Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring Alternative With Flat Uptime Pricing

Yes. Grafana Cloud does uptime monitoring through Synthetic Monitoring. HTTP, ping, DNS, TCP and traceroute checks run on a schedule from Grafana's public probes or from private probes you host, and the results are stored as metrics and logs you can chart, alert on and put in a dashboard. Scripted and browser checks built on k6 go further and test multi step journeys.

For a team that already lives in Grafana, that integration is the reason to use it. Availability sits next to latency, infrastructure and logs in one place. The question is not whether Grafana can watch a URL. It is whether paying per execution, and building the paging path yourself, is the right way to get a phone call when that URL stops answering.

Grafana Cloud synthetic monitoring costs $5 per 10,000 API test executions and $50 per 10,000 browser test executions on the Pro plan, after the 100,000 API and 10,000 browser executions included in the $19 monthly platform fee, according to grafana.com/pricing read on October 12, 2026. The free tier includes the same 100,000 API and 10,000 browser executions.

Grafana's documentation says each selected probe runs the check independently at every interval, so a one minute check from three probes is three executions per minute. Grafana recommends at least three probes for critical checks. In a 30 day month that works out as follows for a single URL.

The 100,000 included executions cover about two URLs at one minute from one probe, or three URLs at five minutes from three probes. Past that, every check adds to the bill.

For a few URLs it is cheap or free, and you should keep it. For one minute checks across dozens of URLs it is not. The table below adds the $19 Pro platform fee and subtracts the 100,000 included executions; browser checks, IRM users, metrics and logs are extra.

The honest exception sits in the first row. Five URLs checked every 5 minutes cost about $34 on Grafana Pro, less than Professional here, and a free account covers two or three URLs outright. If that is your whole estate and IRM already reaches your phones, moving saves nothing. The case for switching is one minute checks across many URLs, multiple probes per check, or a team that wants calls without running IRM.

Yes, through Grafana IRM. Synthetic Monitoring writes probe results as metrics; an alert rule on those metrics fires through Grafana Alerting, and an IRM escalation chain turns it into a phone call, SMS, push or Slack notification. Grafana's documentation says there are no additional costs for outgoing calls or SMS and no fixed limits on them, although Grafana may throttle abnormal volume.

The cost is in users and setup, not messages. IRM is free for three active users and $20 per additional active user on Pro. Someone has to write and tune the alert rule, set its sensitivity, and keep the escalation chain current. TrackDowntime skips those layers: a failed check opens an incident and calls every number on the endpoint, repeating until it recovers. If you want calls only for the URLs customers hit, a downtime alert by phone call from here can run next to Grafana.

A fair amount. Grafana runs checks from many public probes and from private probes inside your network. It runs scripted multi step checks and real browser checks on k6, plus DNS, TCP and traceroute checks. Results land in the same dashboards as your Prometheus metrics and Loki logs, and the free tier is the most generous in the category.

TrackDowntime checks from a single location and confirms a timeout with two quick rechecks before alerting. It does not run browser journeys or scripted flows, it does not check for text in the response body, and it has no public status page. It watches whether each endpoint returns the status you expect within your timeout, keeps the downtime record, and makes sure people hear about it. Teams that need both keep Grafana for journeys and dashboards and move plain uptime checks here.