Which one is cheaper?

Checkly starts lower at $24/mo, compared to $150/mo for Honeycomb.

Can I use either one for free?

Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.

Different approach here. Checkly uses hybrid pricing, while Honeycomb goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.

Which one is a better deal?

Depends on what you need. Checkly: Checkly sits in the mid-market sweet spot — cheaper than Datadog Synthetics or New Relic's monitoring suite, but more developer-focused and purpose-built than generic uptime tools like Pingdom. They're clearly going after DevOps-native teams who want code-driven monitoring (Playwright, Terraform) without paying enterprise APM prices. Honeycomb: Honeycomb sits in the premium tier of the observability space, competing with Datadog and New Relic but positioning itself as the serious tool for teams that actually care about distributed tracing and high-cardinality data. They're not trying to win on price — they're targeting engineering-led orgs willing to pay for depth over breadth.

Checkly vs Honeycomb Pricing (2026)

How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.

	Checkly	Honeycomb
Starts at	$24/mo	$150/mo
Number of plans	4	3
Free plan
Free trial		—
Pricing model	hybrid	usage-based

Checkly

Official page

Hobby

$0/mo

Uptime Monitors
Maximum Frequency
Locations
Retries
Browser/Playwright Checks
API Checks
Round Robin
Email, Slack, Webhooks for Alerting
Protocol Support
Scheduling
Public Locations
Single Retry
Browser Checks
Playwright Check Suites
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
API & Multistep Checks
API Check Runs
Automatic Retries
SSL Monitoring
Email Alerts
Slack Alerts
Webhook Alerts
SMS Alerts
Phone Alerts
Dashboards
Invocations
Automated RCA
Users
Raw data retention
Aggregated data retention
Checkly CLI
Terraform provider
Pulumi Provider
SOC 2 Type II Compliant
Multi-Factor Auth

Starter

$24/mo

Uptime Monitors
Maximum Frequency
Locations
Retries
Browser/Playwright Checks
API Checks
Agentic Checks
Round Robin
Email, Slack, SMS, Webhooks for Alerting
Protocol Support
Additional Monitors (25)
Scheduling
Public Locations
Single Retry
Browser Checks
Playwright Check Suites
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Additional Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Overages (1k)
API & Multistep Checks
API Check Runs
Additional API Check Runs
API Check Overages (10k)
Automatic Retries
SSL Monitoring
Additional Agentic Checks
Agentic Check Regions
Agentic Check Frequency
Email Alerts
Slack Alerts
Webhook Alerts
SMS Alerts
Phone Alerts
Custom Domain
Dashboards
Invocations
Automated RCA
Users
Raw data retention
Aggregated data retention
Checkly CLI
Terraform provider
Pulumi Provider
SOC 2 Type II Compliant
Multi-Factor Auth

Team

Popular

$64/mo

Uptime Monitors
Maximum Frequency
Locations
Retries
Browser/Playwright Checks
API Checks
Agentic Checks
Round Robin
Private Locations
All Alerting Channels
Protocol Support
Additional Monitors (25)
Scheduling
Public Locations
Single Retry
Automatic Retries
Browser Checks
Playwright Check Suites
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Additional Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Overages (1k)
API & Multistep Checks
API Check Runs
Additional API Check Runs
API Check Overages (10k)
Automatic Retries
SSL Monitoring
10 Second Frequency
Visual Regression Testing
Additional Agentic Checks
Agentic Check Regions
Agentic Check Frequency
Email Alerts
Slack Alerts
Webhook Alerts
Incident.io, Rootly & more
SMS Alerts
Phone Alerts
Maintenance Windows
Custom Domain
Custom CSS
Password Protection
Incident Management
Maintenance Windows
Dashboards
Invocations
Automated RCA
Users
Raw data retention
Aggregated data retention
Checkly CLI
Terraform provider
Pulumi Provider
Prometheus Endpoint
SOC 2 Type II Compliant
Multi-Factor Auth

Enterprise

Custom

Uptime Monitors
Maximum Frequency
Locations
Retries
Agentic Checks
RR & Parallel Scheduling
Private Locations
All Alerting Channels
Protocol Support
Additional Monitors (25)
Scheduling
Public Locations
Single Retry
Automatic Retries
Browser Checks
Playwright Check Suites
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Additional Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Runs
Browser Check / Playwright Check Suite Overages (1k)
API & Multistep Checks
API Check Runs
Additional API Check Runs
API Check Overages (10k)
Automatic Retries
SSL Monitoring
10 Second Frequency
Visual Regression Testing
Additional Agentic Checks
Agentic Check Regions
Agentic Check Frequency
Email Alerts
Slack Alerts
Webhook Alerts
Incident.io, Rootly & more
SMS Alerts
Phone Alerts
Maintenance Windows
Custom Domain
Custom CSS
Password Protection
White Labeled
Incident Management
Maintenance Windows
Dashboards
Invocations
Automated RCA
Users
Raw data retention
Aggregated data retention
Checkly CLI
Terraform provider
Pulumi Provider
Prometheus Endpoint
Premium Support
Onboarding Support
Dedicated Customer Success Engineer
24x7 Phone Escalation
Contracts & Invoicing
Security Review
SOC 2 Type II Compliant
Multi-Factor Auth
SAML/SSO
99.9% Uptime SLA
Client Certificates
Service API Keys

Honeycomb

Official page

Free

$0/mo

2 Triggers
Distributed Tracing
BubbleUp
OpenTelemetry Support
Team Query History
Query Result Permalinks
Honeycomb Metrics
Canvas AI Copilot
Honeycomb MCP

Pro

$150/mo

All features from the Free Plan
100 Triggers
2 Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
Single-Sign On (SSO)
Honeycomb Support
Monthly or Annual Subscription

Enterprise

Popular

Custom

All features from the Pro Plan
Starts with 300 Triggers
Starts with 100 SLOs
Service Map
Enterprise Support for Refinery
Enterprise-Grade Support + Onboarding
Query Data API
AWS PrivateLink
SLO Reporting API
Support for Honeycomb Private Cloud

Checkly vs Honeycomb FAQ

Which one is cheaper?: Checkly starts lower at $24/mo, compared to $150/mo for Honeycomb.
Can I use either one for free?: Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
How do they charge?: Different approach here. Checkly uses hybrid pricing, while Honeycomb goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
Which one is a better deal?: Depends on what you need. Checkly: Checkly sits in the mid-market sweet spot — cheaper than Datadog Synthetics or New Relic's monitoring suite, but more developer-focused and purpose-built than generic uptime tools like Pingdom. They're clearly going after DevOps-native teams who want code-driven monitoring (Playwright, Terraform) without paying enterprise APM prices. Honeycomb: Honeycomb sits in the premium tier of the observability space, competing with Datadog and New Relic but positioning itself as the serious tool for teams that actually care about distributed tracing and high-cardinality data. They're not trying to win on price — they're targeting engineering-led orgs willing to pay for depth over breadth.

Still deciding? See the best Checkly alternatives or the best Honeycomb alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.

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