Checkly vs Papertrail 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 Papertrail
Starts at $24/mo $5/mo
Number of plans 4 1
Free plan
Free trial
Pricing model hybrid usage-based

Hobby

$0/mo
  • Uptime Monitors
  • Maximum Frequency
  • Locations
  • Retries
  • Browser/Playwright Checks
  • API Checks
  • Round Robin
  • Email, Slack, Webhooks for Alerting

Starter

$24/mo
  • Uptime Monitors
  • Maximum Frequency
  • Locations
  • Retries
  • Browser/Playwright Checks
  • API Checks
  • Round Robin
  • Email, Slack, SMS, Webhooks for Alerting

Team

Popular
$64/mo
  • Uptime Monitors
  • Maximum Frequency
  • Locations
  • Retries
  • Browser/Playwright Checks
  • API Checks
  • Round Robin
  • Private Locations
  • All Alerting Channels

Enterprise

Custom
  • Uptime Monitors
  • Maximum Frequency
  • Locations
  • Retries
  • RR & Parallel Scheduling
  • Private Locations
  • All Alerting Channels

Log Observability

$5/mo
  • Intuitive Web-based log viewer
  • Team-wide groups & searches
  • Unlimited systems & users
  • Encrypted logging
  • Long-term archive
  • REST API
  • Search alerts

Checkly vs Papertrail FAQ

Which one is cheaper?
Papertrail is the cheaper option, starting at $5/mo vs $24/mo for Checkly.
Can I use either one for free?
Checkly has a free plan. Papertrail doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
How do they charge?
Different approach here. Checkly uses hybrid pricing, while Papertrail 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: At $24-$64/mo for the self-serve tiers, Checkly sits in the mid-market — pricier than bare-bones uptime checkers but way more accessible than legacy APM/observability suites that gate synthetic monitoring behind enterprise contracts. They're clearly targeting dev teams who want Datadog-adjacent monitoring quality without Datadog-adjacent pricing complexity. Papertrail: At $5/GB entry, Papertrail lands on the affordable end for teams that just need centralized log search without a heavyweight observability suite. It's playing for smaller teams and startups who'd balk at Datadog or Splunk-level spend.

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