Datadog alternative
Uptime monitoring
without paying per test run.
Datadog is a full observability platform, and its uptime checks are billed by how many times they run. If what you need is to know when a site or endpoint goes down, PULSX does that for free.
Why teams switch
from Datadog.
A price that does not move
On Datadog, checking more often or from more places means more test runs and a larger bill. PULSX is free for 20 monitors at 1-minute checks, and a pack of 10 more has one fixed monthly price.
Add a URL, done
Paste a URL, pick an interval and an alert channel, and the first check runs within a minute. There is nothing to install and no wider platform to learn first.
Built for small teams
Startups, agencies and solo builders get the same thing: 20 monitors, status pages, incidents, on-call and 25 seats, without a sales call.
PULSX and Datadog,
side by side.
| Feature | PULSX Free | Datadog Synthetics from $5 per 10,000 API test runs |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | From $5 per 10,000 API test runs |
| How it is billed | Per monitor, fixed | Per test run |
| Check interval | 1 minute | 1 minute at the fastest |
| SSL, DNS, TCP and ping checks | Yes | Billed as API tests |
| Public status pages | Yes | Yes |
| Browser and mobile app tests | No | From $12 per 1,000 browser runs |
| Checks from several locations | No | Yes |
| Logs, traces, APM | No | Yes |
This is not a like-for-like comparison. Datadog does a great deal that PULSX does not: logs, traces, application performance monitoring and infrastructure metrics. If you need those, you need Datadog or something like it.
What Datadog costs
as you grow.
| Plan | Price | Monitors | Fastest check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Datadog API tests HTTP, SSL, DNS, TCP and ICMP checks all count as API tests | From $5 per 10,000 runs billed yearly, $7.20 on demand | Pay per run | 1 minute |
| Datadog browser tests Every 25 steps count as 1 run | From $12 per 1,000 runs billed yearly, $18 on demand | Pay per run | 1 minute |
| Datadog mobile app tests Run on real devices | From $50 per 100 runs billed yearly, $72 on demand | Pay per run | Not stated |
| PULSX Every feature, no card | Free | 20 | 1 minute |
| PULSX with 3 packs Same features, more monitors | £8.50/mo | 50 | 1 minute |
| PULSX with 8 packs Same features, more monitors | £19.50/mo | 100 | 1 minute |
Datadog prices are from their pricing page, read on 12 October 2026. Prices change and can differ by country, so check theirs before you decide. Datadog showed us prices in US dollars for its US sites, each marked "starting at". PULSX prices are in pounds; euro and dollar prices are on our pricing page.
What is different day to day
How a per-run price adds up
One URL checked every minute from one location is 43,200 runs in a 30-day month. At $5 per 10,000 runs that is about $21.60 a month, and 20 URLs are about $432 a month. Datadog gives its own example of 3 locations every minute, which is 180 runs an hour for one test. These sums are our arithmetic from the unit prices on their page, not figures Datadog publishes.
What it costs on PULSX
20 monitors checked every minute cost nothing. 50 monitors are £8.50 a month and 100 are £19.50. The price depends on how many monitors you have, never on how often they run.
What Datadog does that PULSX does not
Datadog Synthetics can run recorded browser journeys and mobile app tests, check from many locations including private ones inside your own network, and link a failed check to the backend trace that caused it. Around that sit logs, metrics and application performance monitoring. PULSX has none of this.
What a small team actually needs
For most small products the question is narrower: is the site up, is the certificate about to expire, did the nightly job run, and who gets told. PULSX answers those four with HTTP, TCP, DNS and ping monitors, SSL tracking, heartbeat monitors for cron jobs, and alerts by email, Slack, Discord, webhook and Android push.
Using both
Many teams keep Datadog for what happens inside their systems and use a separate outside check for uptime and for the public status page. An outside monitor that shares nothing with your own stack keeps working when that stack, or the tool watching it, has a problem.
Stay or switch,
an honest split.
Stay with Datadog if
- You need logs, traces and application performance monitoring.
- You run browser or mobile app tests, or checks from inside a private network.
- You want a failed check linked to the backend trace behind it.
Switch to PULSX if
- You only use Datadog to know whether sites and endpoints are up.
- Your Synthetics bill grows every time you add a check or a location.
- You want heartbeat monitoring for cron jobs and a status page in one free tool.
- You want an outside check that does not depend on your main monitoring platform.
Move over
in an afternoon.
01
Create a PULSX account
Free, with no card and nothing to install.
02
Add the endpoints you care about
Public URLs, health endpoints and cron heartbeats. Pick intervals and the status codes you expect.
03
Route alerts and publish a status page
Slack, Discord, webhook or Android push, then a public status page if your users should see it too.
Questions
Is PULSX a replacement for Datadog?+
How much does Datadog Synthetic Monitoring cost?+
Does Datadog have a free uptime monitor?+
Does Datadog have status pages?+
Why is PULSX free?+
Can PULSX monitor private endpoints?+
Know when things are down. Pay nothing.
Uptime monitoring, SSL tracking and status pages for every team, free.