The New Relic alternative built on Playwright, not Selenium
Checkly runs API, browser, and heartbeat monitoring code-first, not click-first. Your checks are native Playwright, they live in the repo, and you run them locally before they ship.
Playwright-native No vendor lock-in No seat charges
Trusted to monitor mission-critical flows at teams like these
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“With New Relic, what you’re getting is a bit of an add-on that they’re not really focusing on, because their core business sits in ingestion.”
Built for how modern software is actually shipped
Built on open-source technologies, with no vendor lock-in. Your monitors are flexible, reviewable, and version-controlled like the rest of your stack, not locked inside a vendor’s UI.
Monitoring as code, end to end
Your monitors live in version control. You write them in TypeScript, review them in a pull request, and ship them in CI alongside the app. New Relic keeps scripts in a text box in its UI. Its monitoring-as-code story stops at a Terraform provider.
Built for engineering teams
Checkly runs where engineers already work. Write monitors on your local machine, verify preview deploys in CI, and watch production from the command line. New Relic ships no first-party CLI for synthetics, so there is no local run to debug against.
Synthetic monitoring is all we do
Every engineer we have works on API, browser, and heartbeat monitoring. It is the product, not one tab inside an observability suite whose core business is data ingestion.
Checkly vs. New Relic
A focused, code-first synthetic monitoring platform against a synthetics module inside a full-stack observability suite. Here’s where the difference shows.
Native Playwright runtime
Local run and debug
Command line interface
Monitoring as code
Runtime freshness
API monitoring
Heartbeat monitoring
Status pages
Pricing model
● Full support·— Limited·✕ Not available
Where New Relic leads: correlating synthetic results with APM, infrastructure, logs, and real user monitoring in one platform, plus certificate expiry monitors, codeless step monitors for non-engineers, and deep enterprise workflow integrations like ServiceNow. If unified full-stack observability is the job, New Relic fits. If synthetic monitoring is the job, Checkly is built for it.
Monitor everything, not just what fits the budget
New Relic meters every synthetic check and bills every user on top, so teams dial back frequency and coverage to keep the invoice down. Checkly is one predictable plan with one run pool and no seat charges. Run every critical flow as often as it needs.
One plan. One run pool.
Every engineer on your team can read and edit checks, at no extra cost
A separate meter for each.
Every check is metered at $0.005 above the free tier, and seats are billed on top.
“The overages with New Relic are almost an unseen, unaccounted cost. It’s just something that happens.”
From your IDE to production in three commands
Write checks in TypeScript, run them in CI, deploy them to production. The same workflow as the rest of your code, with the same tools.
Code your monitoring checks
Your app code lives in the repository. Your monitoring should too. Reuse the Playwright tests you already write and turn them into always-on production monitors. No Selenium rewrite, no scripts pasted into a text box.
Test and verify locally or in CI
Run checks from your local machine or on every deploy in CI. They execute on Checkly’s global infrastructure, exactly as they will in production. New Relic has no first-party CLI for synthetics, so this step has no equivalent there.
Deploy for 24/7 monitoring
Deploy and version your monitoring from the command line, right alongside your application deploys. One command puts it live across 20+ locations.
Need more proof? Listen to the engineers
“Checkly has helped us save engineering resources and expenses. When we get an alert, we can tell customers directly about issues.”
“The Checkly CLI has enhanced our engineering team’s ability to quickly build, validate, and deploy an entire suite of checks from their local development environment.”
“We’ve been using Checkly for months and it’s been phenomenal. Super easy to set up, works flawlessly and intuitively. The team is super receptive and quick to help.”
“Checkly is a fabulous developer tool. The flexible features and developer-friendly API made the integration super easy, and their support is friendly and knowledgeable.”
“Checkly is incredible: it combines Pingdom, Ghost Inspector, and Assertible in the same app, and the insights are much more detailed.”
“A real advantage Checkly gives us is that we’re not waiting for users to report an issue, or waiting on a staff member to file a ticket. Checkly gives us real-time feedback on what is and isn’t working.”
Coming from New Relic?
See the Migrator in action. We'll show you how your New Relic Synthetics monitors become version-controlled Checkly monitors, and exactly what you'll save.
We map your New Relic Synthetics monitors
Show us your existing scripted browser and API monitors. We translate them into Checkly constructs and native Playwright specs that live in your repo.
You see the cost delta before you commit
We take your current check volume, locations, frequency, and seat count, and put a real number next to what the same coverage costs on Checkly.
Your first monitors go live with us
A guided session with our team to get checks running in CI and deployed to production, not a slide deck.