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The 9 Best Synthetic Monitoring Tools Reviewed For 2024

· 10 min read

Web performance monitoring is key for maintaining a fast, reliable website. Synthetic monitoring tools help you track your website's performance by simulating user interactions and measuring key metrics.

This guide compares a number of synthetic monitoring solutions. We evaluate their key features, pricing, and limitations to help you choose the right tool for your needs.

1. DebugBear

https://debugbear.com/

DebugBear is a web performance monitoring service that tracks Core Web Vitals, site speed metrics, and user experience data to help optimize website performance and SEO rankings.

DebugBear home page

Key Features

Pros

One click experiments

Synthetic website monitoring dashboard on DebugBear:

Synthetic monitoring dashboard for a web page

DebugBear features a detailed waterfall view of network requests:

Detailed reporting and analysis

Cons

  • Can be expensive for small hobby projects
  • Only focussed on frontend performance

Pricing

Start with a 14-day free trial (no credit card needed), then pay $125 USD monthly for up to 4,000 synthetic tests.

2. SpeedCurve

SpeedCurve monitors website performance through synthetic testing and real user monitoring (RUM), helping identify and fix speed issues that affect user experience.

SpeedCurve home page

Key Features

  • Tracks 100+ performance metrics including Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse scores, and custom metrics
  • Provides competitor benchmarking capabilities
  • Integrates with CI/CD workflows through API and performance budgets
  • Offers real-time alerts for performance threshold violations

Pros

Track website changes through clear visualizations and performance comparisons in an intuitive dashboard. Each deployment includes automated Lighthouse scoring and reporting.

Synthetic test budgets help alert you during performance regressions.

The budget section for metrics, in SpeedCurve

Synthetic lab tests also capture a network request waterfall, that includes CPU activity, so you can understand periods of heavy browser processing activity.

A waterfall view showing busy CPU activity

Cons

Oversimplified interface and restricted functionality affects usability. Performance metrics lack granularity, preventing effective troubleshooting of performance issues.

Pricing

Sign up for a free trial, then pay $12 USD monthly for up to 1000 synthetic checks per month on the basic plan.

3. Datadog

Datadog RUM and synthetic monitoring service that can track and analyze how users interact with web applications in real-time.

Datadog home page

Key Features

  • Monitors core web vitals and load times across web applications
  • Tracks user sessions with replay capability and error tracking
  • Collects custom metrics and user behavioral data
  • Correlates frontend issues with backend traces and logs
  • Provides synthetic browser testing to simulate user journeys

Pros

Monitor site performance and interaction tests, while also capturing real user web browsing sessions. This captured data reveals how visitors navigate your site and helps identify issues.

A synthetic browser test that includes a user flow:

User flow settings for a browser test

Synthetic test chart showing uptime:

Chart showing performance for a browser test, across different regions

Cons

Installing the required tracking agent during onboarding creates confusion and complexity.

Pricing

Start with a free trial, then pay $5 monthly for up to 10,000 synthetic checks.

4. Pingdom

Pingdom is a website monitoring service that also includes a real user monitoring service to track end-user interactions and performance metrics on websites, priced starting at $10 per month.

Pingdom homepage

Key Features

  • Geographic tracking of user activity with live mapping
  • Performance metrics including load time, time to first byte, and Apdex score
  • Browser, device, and platform-specific analytics
  • Customizable performance threshold alerts
  • Historical trend analysis and comparison
  • Deployment via single code snippet

Pros

Records user interactions to create automated tests, monitors site uptime with a shareable status page, and integrates with monitoring tools to provide infrastructure metrics and code-level visibility.

Synthetic uptime checking: Pingdom can also generate status pages for you

An automatically generated uptime status page that shows average response time also

Synthetic lab-based tests give you a report and recommendations for how to improve performance

Performance recommendations for a website speed test

Cons

Performance monitoring lacks depth, notably missing Core Web Vitals tracking. Available metrics provide insufficient detail to properly diagnose and debug performance issues.

Pricing

Users can start with a free trial before choosing between $10/month (billed annually) for either 10 uptime checks or 2 transaction checks monthly.

5. New Relic

New Relic is a suite of monitoring tools, including a synthetic monitoring service and a real user monitoring service that tracks and analyzes web application performance from the end-user's perspective through browser-side data collection.

New relic home page

Key Features

  • Core web vitals tracking (LCP, INP, CLS) for SEO optimization
  • Error rate monitoring with deployment correlation
  • Geographic usage patterns and device-specific performance metrics
  • Browser-specific performance tracking and troubleshooting
  • Backend service connection through distributed tracing
  • Real-time alerting for performance indicators

Pros

Monitor your website and infrastructure while watching user session recordings to correlate logs with on-page events. Track page views with filtered analytics and query dashboard data using AI-powered insights.

This synthetic test captures the clicking of a call-to-action button, and asserts the page updates as expected:

Configuring a user flow journey as part of a new website check

You can dive into specific network request details when when looking at a lab test. Synthetic lab tests capture the usual performance and network related metrics you're likely to expect

Network request details for a particular resource

Cons

The interface's complexity hinders easy information access. Data analysis lacks depth, particularly for web performance metrics.

Pricing

Start with a free trial and pay based on your usage.

6. Request Metrics

Request Metrics is primarily a RUM service that tracks website performance metrics and Core Web Vitals to identify speed issues affecting actual users. It also has some synthetic monitoring capabilities.

Request metrics home page

Key Features

  • Real-time performance monitoring of page loads and user interactions
  • Automatic URL pattern detection and page grouping
  • Resource waterfall analysis to identify slow-loading assets
  • Core Web Vitals tracking for SEO optimization
  • Third-party script impact analysis
  • Regional performance tracking by country
  • No-code trial option with performance scanning

Pros

Monitor and debug Core Web Vitals through detailed interaction analysis, track user journeys step-by-step, and visualize website performance metrics in a clean dashboard interface.

Request Metrics is geared towards real user monitoring, however synthetic lab data is available if you do not have real users yet, for example for a site that has not yet been released.

When configuring a new site you can run automated crawls to generate synthetic web performance measurements

Cons

Useful features are restricted to premium pricing tiers. Synthetic testing remains basic and secondary to the core product.

Pricing

Start with a free trial, then choose from plans starting at $37/month for the Essentials plan.

7. Solarwinds

SolarWinds Observability SaaS provides real-time monitoring of web application performance and user experience, combining website metrics with application performance monitoring.

Solarwinds home page

Key Features

  • Real-time tracking of page speed, uptime metrics, and user experience by region, device, and browser
  • Integration with APM for combined client-side and server-side monitoring
  • Performance analysis through customizable alerts and Apdex satisfaction ratings
  • Root cause identification through transaction traces and database query analysis
  • Single interface monitoring of end-user experience, application servers, infrastructure, and databases

Pros

Monitor user transactions and verify journey functionality while tracking logs across your application, infrastructure, and database. Analyze and filter data through customizable reporting tools.

Synthetic transaction monitoring lets you capture critical user journeys in your web application:

A website test result showing the individual steps which were carried out

Synthetic tests can originate from a number of different regions, helping you understand what performance looks like from across the world.

A list of regions with additional metadata for each region

Cons

The complex interface and dashboard structure hinders information discovery and access. Limited performance metrics obscure problem diagnosis and root cause analysis. Core Web Vitals data is incomplete, specifically missing Interaction to Next Paint measurements.

Pricing

Users can start with a free trial before choosing between $10/month (billed annually) for either 10 uptime checks or 2 transaction checks monthly.

8. Atatus

A monitoring solution that tracks end-user experience and frontend performance metrics for web applications in real-time.

Atatus home page

Key Features

  • Web vitals monitoring (FID, LCP, FCP, INP, TTFB, CLS)
  • Page load performance tracking with resource waterfall analysis
  • Single page application (SPA) route change monitoring
  • AJAX performance tracking
  • JavaScript error detection and diagnosis
  • User session replay and journey mapping
  • Deployment impact measurement

Pros

Track website performance through analytics dashboards that monitor usage patterns, code deployments, and network statistics. Link deployment changes directly to performance regressions.

In lab-based synthetic tests, you get helpful charts and visualizations to show how your website is performing over time, when accessed from one particular location.

A response time by location chart

Atatus offers a number of useful synthetic test measurements:

Options when creating a new synthetic check which include an API or web check and a multi-step API check

Cons

Performance metrics, especially Core Web Vitals, lack detailed data to diagnose and troubleshoot low scores. This limited visibility hinders accurate performance analysis and improvement efforts.

Pricing

Start with a 14-day free trial, then pay $2/month for up to 10,000 synthetic checks monthly.

9. Calibre

Calibre is web performance monitoring platform to track Core Web Vitals and other performance metrics.

Key Features

  • Core Web Vitals monitoring using Chrome User Experience Report data
  • Performance budgets with alerts via email and Slack
  • CI/CD integration for pull request performance reviews
  • Third-party impact analysis and JavaScript task monitoring
  • API access through Node.js and CLI tools for automation

Pros

Includes a simple user interface to view basic performance data of the specified website.

Synthetic monitoring in Calibre gives a big focus on performance metrics, such as Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals metrics shown for a website speed check

You can set budgets for your synthetic tests. This can alert you when scores are below a certain threshold.

Options presented to set a budget for a metric

Cons

The service displays limited real-user data from Google CrUX dataset and shows nothing if your site isn't included there. Performance insights don't extend beyond basic Lighthouse metrics.

Pricing

Start with a free trial, then pay $75 USD monthly for up to 5000 synthetic checks.

How to choose a synthetic monitoring tool

When choosing a synthetic monitoring tool, consider the following factors:

  • Metrics: Look for tools that track Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse scores, and other key performance metrics.
  • Alerts: Choose a tool that sends alerts when performance thresholds are breached.
  • Integrations: Ensure the tool integrates with your existing monitoring tools and workflows.

Get started with website performance monitoring

There are lots of monitoring tools out there. Most of them offer a free trial, so you can see how well they work for your use case.

Ready to get started? Sign up for DebugBear to get a detailed analysis of your website and see how fast it performs in our controlled lab environment.

Illustration of website monitoringIllustration of website monitoring

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  • In-depth Page Speed Reports
  • Automated Recommendations
  • Real User Analytics Data

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