, posts incident updates and scheduled maintenance, and notifies subscribers through channels such as email, SMS, Slack and webhooks, at a much lower price than Atlassian Statuspage.

Pages are generated as static sites and served from a global CDN, so they stay online even when the main product is down. Subscriber and team member limits rise with each plan, and the lineup adds custom domains, private and audience-specific pages on higher tiers, built-in uptime monitoring and integrations with monitoring and alerting tools such as Datadog and PagerDuty that can update component status automatically. The free plan covers a basic public page, Pro adds a custom domain and more branding options, and Business targets companies that need private pages, SSO and advanced controls.

Instatus suits startups and growing SaaS teams that want professional incident communication without enterprise pricing. Its built-in monitoring is basic compared with dedicated tools, so many teams pair it with a separate uptime monitor. Atlassian Statuspage remains the established choice for enterprises on Jira Service Management, Better Stack bundles status pages with monitoring and on-call scheduling, and open-source options such as Upptime or Uptime Kuma work for teams willing to self-host.