Checkly vs Grafana Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Checkly and Grafana Cloud.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Checkly
0 reviews
3.9/5
Grafana Cloud
0 reviews
Checkly is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.9). Checkly enables monitoring as code using Playwright for E2E browser checks and HTTP API checks. Define checks alongside your code in TypeScript. Global check locations. Grafana Cloud provides managed Grafana, Prometheus, Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), and k6 (load testing). Free tier includes 10,000 metrics series. Open source self-hosting also available.
Checkly Monitoring as code with Playwright and API checks | Grafana Cloud Open source observability platform — cloud and self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.9 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Engineering teams who want to define synthetic and API monitoring tests as code in their repository and run them from global locations | Teams wanting a managed, self-hostable observability stack with a genuinely useful free tier and metrics, logs, and traces under one pane |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tieropen sourceapi access | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi accessteam features |
| Visit Checkly → | Visit Grafana Cloud → | |
Checkly
Pros
- + True monitoring as code: TypeScript + Playwright checks versioned in your repo and deployed via CLI
- + Useful free Hobby tier and clear published plan pricing
- + 22 global check locations plus private locations for internal services on Team+
- + Full check types (HTTP, TCP, DNS, ICMP, SSL/TLS, gRPC, traceroute, heartbeat) with rich alerting and status pages
- + Local test mode in CI catches broken checks before deploy; SOC 2 since 2022
Cons
- - Usage-based billing scales with frequency x locations x checks — overage at $4 per 1,000 runs adds up
- - Developer-only tool: no point-and-click path for non-technical teams
- - Synthetic monitoring only — not a replacement for APM, logs, or metrics platforms
- - No public uptime SLA for the platform itself; best features (1-second checks, parallel scheduling) gated to Enterprise
Grafana Cloud
Pros
- + Open source core (AGPLv3) across Grafana/Mimir/Loki/Tempo/Pyroscope — a real self-host exit
- + Permanent free tier: 10k metric series, 50 GB logs/traces/profiles, 500 k6 VUh, no credit card
- + Public Pro pricing ($19/mo platform fee, from $6.50/1k series) with automatic volume discounts
- + 42 stack regions on AWS, Azure, and GCP including a Federal Cloud option
Cons
- - Usage-based billing punishes metric cardinality and log verbosity — bills can spike on app-side mistakes
- - PromQL/LogQL and label design have a real learning curve
- - SLA is 99.5% (paid plans only) — below hyperscaler commitments
- - Some enterprise RBAC/audit/reporting features require a quote-based Enterprise plan
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new hosting and infrastructure providers, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.