A like-for-like comparison of Checkly and Datadog Synthetics — what each one monitors, what it costs at the entry tier, and where each one falls short.
Pricing and intervals
Checkly: free tier available, Team from $40/mo, checks as often as every 0 min.
Datadog Synthetics: trial only, Per 10k API test runs from $5/mo, checks as often as every 1 min.
Checkly — strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
Playwright-native synthetic checks — great for E2E API flows
Monitoring-as-code via CLI and Terraform
10-second check interval on Team tier
Weaknesses
Aimed at engineers; agency/marketing use cases are secondary
No visual change detection for marketing pages
Priced per check run — high-frequency monitors get costly
Datadog Synthetics — strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
Full observability stack (APM, logs, metrics, RUM)
Deep integration with cloud infra and Kubernetes
Very large ecosystem of dashboards and integrations
Weaknesses
Bill shock is common — usage-based pricing across many SKUs
Overkill for teams that just need website monitoring
SEO/content monitoring not part of the platform
Which should you pick?
Choose Checkly when Your team writes Playwright scripts and wants synthetic API + browser checks in code.
Choose Datadog Synthetics when You already run Datadog for APM and want synthetic checks in the same pane of glass.
Facts last verified 2026-06-28 (Checkly) and 2026-06-28 (Datadog Synthetics) against each vendor's public pricing page.