---
title: "Synthetic Monitoring — monitoring glossary"
description: "Synthetic monitoring is the practice of running scripted, scheduled checks against a website from controlled probe locations — as opposed to real-user…"
canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/glossary/synthetic-monitoring"
source: "https://lemwatch.com"
---

# Synthetic Monitoring

> Synthetic monitoring is the practice of running scripted, scheduled checks against a website from controlled probe locations — as opposed to real-user monitoring (RUM), which captures data from actual visitors. It catches issues even when traffic is low.

## Definition

 Synthetic checks range from simple HTTP GETs to full headless-browser scripts that log in, click through a checkout, and verify the order confirmation page. They run on fixed intervals (typically 1-5 minutes) from multiple regions and produce consistent, comparable data.

 The trade-off versus RUM: synthetic is repeatable and catches issues even at 3am with no users online, but it doesn't reflect the diversity of real-user devices, networks, and behaviour patterns.

## Why it matters

 Synthetic monitoring is the only way to detect outages on low-traffic pages, validate uptime against SLAs (you control the measurement), and catch deployment regressions immediately rather than after users start complaining.

 See it in the product: [All features](https://lemwatch.com/features).


## Related

- [Monitoring glossary](https://lemwatch.com/glossary)
- [Website Monitoring](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/monitoring)
- [Uptime](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/uptime)
- [Incident](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/incident)
- [False Positive](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/false-positive)
- [Recovery Time Objective](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/rto)
- [All monitoring checks](https://lemwatch.com/features)
- [TTFB (Time To First Byte)](https://lemwatch.com/glossary/ttfb)