Checkly

Checkly is a monitoring-as-code platform for API and browser monitoring, built for engineers who test from the outside in.

Overview

Checkly monitors your APIs and critical user flows the way your customers experience them — from global locations, on schedules, as code. Monitoring definitions live in your repository with its TypeScript and Python frameworks, run in CI, and alert through PagerDuty, Slack and Opsgenie when things break. AI-assisted authoring helps write checks faster and diagnoses failures with root-cause hints. It is a modern alternative to legacy synthetic monitoring, popular with teams practicing monitoring-as-code alongside their infrastructure-as-code.

Key Features

• API checks and browser checks as code
• Global locations simulating real users
• CI/CD integration with monitoring-as-code workflows
• AI-assisted check authoring and failure diagnosis
• Alerting through PagerDuty, Slack and more
• Deep tracing integration with observability tools

Pricing

Checkly is freemium with a free tier for small projects; usage-based paid plans scale with check frequency and volume.

Who Is It For

Engineering teams that want synthetic monitoring maintained like code, integrated into their DevOps pipeline.

FAQ

Is Checkly free to use?

Yes — a free tier covers small-scale monitoring; growth brings usage-based pricing.

Does Checkly offer an API?

Yes — the platform is API-first with CLI and framework support for defining monitoring as code.

How does Checkly compare to alternatives?

Versus Pingdom or Datadog Synthetics, Checkly is developer-native with monitoring-as-code; versus uptime-only tools it covers full browser flows.

What is monitoring-as-code?

Monitoring definitions live in your repository as TypeScript or Python, reviewed in pull requests and deployed through CI — the same discipline as infrastructure-as-code.

How do browser checks work?

Playwright-powered scripts simulate real user flows — sign-in, checkout, search — on schedule from global locations, catching broken journeys before customers do.

What alerting integrations exist?

PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Slack, SMS and webhooks deliver alerts with failure context and links to traces for fast diagnosis.

Does it replace APM tools?

No — Checkly complements them by testing from the outside in, while APM observes from within; together they cover both perspectives.

How does AI help?

AI-assisted authoring drafts checks faster and failure analysis suggests likely causes, cutting the time from alert to understanding.

Where do checks run from?

Global data center locations simulate regional user experience, letting teams confirm performance in the markets that actually generate revenue.

Is there a free tier?

Yes — the free plan covers small projects with basic checks, and paid tiers scale with usage.