Checkly vs UptimeRobot

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.

UptimeRobot is a hosted service that checks whether websites, APIs, servers and scheduled jobs are up and alerts you when they are not. It launched in 2010 as a side project of Turkish developer Umut Muhaddisoğlu, grew into one of the most widely used free monitoring tools and has been owned since late 2019 by Itrinity, the Czech and Slovak software group behind Mangools.

Monitor types cover HTTP(S), keyword, ping, port, heartbeat for cron jobs, SSL and domain expiry, DNS, UDP and API checks, with multi-location confirmation on paid plans. Alerts go to email, SMS and voice credits, mobile push and integrations such as Slack, Teams, Discord, Telegram and PagerDuty. Plans scale by monitor count and interval: Free gives 50 monitors at 5 minutes, Solo starts at 10 monitors with 60-second checks, Team adds 30-second checks and login seats, and Scale reaches 15 seconds and unlimited status pages.

It suits freelancers, agencies and SaaS teams that want simple external checks and public status pages without running their own stack. It is not an observability platform: Better Stack bundles logs and on-call, Pingdom adds real user and transaction monitoring, and self-hosted Uptime Kuma is free if you can run a server.

Important change: since late 2024 the Free plan is for non-commercial use only, so business sites need at least Solo. PayPal is no longer accepted for new subscriptions; payment is by card through Stripe or wire transfer, and there is a 14-day money-back guarantee.