1v1 Pricing Showdown
Checkly vs Pingdom (SolarWinds)
Side-by-side pricing breakdown for Uptime Monitoring & Status Pages decision-makers
Prices in USD, verified from the United States. Regional pricing may vary.
When choosing between Checkly and Pingdom (SolarWinds) for your uptime monitoring & status pages stack, the right answer depends on three things: your budget, the specific features you actually use day-to-day, and your tolerance for renewal-price increases. Below we lay out the prices each vendor advertises today (verified against their live pricing pages), the plan limits that decide whether they'll fit your team, and the features that differ between them.
Checkly starts at $24/mo; Pingdom (SolarWinds) starts at $10/mo. The cheaper headline price isn't always the cheaper total cost — renewal pricing, per-user fees, and overage charges can shift the math. Use the plan-by-plan tables below to model your actual spend.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| playwright based browser checks | Category-leading synthetic browser monitoring | — |
| api monitoring with assertions | All plans | — |
| uptime monitoring | All plans | All plans |
| global locations | 6 Hobby-Starter / 22 Team+ | 70+ worldwide |
| alerting | All plans — email, Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Webhooks | — |
| traceroute monitoring | Team+ | — |
| private locations | Team+ | — |
| monitoring as code | Terraform + Pulumi support | — |
| checkly cli | GitHub Actions integration | — |
| status pages | Team+ | — |
| maintenance windows | All paid plans | — |
| check groups | All plans | — |
| rbac | Team+ | — |
| transaction monitoring | — | All plans |
| real user monitoring | — | Professional+ |
| page speed monitoring | — | All plans |
| public status pages | — | All plans |
| sms alerts | — | Included credits per tier |
| solarwinds ecosystem | — | Integrates with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor + others |
| email alerts | — | All plans |
| slack pagerduty integrations | — | All plans |
| mobile apps | — | iOS + Android |
| acquired by solarwinds | — | 2014 for $51M |
| check frequency | — | 5-min Starter/Standard / 1-min Professional+ |
Affiliate links — you pay the same price
Dive Deeper
Pingdom (SolarWinds)
About the uptime monitoring & status pages category
Uptime monitoring and status pages in 2026 have three distinct tiers. 'Free-tier leaders' (UptimeRobot Free 50 monitors + 5-min interval, Better Stack Free 10 monitors + 1 status page, Checkly Hobby 10 uptime monitors): genuinely usable for small projects at $0. 'SMB-accessible paid' (UptimeRobot Solo $7-15/month, Checkly Starter $24/month annual, Pingdom Starter $10/month, Better Stack Team $29-34/month): $10-30/month covers production monitoring for most small businesses. 'Enterprise incident management' (Better Stack Enterprise, Checkly Enterprise, PagerDuty-style call routing): budget $500-5,000+/month for large teams with 24/7 on-call. Distinct from general observability (Datadog, New Relic — covered separately) which includes uptime but adds APM, logs, traces, RUM. Pingdom (SolarWinds-owned since 2014) is the veteran brand. UptimeRobot has become SMB leader with generous free tier. Better Stack (rebranded from Better Uptime in 2024) expanded scope to full incident management + telemetry. Checkly specializes in synthetic browser checks + API monitoring for developers. StatusCake targets SMBs with transparent tier-based pricing. 2024-2026 trend: AI incident response (Better Stack AI SRE chat at $0.00003/token, Checkly AI Copilot), Playwright-based synthetic monitoring (replacing legacy headless Chrome), and merged observability-incident-status platforms consolidating tool count.
How to choose between uptime monitoring & status pages options
First: what are you monitoring? Simple website uptime (HTTP 200 + keyword check): UptimeRobot Free (50 monitors) or Pingdom Starter ($10/month). API endpoints with assertions: Checkly Hobby (10,000 API checks/month free) or Starter ($24/month for 25,000 API checks). Browser-level user journeys (login → purchase flow): Checkly browser checks are category-leading — Playwright-based. Public status pages for customers: Better Stack Team ($29-34/month with 1 status page included) or StatusCake Superior. Full incident management + on-call rotations: Better Stack Team + Call Routing ($208-250/month). Second: check interval needs? 5-minute (standard SLA monitoring): UptimeRobot Free, StatusCake Free, Pingdom Starter. 1-minute (production SaaS): UptimeRobot Solo+ ($7-15/month), StatusCake Superior, Checkly Starter. 30-second (regulated/financial): UptimeRobot Enterprise, StatusCake Business, or Checkly custom. Third: how many monitors? 1-10: Free tiers across UptimeRobot, Better Stack, Checkly, StatusCake. 10-100: UptimeRobot Solo or Team, StatusCake Superior. 100-500: UptimeRobot Enterprise, StatusCake Business, Checkly Team. 500+: Enterprise tiers across all. Fourth: team size? Solo developer: UptimeRobot Solo $7-15/month or Pingdom Starter $10/month. 2-10 person team: UptimeRobot Team $29-38/month annual or Better Stack Team. 10+ with on-call rotations: Better Stack + Call Routing add-on. Fifth: global distribution needs? Checkly has 22 locations globally (Team tier). Better Stack external monitoring distributes widely. StatusCake Enterprise has dedicated locations. UptimeRobot has multiple regions on paid. Sixth: incident management critical? Better Stack is the leader (phone calls, Slack/Teams routing, escalation policies). UptimeRobot has alerts but not full incident management. Checkly integrates with PagerDuty/Opsgenie. Seventh: status page branding matters? Better Stack $15-250/month additional for extra status pages. StatusCake white-label reporting on Business. Pingdom public status pages included.
Building Your Business Stack?
Decision-makers comparing tools often need more than one category. Here are related comparisons:
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Checkly cheaper than Pingdom (SolarWinds)?
- Pingdom (SolarWinds) is cheaper starting at $10/mo. Checkly starts at $24/mo and Pingdom (SolarWinds) at $10/mo.
- Does Checkly or Pingdom (SolarWinds) offer a free plan?
- Checkly offers a free plan.
- Which is better, Checkly or Pingdom (SolarWinds)?
- Checkly scores 8.9/10 compared to Pingdom (SolarWinds)'s 8.2/10 in our analysis. Checkly ranks higher on features and value, but Pingdom (SolarWinds) may suit specific use cases — see the feature comparison above.
- Is Checkly cheaper than Pingdom (SolarWinds) for a team of 5?
- For a team of 5, Checkly costs $24/mo (flat rate) and Pingdom (SolarWinds) costs $10/mo (flat rate). Pingdom (SolarWinds) is the cheaper option at this team size.
- Are there other uptime monitoring & status pages alternatives besides Checkly and Pingdom (SolarWinds)?
- Yes. Our [Uptime Monitoring & Status Pages pricing comparison](/pricing/uptime-monitoring/) page covers all major providers with daily-verified prices. You can also see the [cheapest uptime monitoring & status pages](/pricing/uptime-monitoring/cheapest/) for budget-focused options.