Datadog vs Dynatrace: pricing, synthetic monitoring and check intervals compared
Short answer: both are full observability platforms that meter synthetic monitoring, but on different units. Datadog bills per test run, near $5 per 10,000 API runs. Dynatrace bills per synthetic request for HTTP monitors, $1.00 per 1,000, and per synthetic action for browser monitors, $4.50 per 1,000. That action-versus-run difference is the one that surprises people: a shallow browser check is cheaper on Dynatrace, and the advantage flips to Datadog at roughly three actions per script. Neither vendor checks faster than once a minute, which is where AlertPing sits, at 60-second checks from $19 a month and 30-second checks from $59.
Last updated August 2026 · US dollar list prices checked August 2026
alertping ▸ run check
live
▸ type a domain and run a real-feel check
▸ probes from 3 regions · FRA · IAD · SIN
▸ waiting…▌
queued probing▌
If ever goes down, you get:
Alert fired ▸ 2 channels · 6.2 s after first failure
AlertPing app
● DOWN : HTTP timeout confirmed from 3/3 regions (FRA, IAD, SIN). Incident opened.
sms · on-call
AlertPing: DOWN. Confirmed 3/3 regions . First fail: Frankfurt.
the short version
Two enterprise platforms, two different meters
Datadog and Dynatrace sit at the top of most enterprise observability shortlists. Both do APM, distributed tracing, logs, infrastructure metrics, real user monitoring and synthetics. If that is genuinely the comparison you are running, the synthetic module is a small slice of the decision and you should weigh the platforms whole, including the parts we have no standing to judge. This page covers the slice we know well and can check honestly: uptime and synthetic monitoring, and what each one costs.
Datadog Synthetic Monitoring meters per execution. Its billing documentation states the units plainly: per ten thousand API test runs and per thousand browser test runs. List rates land near $5 per 10,000 API runs and $12 per 1,000 browser runs on an annual commitment, with pay as you go higher and overage running above the committed rate.
Dynatrace publishes a rate card built on consumption units rather than plan tiers. For synthetics it lists $1.00 per 1,000 synthetic requests for HTTP monitors and $4.50 per 1,000 synthetic actions for browser monitors. Its documentation is precise about how a request is counted: one synthetic request is consumed each time a monitor runs, for each HTTP request executed, at each location. Hosts are billed separately again, from $7 a month for Foundation and Discovery up to $58 a month per 8 GiB host for Full-Stack Monitoring.
The honest headline for anyone arriving from an uptime search: neither platform is priced or designed to be a website uptime monitor, and neither goes below a one-minute interval. Both are bought to explain why something broke, not to be first to tell you that it broke.
side by side
Datadog vs Dynatrace vs AlertPing
Figures are US dollar list prices published in August 2026, taken from each vendor's own pricing and documentation pages. Both vendors negotiate hard at volume and both quote different rates on commitment contracts, so confirm current numbers before you buy. Ours are on the pricing page, and the wider field is on our uptime monitoring pricing comparison.
| Datadog Synthetics | Dynatrace Synthetics | AlertPing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per test run, metered | Per synthetic request or action, metered | Flat monthly plan, unlimited checks |
| Simple uptime check rate | Near $5 per 10,000 API runs (annual commit) | $1.00 per 1,000 synthetic requests | Included, no per-check cost |
| Browser check rate | Near $12 per 1,000 runs (annual), $15 to $18 pay as you go | $4.50 per 1,000 synthetic actions | Not offered |
| Billing unit for browser checks | One run, whatever the script length | One action, so a 10-step script bills 10 units per run | Not applicable |
| Shortest check interval | 1 minute | 1 minute (1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60) | 30 seconds from the $59 Team plan, 60 seconds on the $19 Starter, 15 seconds on Enterprise |
| Counted per location | Yes, each location executes separately | Yes, documented explicitly | 3 regions always included, no multiplier |
| Entry price | Metered, plus platform subscription | Metered, plus host cost from $7/mo per host | $19/mo flat, $15/mo billed yearly |
| Host and infrastructure cost | Per host, separate SKU | $7/mo Foundation, $29/mo Infrastructure, $58/mo per 8 GiB host Full-Stack | None, we do not install agents |
| SMS alerts | Via integration, not included | Via integration, not included | Included and unmetered on every plan |
| Outage confirmation | Configurable retries and locations | Configurable retries and locations | 3 of 3 regions must agree before alerting |
| APM and distributed tracing | Yes, extensive | Yes, with automatic topology and Davis AI root cause | No |
| Log management | Yes, separate SKU | Yes, $0.20 per GiB ingest | No |
| Real user monitoring | Yes, separate SKU | $2.25 per 1,000 sessions, $4.50 with session replay | No |
| SSL certificate expiry | Via SSL test type | Via monitor configuration | Included on every plan |
| Best described as | Synthetics inside a broad observability platform | Synthetics inside a deep, automated enterprise platform | A dedicated uptime monitor on flat pricing |
the per-check math
What one monitor actually costs on each platform
Per-unit rates mean nothing until you multiply them by a real schedule, so here is the arithmetic in public. An average month is 30.44 days, or 43,833 minutes. One monitor running every minute from one location is therefore 43,833 executions a month. Both vendors count per location, so three locations triples every figure below.
The Dynatrace HTTP column assumes one HTTP request per execution. If your monitor follows a redirect or chains several requests, Dynatrace counts each one, so a three-request monitor costs three times the figure shown. Datadog figures use the annual-commitment rates.
| Schedule (one monitor) | Executions per month | Dynatrace HTTP | Datadog API test | AlertPing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Every minute, 1 location | 43,833 | $43.83 | $21.92 | Included |
| Every minute, 3 locations | 131,499 | $131.50 | $65.75 | Included |
| Every 5 minutes, 1 location | 8,767 | $8.77 | $4.38 | Included |
| Every 5 minutes, 3 locations | 26,300 | $26.30 | $13.15 | Included |
| 50 monitors, every minute, 3 locations | 6,574,950 | $6,574.95 | $3,287.48 | $59/mo Team plan |
Read the bottom row carefully before you take it as a gotcha. Nobody buys Datadog or Dynatrace to run fifty ping checks, and both would sell you a committed contract at a real discount off list long before that bill arrived. The row is there to show the shape of the curve: on a metered platform, the cost of watching something rises every time you speed a check up or add a region. On a flat plan it does not move at all, which is the entire reason a dedicated uptime tool still exists alongside these platforms.
the unit that catches people out
Dynatrace bills browser checks per action, Datadog per run
This is the single difference most comparison articles miss, and it changes which vendor is cheaper depending on how deep your scripts go. Datadog charges for a browser test run as one unit no matter how many steps it contains. Dynatrace charges $4.50 per 1,000 synthetic actions, and every click, navigation and assertion inside a browser monitor is an action.
Work the break-even and it is unusually clean. Datadog's annual rate is $0.012 per browser run. Dynatrace is $0.0045 per action. Divide one by the other and the crossover sits at about 2.7 actions. In plain terms:
| Browser script depth | Dynatrace per run | Datadog per run | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 action (load a page) | $0.0045 | $0.012 | Dynatrace, by 2.7x |
| 2 actions | $0.0090 | $0.012 | Dynatrace |
| 3 actions | $0.0135 | $0.012 | Datadog, just |
| 6 actions (a login and checkout) | $0.0270 | $0.012 | Datadog, by 2.3x |
| 12 actions (a long journey) | $0.0540 | $0.012 | Datadog, by 4.5x |
So if your browser monitoring is a handful of shallow page-load checks, Dynatrace's unit is kinder. If you run real multi-step user journeys, which is the usual reason to buy browser monitoring at all, Datadog's flat per-run unit wins and keeps winning as the script grows. Neither of those is a criticism. They are just different units, and the only mistake is assuming the smaller headline number is the cheaper one.
the interval floor
Neither platform checks faster than once a minute
Dynatrace documents the available HTTP monitor frequencies as every 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, plus on demand. Datadog documents one minute as the shortest synthetic test frequency. There is no faster tier to buy on either platform, at any price. The same is true of New Relic, which we worked through on our Datadog vs New Relic comparison.
That floor matters more than it sounds. Detection latency is roughly half your check interval on average, plus whatever confirmation logic you run before alerting. A one-minute schedule means a typical outage is already 30 seconds old before the first failed check, and longer before a retry confirms it. If you are measuring against a 99.99% target, the entire monthly error budget is 4 minutes and 23 seconds, so a minute of detection lag spends a quarter of it before anyone is paged. We wrote the full arithmetic up under SLA monitoring.
For a lot of teams that is completely fine. If you are watching an internal service with a 99.5% target, a minute of lag is noise. It is worth knowing about before you sign, rather than after, and it is one of the few places where a small dedicated tool genuinely does something neither enterprise platform will sell you.
honest scorecard
Where each one genuinely wins
We sell an uptime monitor, so treat this section as interested but checkable. Everything here is something you can verify on the vendors' own documentation.
Dynatrace wins on
- Automatic topology discovery. The agent maps dependencies without you drawing them, which is the thing large estates actually buy.
- Davis AI root cause. It attempts to name the failing component rather than hand you dashboards to correlate yourself.
- Depth of full-stack tracing on complex, older enterprise stacks, including mainframe and SAP.
- A published, granular rate card. You can model a bill from the website, which is rarer than it should be.
- Shallow browser checks, where the per-action unit is cheaper than Datadog's per-run unit.
Datadog wins on
- Breadth of integrations, with hundreds of turnkey sources covering most of a modern cloud stack.
- Time to first dashboard. Teams get something useful running in an afternoon.
- Deep multi-step browser journeys, where per-run billing beats per-action billing from about three actions up.
- Cheaper simple API synthetic checks, at roughly half the Dynatrace HTTP request rate.
- A larger hiring pool and community, so the knowledge is easier to buy in.
AlertPing wins on
- Speed. 30-second checks from the Team plan, 15 seconds on Enterprise. Neither platform goes below a minute.
- A bill that does not move when you speed a check up or add a region.
- SMS, email, Slack and webhook alerts included and unmetered on every plan.
- 3-of-3 region confirmation before we page anyone, which kills most single-region false alarms.
- Setup in a minute, with no agent to install anywhere.
What AlertPing does not do
We are not a third option in this comparison in any complete sense, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. We have no APM, no distributed tracing, no log management, no real user monitoring, no session replay, no infrastructure agent and no server resource metrics. We do not run scripted multi-step browser journeys. If the reason you are comparing Datadog and Dynatrace is that you need to understand a slow database query or trace a request through twelve services, neither of them is replaceable by us and you should buy one of them. The realistic pattern is running a cheap, fast external uptime check alongside whichever platform you pick, so that the thing telling you the site is down is not the same thing that might be down.
which to buy
Pick by what you are actually trying to do
| Your situation | Buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You need to know within seconds that a public site or API is down | A dedicated uptime tool | Both platforms floor at one minute. This is not a budget problem, it is a product limit. |
| Large enterprise estate, mixed legacy and cloud, small platform team | Dynatrace | Automatic discovery and Davis root cause do work that would otherwise need headcount. |
| Modern cloud-native stack, many managed services, engineers who like to build dashboards | Datadog | Integration breadth and speed to value are its strongest suit. |
| Heavy multi-step browser journey testing | Datadog | Per-run billing does not punish you for script depth the way per-action billing does. |
| A handful of shallow page-load browser checks | Dynatrace | $0.0045 per action beats $0.012 per run when the script is one or two actions. |
| You only want uptime, SSL and alerting, nothing else | Neither | You would be buying an observability platform to do a job a $19 plan does faster. |
| You already own one of them and keep missing short outages | Both, layered | Keep the platform for diagnosis, add an external check for detection speed and independence. |
questions people ask
Datadog vs Dynatrace, answered
Datadog vs Dynatrace: which is better?
It splits by estate. Dynatrace is stronger where automatic dependency discovery and AI root cause save a small team from mapping a large, mixed environment by hand. Datadog is stronger on integration breadth and speed to first value in a modern cloud stack. For synthetic monitoring alone, the answer depends on your billing unit, not on quality.
Datadog vs Dynatrace pricing: which is cheaper?
For simple API and HTTP checks Datadog is cheaper, around $0.0005 per run against Dynatrace's $0.001 per synthetic request. For browser checks it flips with script depth: Dynatrace's $0.0045 per action wins below three actions, Datadog's $0.012 per run wins above. Host costs and platform subscriptions usually dwarf both at real scale.
How much does Dynatrace cost?
Dynatrace publishes a consumption rate card. Hosts run $7 a month for Foundation and Discovery, $29 for Infrastructure Monitoring and $58 per 8 GiB host for Full-Stack Monitoring. Synthetics are $1.00 per 1,000 HTTP requests and $4.50 per 1,000 browser actions. Logs and traces ingest at $0.20 per GiB, and real user monitoring is $2.25 per 1,000 sessions.
Does Datadog or Dynatrace do 30-second checks?
Neither does. Dynatrace lists HTTP monitor frequencies of 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 and 60 minutes, and Datadog documents one minute as its shortest synthetic test frequency. No tier or contract buys you faster. If sub-minute detection is a hard requirement, both vendors are out regardless of budget.
What is a synthetic request in Dynatrace?
Dynatrace defines it precisely: one synthetic request is consumed each time a monitor runs, for each HTTP request executed, at each location. So a monitor that follows one redirect and runs from three locations consumes six requests per execution, not one. Adding locations multiplies the meter exactly the way shortening the interval does.
Datadog vs Dynatrace vs New Relic: how do they compare?
All three meter synthetics and all three floor at one minute. New Relic is the outlier on price because its simple ping monitors are exempt from the check meter and free on every edition. Datadog is cheapest for metered API runs, and Dynatrace sits between them while billing browser work per action. We compared two of them in detail on our Datadog vs New Relic page.
Can I use Dynatrace just for uptime monitoring?
Technically yes, with HTTP monitors, but the economics are poor. You would pay $43.83 a month per one-minute single-location check, plus whatever host and platform costs your contract carries, to get a slower interval than a $19 flat plan gives you. Dynatrace is worth its price for tracing and root cause, not for pinging a URL.
Why is synthetic monitoring so expensive on these platforms?
Because the meter runs on executions, and executions multiply by interval and by location. A rate of $1.00 per 1,000 requests looks trivial until a one-minute check from three regions becomes 131,499 requests a month. Flat-priced tools charge for the plan, so speeding a check up or adding a region costs nothing extra.
related comparisons
Keep comparing
If you are still narrowing the field, these go deeper on the neighbouring pairs and on the dedicated uptime tools that sit below the observability platforms on price.
- Datadog vs New Relic synthetics pricing, including New Relic's free ping monitor exemption.
- New Relic vs Dynatrace pricing, seat-based billing against host-based billing.
- AppDynamics vs Dynatrace pricing, per-core billing against per-gigabyte billing and the 4.52 GiB crossover.
- Dynatrace vs Splunk pricing, flat per-host billing against per-gigabyte and the 7.53 GiB crossover.
- Pingdom vs Datadog, a metered platform against a per-check uptime vendor.
- Datadog alternative for uptime monitoring, if the platform is more than you need.
- Best uptime monitoring tools, the full roundup with pricing.
- Uptime monitoring pricing compared across fifteen vendors.
- Synthetic monitoring vs uptime monitoring, which explains what you are actually buying with each.
- API monitoring with assertions, our own status code, keyword and JSON path checks.
“Our old tool paged me at 3am for blips that fixed themselves in a minute. AlertPing only pages when all three regions agree it's really down. I sleep again.”
SRE lead, payments SaaS
“I run 40 client sites. One dashboard, one status page per client, and SMS that does not cost extra credits. The math was not close.”
Founder, web agency
“We sell a 99.9% SLA. AlertPing's reports are what we attach to the quarterly review. Our biggest customer stopped asking for proof.”
CTO, logistics platform
Detection speed neither platform sells
Checks confirmed from three regions, SMS on every plan, flat from $19 a month with no per-run metering. 30-second checks from $59. Running in under a minute.