Checkly vs OnlineOrNot: Full Playwright Platform or Simple Browser Checks?

Checkly and OnlineOrNot both market Playwright-powered synthetic checks. The scale of ambition differs. Checkly is a monitoring-as-code platform with Check Suites, Terraform, Pulumi, and per-run economics. OnlineOrNot is an indie monitoring product: uptime, API, heartbeats, status page, and real Chrome browser checks on a readable Pro plan.

Teams land on this comparison when they want browser journeys without an enterprise DEM contract, and they are weighing "full Checkly" against "enough Playwright for a small fleet." See also best synthetic monitoring tools.

TL;DR

What "Playwright" means on each side

On Checkly, Playwright is the product surface: multi-file suites, fixtures, stored state, CLI deploy, and CI parity. Playwright monitoring as a discipline maps almost 1:1 onto Checkly's model.

import { test, expect } from "@playwright/test";

test("settings save", async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto("https://app.example.com/settings");
  await page.getByLabel("Display name").fill("Synthetic User");
  await page.getByRole("button", { name: "Save" }).click();
  await expect(page.getByText("Saved")).toBeVisible();
});

OnlineOrNot runs real Chrome for JavaScript-heavy flows and accepts Playwright-style checks. That catches white-screen SPAs and broken client routes that HTTP monitors miss. It does not try to be Check Suites: expect fewer guards around large monorepos, shared fixtures, and enterprise private locations.

Pricing

OnlineOrNot Pro starts around $15/mo with 10 uptime monitors, 30-second intervals, and 3,000 browser-check runs included ($4 per 1,000 overage). Hobby is free with 3 monitors, a 3-minute floor, and 1,000 browser runs/month. The spreadsheet is small.

Checkly's Detect tiers (Hobby free with 1k browser runs, Starter/Team with larger allotments) plus ~$4–6.50/1k overage are fine at modest volume and painful when every journey is multi-region and sub-minute. Status pages and AI RCA are separate Checkly products. OnlineOrNot bundles a status page on Pro (extra pages cost more).

If you need 50 complex Playwright suites from many regions, Checkly's power matters more than OnlineOrNot's sticker. If you need five browser journeys and a clean invoice, OnlineOrNot usually wins the "will finance approve this" test.

Developer surface and ops

Checkly: checkly test, checkly deploy, Terraform, Pulumi, Prometheus export on higher tiers. That is the MaC reference in this category.

OnlineOrNot: API, alerts to Slack/Discord/Telegram, SMS and on-call integrations on Pro, unlimited users on Pro. Fine for small teams. Not a Terraform-first synthetics workflow.

Neither replaces a full on-call product the way Better Stack tries to. Both can page a human; Checkly assumes you bring PagerDuty/Opsgenie, OnlineOrNot leans on integrations and SMS.

Who should choose which

Choose Checkly when Playwright is already how your org defines quality, and monitors must live beside the app in git with suite-level fidelity.

Choose OnlineOrNot when you want real browser checks on a simple plan, a small monitor count, and minimal platform surface.

Still monitor the APIs under the UI. A red browser check without endpoint assertions is a vague page. Put API and uptime monitoring underneath. DevHelm does that layer with flat pricing and config-as-code. First monitor in about 60 seconds, no credit card.