Pingdom vs Datadog Synthetics Pricing per Uptime Check at 5 to 650 URLs

Pingdom is the cheaper way to buy uptime monitoring at almost any size. Pingdom charges per check on a flat tier, $18 a month for 10 checks at 1 minute intervals and $149 for 100. Datadog Synthetics charges per test run, $5 per 10,000 API test runs billed annually, so one URL checked every minute from one location costs $21.60 a month on its own. At 100 URLs that is $149 on Pingdom against $2,160 on Datadog.

Datadog only gets close when checks run rarely: at a 15 minute interval from one location a URL costs $1.44 a month, which undercuts Pingdom slightly. Both prices below were read from pingdom.com/pricing and datadoghq.com/pricing/list on October 7, 2026.

How the two pricing models work

The two vendors price the same job in completely different units, which is why most comparisons online give numbers that do not line up.

Pingdom sells checks. You pick a tier on a slider with 22 steps, and the tier sets how many uptime checks, advanced (transaction) checks and SMS alerts you get each month. The interval and the number of probe servers that test the URL do not change the price. Annual billing is about 8.3 percent cheaper.

Datadog sells runs. Every hit on your endpoint from every location is one API test run. Datadog's pricing FAQ gives its own example: a test that runs from 3 locations every minute counts as 180 test runs an hour. Runs are billed at three rates:

So on Datadog the interval and the location count multiply the bill. On Pingdom they are free.

Is Pingdom cheaper than Datadog?

Yes, for uptime checks at 1 minute intervals Pingdom is cheaper at every size. A 30 day month has 43,200 minutes, so a URL checked every minute from one location is 43,200 Datadog runs. Here is what that does at the sizes people actually run, with our own plan alongside because we sell a competing monitor.

Two things stand out. Datadog at the annual list rate costs $21.60 per URL at one location, 12 to 16 times Pingdom's $1.33 to $1.80 per check, and three times that at three locations. And the gap does not close with scale, because Datadog's price per run is the same at 5 URLs and at 650, while Pingdom's price per check drifts down from $1.80 to about $1.33.

Be straight about our own column too. Pingdom is cheaper than us up to roughly 200 URLs on monthly billing, and if email and texts are enough, it is the better buy for a small estate. Our plans make sense when the phone has to ring, which comes up further down.

When Datadog is cheaper than Pingdom

Stretch the interval and Datadog catches up quickly, because the bill is proportional to how often you hit the URL.

At 15 minutes, 25 URLs cost $36 on Datadog against $40 on Pingdom, and 100 cost $144 against $149. That is the one place Datadog wins on price. The trade is visibility: a 15 minute interval can leave up to 15 minutes of an outage unseen and out of the downtime record. For a marketing page that is fine. For checkout, login or an API with an SLA, it usually is not, and the SLA arithmetic for uptime monitoring shows how fast a slow interval eats a 99.9 percent budget.

Is Datadog better than Pingdom?

Datadog is the bigger product, and Pingdom is the better uptime monitor for most people who only need uptime. Datadog is worth its price per run when a failed check needs to open straight into the APM trace, log lines and host metrics that explain it, when you test internal services from private locations, or when the team already lives in Datadog dashboards. Pingdom is worth more when the job is "tell me the site is down, check page speed and walk the checkout," priced in a way finance can predict.

Feature for feature on the uptime side:

Does Datadog replace Pingdom?

It can, but most teams that try it either keep Pingdom for plain uptime or move uptime somewhere flat priced. The usual pattern after a few months on Datadog is to keep browser tests on the money paths and multistep API tests that assert on response bodies, and move the dozens of single step "is it 200" checks off the per run meter. We covered that split, with the full Datadog rate card and run counting rules, in Datadog Synthetics pricing per uptime check.

If you are moving the other way, from Pingdom into Datadog because the company standardized on it, price the existing Pingdom checks at your real intervals and location counts first. A 100 check Pingdom account at 1 minute from three locations becomes about $6,480 a month at Datadog's annual list rate before any negotiation. That number tends to change the plan.

What phone call alerts cost on each

Neither vendor puts a ringing phone in the base price.

Pingdom alerts by email, SMS from a monthly allowance (50 texts on the 10 check tier, 350 at 100 checks), mobile push and integrations such as Slack. There is no voice call on any tier, so a phone that rings means a second tool. The allowance math for a three person rota is in Pingdom SMS alerts and credit limits.

Datadog sends synthetic alerts through monitors to email, Slack and other integrations. Calls and texts come from Datadog On-Call, listed at $20 per seat a month billed annually, $24 month to month. Three people who all need the phone to ring is $60 to $72 a month on top of the test runs.

That is where a flat monitor with calls built in changes the comparison. TrackDowntime Professional is $99 a month, or $49 billed yearly, for 25 endpoints checked every 60 seconds, and every number on an endpoint gets a call and a text at the first failure, then again at 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 minutes and onward until it recovers. There are no seats and nothing is counted. The schedule is on downtime alerts by phone call, and Enterprise covers unlimited endpoints for $299, or $149 a month billed yearly, on our pricing page.

What we do not do: we check from a single location, and we have no transaction checks, page speed tests, status pages or APM. If those matter, keep Pingdom or Datadog for them and use us for the call.

Which to buy, by situation

• One person, a handful of sites, email and text is enough. Pingdom, $18 a month. Uptime.com is cheaper still at $9 for the same 10 checks, laid out in Uptime.com vs Pingdom pricing.
• Team already paying for Datadog APM and logs. Datadog for browser tests and multistep API tests on critical flows. Move plain HTTP checks to something flat priced once there are more than a few.
• Engineering org with a purchasing process. Price both at your real intervals and locations before the renewal goes through a procurement workflow, because the per run number is the one that usually surprises the approver.
• Small team on a night rota. A monitor with calls included, so nobody pays per seat to be woken. Our Datadog uptime monitoring alternative and Pingdom alternative pages cover what moving only the alerts looks like.
• Agency or SaaS with hundreds of URLs. A flat plan. At 650 URLs Pingdom is $999 a month and Datadog is $14,040 at one location; Enterprise here is $299.

Pingdom vs Datadog pricing questions

How much does Datadog synthetic monitoring cost per month? Datadog charges $5 per 10,000 API test runs billed annually, $6 month to month and $7.20 on demand, and $12 per 1,000 browser test runs annually. One URL checked every minute from one location is 43,200 runs, or $21.60 a month at the annual rate. Three locations triple it.

How much does Pingdom cost per month? Pingdom starts at $18 a month, or $16.50 billed yearly, for 10 uptime checks, 1 advanced check and 50 SMS alerts. 100 checks cost $149 and 1,000 cost $1,295. Users are unlimited, there is no voice calling, and Real User Monitoring is a separate slider from $18 for 100,000 pageviews.

Why is Datadog so much more expensive for uptime checks? Because it bills every hit from every location. Pingdom bills a check once whatever the interval, while Datadog bills 43,200 runs a month for a 1 minute check from one location. The per run model is built for teams buying Datadog's wider platform, not for large fleets of simple HTTP checks.

Can Datadog call my phone when a synthetic test fails? Yes, through Datadog On-Call, a separate product at $20 per seat a month billed annually. Its contact methods include push, email, SMS and phone calls. Pingdom cannot place calls at all. TrackDowntime calls every listed number without seats from the Professional plan.

Is there a cheaper alternative to both for uptime and phone alerts? For a small estate, Uptime.com at $9 a month for 10 checks is cheaper than both and includes calls from a monthly allowance. For calls to several people with no cap, or for hundreds of URLs at one price, TrackDowntime Professional at $99 and Enterprise at $299 are the flat options.