Monitoring-as-code with Playwright versus external monitoring with change intelligence.
Checkly is built for teams who write monitors in TypeScript, run Playwright browser checks and deploy through CI. PulseTrace is built for teams who want the external surface — uptime, TLS, DNS, domains, headers — watched and diffed continuously without a test suite, with an API and MCP server when code is the right interface.
| Criterion | PulseTrace | Checkly |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 10 monitors, 1-minute checks, 1 region, 1 status page — free forever | Hobby: 10 uptime monitors, 10k API check runs and 1k browser runs per month, 1-minute frequency, 6 locations |
| Entry price | Team $29/mo (50 monitors, 30 s), Pro $85/mo (200 monitors, 15 s) | Starter $24/mo (50 uptime monitors, 25k API runs); Team $64/mo (75 uptime monitors, 100k API runs, 30 s, 22 locations) |
| Fastest interval | 60 s Free · 30 s Team · 15 s Pro · 10 s Enterprise | 1 min on Hobby/Starter; 30 s on Team; 1 s on Enterprise |
| Locations | 12 probe regions, per-region results; private probe agent for internal targets | 6 locations (Hobby/Starter), 22 on Team; private locations on Team+ |
| Monitor types | 12: HTTP(S), TCP, UDP, DNS, ICMP, WebSocket, traceroute, gRPC, TLS, SSL/TLS security grading, domain security, multi-step API | Uptime (URL, TCP, heartbeat), API checks, multistep API, Playwright browser checks |
| Security grading | A+–F grade for TLS config, chain, revocation, security headers, cookies, CORS; domain grade for RDAP, DNSSEC, SPF/DKIM/DMARC | SSL expiry alerts; no configuration or header grading |
| Change detection | Fingerprints DNS, TLS, HTTP headers, redirects, content and infrastructure on every check; change events with before/after; anomaly baselines; CT-log & look-alike watch (Pro) | Not a feature; AI root-cause analysis on failures |
| Status pages | 1 page on Free, 5 on Team, unlimited + custom domain on Pro, white-label on Enterprise; trust pages with security grades | 20–100 services, 250–2,000 subscribers by plan, custom domain from Starter |
| Alert channels | Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, incident.io, Rootly, email, signed webhooks — no SMS/voice | Email, Slack, webhooks, SMS (Starter+), phone (Team+), PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Teams, Discord, Telegram and more |
| API & automation | REST API with scoped keys and rate limits; MCP server for AI agents; OpenAPI import | TypeScript CLI (monitoring as code), Terraform and Pulumi providers, REST API, MCP server |
| Reporting | Availability, SLA/SLO with error budgets, performance, incident and intelligence reports; scheduled delivery (Pro) | Dashboards; 7–180 days raw retention by plan |
| Hosting | Hosted SaaS | Hosted SaaS; usage-based check-run pricing |
Checkly column last checked September 2026 from public pricing pages and dated pricing reviews. PulseTrace column reflects current plans. Plans change — tell us if something is out of date.
you want browser-level end-to-end checks written as code, or your team already lives in Playwright and CI-driven monitoring.
you want the external surface — certificates, DNS, domains, headers — watched and diffed without a test suite, predictable monitor-based pricing, and incidents plus SLA reporting in the same tool.
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