Looking for a Checkly alternative?
Checkly is a powerful synthetic monitoring platform built for engineering teams running Playwright-based E2E tests and complex API flows. SitePulse is a smaller, simpler uptime monitor for indie devs who just want a status page in 60 seconds. Here's how they actually compare in 2026.
TL;DR
- Pick Checkly if you need browser-based E2E monitoring (Playwright), multi-step API flows, monitoring-as-code with CI integration, or global multi-region probes.
- Pick SitePulseif you want HTTP uptime + a free public status page at indie pricing ($9 vs $40/mo) and don't need synthetic browser tests.
- Honest gaps in SitePulse vs Checkly: no Playwright tests, no multi-step flows, no CLI/Terraform, single-region probes.
Pricing comparison
SitePulse
- Free — 5 monitors · 5-min$0
- Pro — 25 monitors · 1-min · 90-day history$9 / mo
- Business — 150 monitors · 1-min · 1-yr history$29 / mo
Flat pricing. No per-seat. No add-ons.
Checkly
- Hobby — 10K check runs / mo$0
- Team — Includes seats + run quota$40 / mo
- Enterprise — Custom$$$
Run-based pricing scales with check frequency and team seats. Pricing as of early 2026.
Feature-by-feature
Free plan monitors
Free plan check interval
Cheapest paid plan
1-minute checks
Public status page
Email alerts
API / GraphQL monitoring
Browser / E2E checks (Playwright)
Slack / Discord webhooks
Multi-step / chained checks
Where probes run from
Monitoring as Code (CLI / CI)
Pricing model
Built for
Checkly pricing and features as of early 2026 — check their pricing page for the latest.
When Checkly is the right call
- You need browser-based E2E monitoring with Playwright scripts.
- Multi-step API flows (login → fetch → assert) matter to your product's health.
- You want to manage monitoring as code via CLI / Terraform / Pulumi.
- You have an engineering team and the $40+/mo budget that comes with that.
- You need probes from many global regions.
When SitePulse is the right call
- You're a solo dev or small team and Checkly's pricing doesn't fit.
- Your monitoring need is "is my site up?" — not "does the checkout flow still work?".
- A free, public status page out of the box matters to you.
- You prefer flat pricing — no per-seat, no run-based metering.
- You want a 60-second setup, not a Playwright-script authoring session.
Try SitePulse free
5 monitors, 5-minute checks, email alerts, public status page — free forever. No credit card.
Frequently asked questions
Is Checkly overkill for a side project?+
Often, yes. Checkly is excellent at what it does — Playwright-based browser testing, multi-step API flows, monitoring as code — but its pricing and complexity are aimed at engineering teams, not solo developers. If you just need to know when your homepage and /api/health go down and want a public status page, Checkly's $40/mo Team plan is overpaying. SitePulse Pro at $9/mo handles uptime + status page for indie scale.
Is SitePulse cheaper than Checkly?+
Significantly. SitePulse Pro is $9/mo flat. Checkly's cheapest paid tier is $40/mo (Team), and pricing scales with check runs and team seats. For most indie projects monitoring 5-25 endpoints, SitePulse is 4-10x cheaper. The tradeoff is feature scope — Checkly does much more (browser tests, multi-step flows, CI integration) than SitePulse.
Can SitePulse do browser-based / E2E monitoring like Checkly?+
No. SitePulse does HTTP-level monitoring only — it requests your URL and checks the response (status code, latency, keyword match, SSL). Checkly runs full Playwright scripts in real browsers, which can detect rendering bugs, JS errors, and broken user flows that an HTTP check would miss. If you need that, Checkly is the right tool. If your monitoring need is 'is my site responding?', SitePulse covers it.
Does SitePulse have a free plan?+
Yes. 5 monitors, 5-minute check interval, email alerts, and a public status page — all free, forever, no credit card. Checkly's free Hobby tier offers 10,000 check runs per month, which translates to roughly 7-15 monitors at typical intervals. Both are reasonable for trying things out.
What's missing in SitePulse vs Checkly today?+
Quite a few things — SitePulse is intentionally scoped narrower. Missing vs Checkly: (1) Browser/Playwright tests; (2) Multi-step API flows; (3) Monitoring-as-code via CLI/Terraform; (4) Slack/PagerDuty/Opsgenie integrations (webhooks coming soon); (5) Multi-region probes (Tokyo only today). If your team needs synthetic monitoring with CI integration, Checkly is the right call.
Where do you run the checks from?+
Tokyo (ap-northeast-1). Multi-region voting is on the roadmap to suppress single-network false positives. Checkly runs from 20+ AWS regions worldwide, which is essential for catching regional outages or measuring latency from many user geographies.