---
title: "Checkly vs Datadog Synthetics — honest 2026 comparison"
description: "Checkly vs Datadog Synthetics: pricing, check intervals, strengths, weaknesses, and which one fits your team. Verified 2026-06-28."
canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/vs/checkly-vs-datadog"
source: "https://lemwatch.com"
---

# Checkly vs Datadog Synthetics

> 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.


## Related

- [Checkly alternatives](https://lemwatch.com/alternatives/checkly)
- [Datadog Synthetics alternatives](https://lemwatch.com/alternatives/datadog)
- [Lemwatch vs Checkly](https://lemwatch.com/compare/checkly)
- [Lemwatch vs Datadog Synthetics](https://lemwatch.com/compare/datadog)
- [Lemwatch pricing](https://lemwatch.com/pricing)
- [All monitoring checks](https://lemwatch.com/features)
- [All Lemwatch comparisons](https://lemwatch.com/compare)
- [Checkly vs New Relic Synthetics](https://lemwatch.com/vs/checkly-vs-newrelic)