Checkly vs New Relic
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Checkly and New Relic.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Checkly
0 reviews
4.0/5
New Relic
0 reviews
Checkly is rated higher (4.1 vs 4.0). 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. New Relic is a full-stack observability platform with a unique pricing model: 100GB free data ingest/month. APM, infrastructure, browser monitoring, synthetics, and logs in one platform.
Checkly Monitoring as code with Playwright and API checks | New Relic Full-stack observability — 100GB free per month | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 4.0 (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 | Engineering teams that want APM, infrastructure, and logs in one platform with usage-based pricing and a genuinely free starting point |
| 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 tierapi accessteam features |
| Visit Checkly → | Visit New Relic → | |
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
New Relic
Pros
- + Best free tier in observability: 100 GB ingest/month, one full platform user, unlimited basic users, no credit card
- + No per-host, per-agent, per-container, or per-function charges — cost tracks telemetry, not fleet size
- + Published unit pricing: $0.40/GB original data, $0.60/GB Data Plus, $49 core users, $10/$99 Standard full users
- + One platform for APM, infrastructure, logs, browser/mobile, synthetics, and alerting with NRQL across all of it
- + Published support response SLAs per edition (2 business days Standard, 2-hour critical Pro, 1-hour Enterprise)
Cons
- - Pro full platform users at $349/user (annual) or $418.80 monthly make seat costs the dominant expense
- - Free tier hard-stops ingest and platform access past 100 GB until the next month or an upgrade
- - Uptime commitments are contract-defined and vacated on Standard — no availability SLA below Pro
- - Cost forecasting across ingest tiers, user types, and Advanced Compute metering takes real effort
- - SaaS-only with US/EU data residency; NRQL dashboards and alerts carry switching costs
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