The 10 Best Runscope Alternatives in 2024 (3 Open-source Options)

Runscope is a cloud-based API monitoring tool that allows you to test and monitor your APIs from locations around the world. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s certainly not for everyone.

If you’re here, you’re most likely looking for a Runscope alternative, as many others are. Trying to find the right fit for you and your team can be a little overwhelming, but this list is designed to help make the transition a little easier.

Although Runscope is a great tool for many, it doesn’t always meet everyone’s expectations. It doesn’t have many reviews online. For a tool that was created back in 2013, one would expect a little more traction online. This leads us all to believe that the tool is relatively unused for one reason or another.

Regardless, you’re here now to find some alternatives to Runscope, so that’s exactly what we’re going to go over. There are several good options out there, but before we jump into those, let’s understand Runscope.

Runscope Key Features

As far as API monitoring and testing goes, there really aren’t too many things to complain about with Runscope. You get all the essentials:

• Automatic test generation
• Webhook testing
• API debugging
• Integrations with Slack, PagerDuty, etc.

What draws some people to Runscope is the ease of use. The tool itself offers a large variety of monitoring and testing options including real-time monitoring, automation, and integrations with many of the popular tools used today.

On the other hand, Runscope is known for being quite complex to set up and configure. When you pair that with the fact that it’s not as intuitive as some of the other tools on this list (which is concerning for a decade-old tool), it becomes a barrier for developers.

On top of all of this, Runscope isn’t exactly cheap. But, we’ll dedicate the next section to pricing.

Runscope Pricing

As a tool that isn’t exactly top-tier, you would expect Runscope to have a solid offer with lots of value. Instead, Runscope charges based on the number of requests rather than the number of monitors.

At the very bottom of the barrel, users can get 250,000 requests for $79/month. Moving up, the next plan offers 1,000,000 requests for $199/month. Finally, the “Large” plan offers 5,000,000 requests for $599/month.

They also offer an Enterprise plan that is tailored to each user, but they don’t offer any starting prices online. It’s also worth noting that if you exceed the limitations of your plan, you will be charged per 1,000 extra requests.

The 10 Best Runscope Alternatives in 2024

1. Better Stack

Better Stack offers API monitoring as part of its comprehensive Uptime Monitoring and Incident Management solution.

It provides a robust monitoring solution covering various aspects of synthetic monitoring, including HTTPS keyword checks, Heartbeat, SSL, Ping, TLD, TCP/UDP, POP3/IMAP/SMTP, and DNS server monitoring. With checks as frequent as every 30 seconds from multiple locations, false alerts are minimized, and geo-specific checks help identify location-related issues.

Better Stack seamlessly integrates with popular third-party tools and platforms like Heroku, Datadog, New Relic, Grafana On-Call, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, AWS CloudWatch, and Google Cloud.

Incidents are thoroughly documented, including screenshots and error logs, along with a detailed incident timeline and post-mortem analysis. Advanced incident escalation rules and on-call scheduling ensure timely response and resolution. Additionally, custom status pages can be created with user-friendly designs, allowing users to subscribe for updates in case of downtime.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Incident management
• Uptime monitoring
• Log management

➕Pros

• 30-second check frequency
• Built-in Status Pages
• On-call scheduling
• Dozens of integrations

➖Cons

• Not a full-stack observability solution

💲Pricing

Better Stack Uptime offers a free basic monitoring and incident management package.

For premium features, the Logs package starts at only $25 per month, providing a 30GB allowance and 15 days of retention.

Similarly, the Uptime premium packages begin at just $25 per month and include 50 monitors, 5 status pages, and built-in incident management.

Want to see more? You can check out our full range of packages by visiting the pricing page.

2. Assertible

Assertible is a comprehensive API monitoring tool that offers a simple way to keep tabs on your API. They substantiate this claim by offering custom API tests based on industry-standard patterns for data validation, functional test cases, and synthetic monitoring.

Assertible's API testing offers the ability to stay updated seamlessly, requiring no manual intervention from the user. As specifications evolve, users can effortlessly incorporate updated responses, parameters, and headers, ensuring synchronization across all API tests with just a click.

Assertible provides Collaborative API monitoring, enabling teams to collectively engage in diagnostics. Remarkably, all this is achievable without any coding, thanks to their built-in assertions and single-click monitoring functionality.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring

➕Pros

• Multi-environment testing
• Powerful HTTP assertions
• Post-deploy smoke tests

➖Cons

• No reviews online

💲Pricing

You can start using Assertible for free, which includes 10 tests for 2 services and retention of up to 1000 test results.

Their first paid plan, Standard, allows monitoring of 25 services with 500 tests per service and retention of up to 5,000 test results, all for $25 per month.

For higher-tier plans like Startup and Business, you can monitor up to 50 web services with 1000 tests per service, retention of up to 10,000 results, and accommodate up to 20 team members.

3. Datadog

With Datadog's Proactive API monitoring, automating site availability monitoring becomes effortless, leading to reduced mean time to pinpoint root causes. Datadog facilitates validation across all system layers, from HTTP to DNS, from multiple geolocations. You can tailor monitoring to focus on crucial business areas by creating custom locations.

Datadog empowers users to create end-to-end tests effortlessly using a codeless web recorder. This allows for real-time API testing, mimicking user interactions accurately. Moreover, comprehensive test components such as screenshots, page performance data, backend traces, errors, and other resources offer clear insights into root causes.

Datadog enables comparison of application performance from both internal and external perspectives. Emphasizing efficient time management, Datadog provides tools to maintain and test automation effectively. With its wide range of monitoring solutions, users can achieve Full Stack Visibility and address any issues promptly.

However, it's essential to note that Datadog's pricing is a common complaint on G2, with users expressing that it's expensive and not tailored for small-to-medium-sized businesses. We'll delve into the pricing further shortly.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Log management

➕Pros

• Full-stack observability
• 20+ individual solutions
• Every integration you can think of

➖Cons

• Very expensive at any scale

💲Pricing

Datadog offers a wide array of solutions, sosummarizing its pricing can be tricky. However, here are some key tools and associated costs to provide a little context into how expensive they can be:

• Infrastructure monitoring begins at $15 per host per month.
• Log management starts at $0.10 per ingested GB and $1.70 per million log events per month.
• Synthetic monitoring starts at $5 per 10,000 API runs and $12 per 1,000 browser runs.
• Real user monitoring (RUM) starts at $1.50 per 1,000 sessions per month.
• Application Performance Monitoring (APM) begins at $31 per host per month.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) starts at $5 per million analyzed events.

4. Sematext Synthetics

Sematext provides an in-depth solution for monitoring both APIs and websites. Designed to meet modern monitoring requirements, including hybrid environments, cloud, and on-premise servers, users can monitor a wide range of metrics with Sematext Synthetics.

Synthetics offers Uptime and API monitoring from various locations, including private networks and behind firewalls. It covers all layers, including DNS, TCP, SSL, and HTTP, and allows for customizable API monitoring. Additionally, Synthetics monitors SSL certificates, website performance, and provides end-to-end visibility.

With its single-pane approach, Sematext assists users in correlating data from across infrastructure metrics, application logs, events, real-user data, and synthetic performance metrics. This comprehensive approach enables users to gain deeper insights into their systems and applications.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Log management

➕Pros

• Full-stack monitoring
• Price-per-monitor option
• Helpful support
• Out-of-the-box dashboards

➖Cons

• Log management is expensive
• User reviews indicate difficulties with user management
• Dashboard configurations can be a bit overwhelming

💲Pricing

Sematext offers both a pay-as-you-go pricing model and standard subscription packages for Synthetics.

For the pay-as-you-go option, Synthetics starts at $2 per monitor and $7 per Browser monitor.

Alternatively, the Standard package for Synthetics starts at $29 per month. This package includes a maximum of 40 HTTP monitors and 5 Browser monitors, with a data retention period of 30 days.

5. Postman

Postman offers a versatile approach to API testing, providing users with extensive freedom. Their platform supports monitoring of a wide array of APIs, covering REST, SOAP, GraphQL, OpenAPI, RAML, Swagger, JSON, cURL, and WADL.

Postman leverages Newman, a command-line Collection Runner, allowing users to execute and test Postman Collections directly from the command line. Additionally, it enables automation of API testing and customization of operation-specific tests.

With an array of comprehensive tools, Postman facilitates API design, testing, documentation, mocking, and sharing. This ecosystem fosters collaboration among developers, promoting the creation of high-quality APIs through shared knowledge and resources.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• API repository

➕Pros

• Very user-focused UI
• Fairly large community of users
• Great support for REST and SOAP APIs

➖Cons

• Difficult learning curve
• Limited documentation
• Limited design frameworks
• Requires heavy disk usage

💲Pricing

Postman provides a free tier with a limit of 1000 calls to Postman API, Mock server calls, and monitoring API calls.

Their first paid subscription, the Basic package, starts at $14 per month, offering 10 integrations and 10,000 calls to Postman API, Mock server calls, and monitoring API calls.

For $29 per month, you can upgrade to the Professional plan, which includes 100,000 calls to Postman API, mock server calls, and monitoring API calls, along with access to 50 integrations.

Postman also offers an Enterprise plan, completely customizable to suit your needs. This plan grants full access to all 100 integrations and provides access to a variety of API development assets.

6. Dynatrace

Dynatrace offers a full-stack observability solution with various capabilities, including synthetics. While it's primarily geared towards enterprise usage, it excels in API monitoring as well.

With Dynatrace, users can detect and resolve issues automatically before they impact end users. Their extensive application availability and performance testing tools help users identify the root cause of incidents within their applications, enabling quick fixes and optimizations.

Dynatrace boasts thousands of test locations worldwide. This enables continuous performance checks on APIs, ensuring proactive maintenance and functionality.

Be aware, though, that like Datadog, Dynatrace is known for being expensive. In small doses, the numbers are manageable, but it’s not until you start doing the math that the numbers soar. More on that in the pricing section below.

🌟Key features

• Synthetic monitoring
• API monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Log management and analytics

➕Pros

• Incredibly feature-rich
• Utilizes AI
• Prices based on the data that you use
• Powerful alerting capabilities

➖Cons

• User reviews report extreme expenses at scale
• User reviews report difficulties with the debugging tool
• User reviews report difficulties with data collection

💲Pricing

As mentioned earlier, Dynatrace's pricing is determined by data usage, particularly for synthetic requests. Instead of charging per monitor for synthetics, users are billed based on the number of synthetic requests.

The cost per request is $0.001, which may seem small initially. However, when broken down, it can become relatively expensive at scale. For instance, if you run tests at 2-minute intervals from a single location, you'll end up with 30 requests per hour. Multiplying that by 24 hours in a day equals 720 requests daily. Then, multiplying that by the average number of days in a month, 30, results in 21,600 requests per month.

Calculating this, 21,600 * 0.001, you end up with $21.6 per monitor. The shorter your intervals, the more expensive each monitor becomes.

7. Checkly

Checkly offers tools tailored for modern systems built on JavaScript-based tech stacks. Among its list of handy capabilities, Checkly offers API monitoring that’s nothing to shake a stick at.

Despite offering monitors from 20 global locations, which is fewer compared to other vendors, Checkly ensures thorough coverage, while maticulously recording responses for your requests.

Users have the flexibility to choose from various alerting mediums, including Slack, SMS, email, PagerDuty, and more. In the event of errors or API performance issues, Checkly promptly notifies users, providing detailed information for efficient debugging.

Not a big fan of Checkly? Check out some similar tools to Checkly.

🌟Key Features

• API monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real browser monitoring

➕Pros

• User-friendly interface
• Easy to create checks

➖Cons

• Expensive pricing
• User reviews report a lack of documentation
• Very few reviews online

💲Pricing

Checkly offers a free plan, but it comes with restrictions. This plan allows for up to 10,000 API checks and supports only one user.

For those seeking additional features, the Team plan is available starting at $40 per month. With this plan, users can conduct up to 50,000 API checks and collaborate with up to 20 team members.

For users with specific or larger-scale requirements, Checkly provides a customizable plan. To explore this option further, it's recommended to reach out to their sales team for personalized assistance.

8. Dotcom-monitor

Dotcom-monitor's Web API monitoring feature empowers users to track the health and uptime of their APIs, supporting SOAP, REST, JSON, and XML web services. Additionally, Dotcom-monitor provides seamless integration with Postman, enabling users to leverage a collection of integration tests for internal API testing. This integration is facilitated through a shared public link to the Dotcom-Monitor platform.

Despite its simplicity, Dotcom-monitor's API monitoring solution is highly effective. With coverage across 30 global locations, users can configure multi-step API calls to validate complex API sequences. This comprehensive approach ensures robust monitoring capabilities for diverse use cases.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Web application monitoring

➕Pros

• Comprehensive dashboards
• Real-time monitoring
• Multi-location testing
• Load testing

➖Cons

• Expensive
• User reviews mention reporting complexities
• User reviews report occasional difficulties setting up more complex workflows

💲Pricing

Dotcom-Monitor provides Web API monitoring as part of its Web Services package, which starts at $19.95 per month. The pricing varies based on the frequency of checks and tasks, available in either the 5-minute Premium package or the 1-minute Platinum package.

9. Rapid API

RapidAPI testing offers functional API testing and monitoring services, accommodating any API type. It enables users to centralize and oversee global operations from a single platform, enhancing efficiency through seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines.

One of RapidAPI’s best features is its RapidApiHub and Enterprise Hub, offering access to thousands of meticulously curated and tested APIs categorized for various applications. RapidAPI also allows users to create comprehensive functional test flows to thoroughly validate REST, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs.

What sets RapidAPI apart are its impressive statistics. With 4,000,000 active developers utilizing the platform to design, publish, consume, and share APIs, and a repository of over 40,000 APIs available in the HUB, RapidAPI facilitates over 1 trillion API calls each month. These numbers underscore its widespread adoption and significance in the API ecosystem.

🌟Key features

• API testing and monitoring

➕Pros

• Reliable API monitoring capabilities

➖Cons

• Poor documentation and difficult to get help
• User reviews report poor support
• User reviews report some security concerns with using APIs from the API hub

💲Pricing

RapidAPI offers a free plan that includes 2 tests per API, 2000 API calls per month, and email-only notifications. However, for users seeking more comprehensive features, the Business plan is available at a minimum cost of $1999 per month. This plan provides unlimited test calls and a wealth of additional developer assets to enhance API testing capabilities.

10. SauceLabs

APIFortress is a cloud-native platform for monitoring REST and SOAP web services, seamlessly integrated into Saucelabs. Users can create and modify tests using the IDE Forge or a user-friendly drag-and-drop GUI. Scheduling is made simple with API Fortress' built-in scheduler, enabling users to schedule tests for uptime, functional uptime, and performance monitoring. Tests can be executed in sets, by tag, individually, or collectively.

Functional Uptime monitoring goes beyond a simple HTTP 200 OK response, providing comprehensive insights. Kibana handles metrics visualization, allowing users to gain an overall understanding of their infrastructure state. Additionally, API Fortress automatically generates a real-time status page, offering valuable insights into API performance for users and their teams.

SauceLabs facilitates automated and scalable API testing by enabling connection to an onboard test scheduler or any CI/CD platform. Users can debug within SauceLabs or integrate with notification/event management platforms such as PagerDuty. This seamless integration enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of API testing workflows.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Mobile app testing

➕Pros

• Multiple configuration options for numerous OS combinations
• Helpful Kibana visualization
• Multiple deployment options

➖Cons

• Occasional slow load times and latency
• Lacks some valuable test analytics

💲Pricing

Sauce Labs presents three distinct solutions, each offering various pricing options based on the desired number of parallel tests.

For Live Testing, pricing begins at $39 per month and scales up to $769 per month for increased test volumes.

The Virtual Cloud solution starts at $149 per month and extends up to $3599 per month to accommodate higher test quantities.

Finally, the Real Device Cloud option commences at $199 per month and reaches up to $4799 per month with the inclusion of maximum test allocations.

The 10 Best Runscope Alternatives 2024 Comparison

The 3 Best Open-source Runscope Alternatives

Although there is a wealth of open-source options out there, they all come with a major drawback. Sure, they are flexible, but the cost of maintaining and managing your own server can add up. In some cases, the cost of self hosting can be much greater than the cost of a cloud-based solution.

Nevertheless, if you’re up for the challenge, here are the 3 best open-source options for Runscope alternatives.

1. Prometheus

Prometheus serves as a metric-based solution tailored to monitor the performance, health, and behavior of an organization, including its APIs. It generates alerts based on the real-time metrics it gathers and stores.

Utilizing the functional query language PromQL, Prometheus enables users to select and aggregate time series data in real-time. These results can then be visualized through graphs or tabular data.

One distinctive feature of Prometheus is its ability to allow external systems to consume its HTTP API. This integration enables seamless connectivity with tools such as Better Stack and provides out-of-the-box support from Grafana. Users can even create dashboards in Grafana to showcase metrics collected by Prometheus.

🌟Key features

• Open-source monitoring

➕Pros

• Single web portal
• Easy integration with 3rd party tools
• Large number of visualization tools

➖Cons

• Cost of ownership can be expensive
• PromQL boasts a bit of a learning curve
• User reviews report occasional complications with query

2. Graphite

Graphite is comprised of 3 primary components: Graphite, Carbon, and Whisper. Graphite web facilitates graph rendering, Carbon listens for time series data, and Whisper stores this data.

A drawback of Graphite is its relatively limited user interface. However, it seamlessly integrates with Grafana, offering enhanced visualization capabilities. Notably, Graphite is not a data collection tool per se; applications must be configured to send data to Graphite. Subsequently, Carbon listens for this data and transfers it to Whisper, which stores it as time series data on a filesystem.

Despite its simple architecture, this open-source system collaborates effectively to provide valuable insights into various applications, processes, or services, including APIs.

🌟Key features

• Open-source monitoring

➕Pros

• Simple metric storage and visualization

➖Cons

• Cost of ownership can be expensive
• Apps need to be configured to send data to Graphite
• For decent vizualizations, it needs to be integrated with Grafana

3. Zabbix

Zabbix offers an array of features that extend beyond traditional host monitoring and providing administrators with exceptional flexibility.

Zabbix enables the collection of metrics from a diverse range of sources, including network devices, cloud environments, containers, virtual machines, databases, applications, HTTP(s) endpoints, and more. Alerting functionalities are robust, integrating with platforms such as On-Call, Opsgenie, Pagerduty, Slack, MS Teams, Telegram, and Webhooks.

With Zabbix, users can oversee a multitude of metrics and incidents concerning servers, such as high CPU or memory usage, packet loss rate, or disk space. The platform's preconfigured templates cater to monitoring all popular servers and operating systems, facilitating seamless setup.

Moreover, Zabbix offers a comprehensive suite of educational resources and courses, along with recognized certificates, affirming proficiency in utilizing its capabilities. Despite its lightweight nature, Zabbix provides extensive support across virtually every aspect of infrastructure monitoring.

🌟Key features

• API monitoring
• Server monitoring
• Network monitoring
• Cloud monitoring

➕Pros

• Open-source
• Lightweight
• Offers educational courses

➖Cons

• Cost of ownership can be expensive
• User reviews report a steep learning curve

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for a Runscope alternative, then look no further. This is a comprehensive list of the best of the best in 2024 and beyond.

It’s very important that in addition to this list, you doyour own research and find the tool that suites your exact needs. In many cases, there are free trials you can sign up for, so be sure to utilize them as much as possible before committing to anything.

Article by

Zach McDaniel

With his laptop as a sword and coffee machine as a shield, Zach is a content strategist here at Better Stack. When he's not wordsmithing, he's putting together PCs, working on cars, or scheming about how to own a zoo one day.

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