Tenium vs Checkly

Two ideas of what monitoring is

Checkly treats monitoring as software. You write a Playwright script or an API check, keep it in your repository, deploy it from CI with a command-line tool or Terraform, and the same code can run as a test before release and as a monitor afterwards. That is a powerful idea for a product team that owns the application it monitors.

Tenium treats monitoring as a service you configure in a browser: pick a URL, pick what counts as healthy, choose who hears about it. It suits people who look after other people's websites and do not want a repository of check definitions. Neither idea is better; they fit different jobs.

The price comparison we can and cannot make

Checkly Team starts at $24 a month and Business at $64, and usage is billed by check runs on top. We do not hold a verified per-run price, so we cannot compute their total. What we can say is that a monitor every 30 seconds is about 8.6 million runs a month per location for 100 checks, and you should look at what your plan includes and what extra runs cost. Tenium Pro is $29 flat, so on starting price alone we are above Checkly, and the real gap depends on your usage. Dollar prices are compared as published. Euro prices are shown as published and converted at about EUR 1 = USD 1.08 for the percentages.

For a few API checks at a relaxed interval, Checkly can be cheaper than any paid Tenium plan, and its free Hobby plan may cover you entirely.

• 20 monitors, 3 people: Tenium Pro at $29. For Checkly: a $24 plan fee plus run-based usage we cannot price; 20 checks every 30 s is about 1.7 million runs per month per location.
• 100 monitors, 3 people: Tenium Pro at $29. For Checkly: a $24 plan fee plus run-based usage we cannot price; 100 checks every 30 s is about 8.6 million runs per month per location.
• 400 monitors, 3 people: Tenium Agency at $59. For Checkly: a $24 plan fee plus run-based usage we cannot price; 400 checks every 30 s is about 34.6 million runs per month per location.

The feature map

What Checkly does that Tenium does not, and the reverse.

• Playwright browser checks, the core of Checkly. Tenium has no browser engine, so a flow like log in, add to cart and check out cannot be exercised.
• Monitoring as code with a CLI and Terraform provider. Tenium has a REST API with write access on Pro, which can script monitor creation, but there is no declarative project format.
• Check intervals as short as 10 seconds. Our floor is 30 seconds on Pro and Agency.
• Tenium includes HTTP, keyword, JSON, ping, port, DNS, SSL, domain and heartbeat monitors in one flat plan (HTTP, keyword, ping and port on Free, the rest from Starter), checked from 2 regions, with 2 of 2 regions agreeing before an incident opens.
• Client workspaces, white-label status pages and branded PDF reports, none of which are Checkly's business.

Who should look at Tenium

The person who benefits is the one who found Checkly because they needed uptime and ended up with a developer tool. If you manage client sites and your real need is "tell me when it is down, show the client a page, send a report", the code-first workflow is overhead, and a flat price removes the worry about run counts growing with interval changes.

Moving API checks, leaving browser checks

Do this in two passes so nothing is lost.

• Use the Checkly CLI or API to export your API checks as JSON or CSV. In Tenium open Import in the sidebar and import the list: URL, name and interval are read where the file has them and you see a preview before anything is created. Assertions (status code, body text, JSON path) are not converted, so re-create the ones that matter as keyword or JSON checks.
• Browser checks cannot be converted. Decide per check: keep it in Checkly, or approximate it with a keyword assertion on the page that must load.
• Alert channels are not imported. Add your contacts again by hand; a Checkly webhook to Telegram, for example, can become a native Telegram contact from Starter and above.
• Remove infrastructure-as-code definitions only after you stop deploying them, otherwise your pipeline will recreate what you deleted.

When you should not switch

If end-to-end flows are the reason you monitor, if checks are reviewed in pull requests, or if you want the same Playwright test to gate deployments, stay. Tenium would give you less, not just a different shape. A common compromise is to keep Checkly for the product itself and use Tenium only for client websites.