As APIs play a crucial role in connecting modern cloud applications, monitoring their availability and performance is a must if you want to provide a top-notch experience. A good API monitoring tool will help you build reliable APIs by identifying and resolving the issues before they reach your users.
If you’re interested in such a solution, look no further. In this article, we reviewed some of the best API monitoring tools and services available today, both open source and commercial. From strengths and weaknesses to pricing, we’re going to dive into all the nooks and crannies to help you find the right fit for your use case.
Let’s get started!
What Is API Monitoring?
API monitoring is the process of continuously tracking and analyzing the performance and behavior of APIs in real-time. This involves measuring various metrics such as response time, error rates, and traffic volume to ensure that APIs are working as expected. The primary goal of API monitoring is to detect and resolve issues before they impact the end-users, ensuring optimal API performance, reliability, and availability.
In short, API monitoring is an essential practice for any organization that relies on APIs to deliver their services. By monitoring APIs, businesses can ensure that their APIs are working efficiently and providing a seamless user experience while avoiding costly downtimes and service disruptions.
Best API Monitoring Tools
1. Sematext
Sematext Synthetics offers powerful synthetic monitoring tools with API monitoring capabilities that enable you to track key API metrics to help improve the performance, functionality, and availability of your APIs. It features an advanced API monitoring notification system that you can customize to work on several different conditions based on errors and metrics. This allows you more granular control over the alerts you get by having Sematext do double or triple checks before sending a notification. Basically, it eliminates false positives (alerts that get fired even though the website works just fine) in the process. As an added bonus, you can schedule your alerts to only be sent at given hours throughout the day.
Sematext’s API monitoring service is part of Synthetics, a suite of tools designed to enhance user experiences by simulating interactions with websites or applications. This synthetic monitoring approach allows Sematext to identify critical API performance metrics, trigger alerts in case of issues, and enable API benchmarking against competitors.
Sematext offers comprehensive API monitoring capabilities, going beyond traditional web performance metrics. Using the HTTP monitor, you can gather in-depth performance data based on scripted API interactions. This means you can assess more than just response times; you can delve into detailed API operations like authentication, data retrieval, and transaction execution. In addition, Sematext allows you to monitor APIs from both public and private locations, including behind your firewall. You can also keep tabs on the status of your SSL Certificates. All API monitoring incidents can be conveniently displayed on a status page you create through Synthetics -> Status pages. This ensures that you have a clear and accessible overview of the API’s health and performance, making it easier to respond to any issues promptly.
There are three options for the pricing plans, the Standard and Pro packages that cost $29 and $99 a month with a number of monitors included in each plan, and the option of choosing a Pay-as-you-Go package where you pay a flat fee for each monitor and start at just $2 a month.
Watch the video below to learn more about how Sematext Synthetics can help with API monitoring.
Synthetic Monitoring With Sematext | Release and Features | The Best Website Monitoring Solution
2. Prometheus
Amongst the most recognized open source monitoring solutions for APIs and web services in cloud applications, Prometheus is best for mission-critical applications due to its inherent simplicity.
Prometheus provides extensive documentation with detailed instructions on how the tool works, how to set it up, and use it to get the most out of it. It’s worth noting that the official Prometheus website has a blog dedicated to exploring use cases, tips, tricks, and features writers all over the world using Prometheus in their day-to-day operations.
Due to how it works, Prometheus lacks in the data analysis department you’d otherwise find in an out-of-the-box API monitoring tool. You can only rely on an append-only file per metric, and data is stored on the local disk. If you do end up using Prometheus, we recommend looking into a remote storage option for long-term retention and analysis.
3. Graphite
Graphite is a push-based open source monitoring system that allows you to gather metrics from modern APIs by having the application push the data into Graphite’s Carbon component, which is later stored in a database.
One thing that sets Graphite apart from the rest of the open-source is the ease with which it gets installed and how users can just pick it up and start using it thanks to Synthesize, an automated installation and configuration script for the Graphite stack.
An interesting feature of Graphite is the ability to store arbitrary events that should be related to time-series metrics. In particular, application or infrastructure deployments can be added and tracked within Graphite. This allows developers to find the issue faster by having more context about the event and the anomaly that led to the unexpected behavior.
4. Uptrends
Uptrends’ API monitoring product uses an advanced multi-step solution to check APIs for performance, function, and uptime. It relies on a solid alerting system that will trigger a message every time something breaks.
Uptrends can monitor your API from 209 locations scattered across the world and test your app and web services behind your Firewall using Private checkpoints. These private checkpoints can be virtual machines or physical servers you have on-premise and are used to monitor your intranet, web applications, and APIs using Uptrends checkpoint software.
Their multi-step monitoring platform lets you set up powerful testing scenarios with virtually no need for programming skills. It’s easy to configure, and you get instant alerting and custom metrics.
While they have five different pricing plans, they only offer API monitoring with their advanced website monitoring plans that start at $27 for Business and $65 for Enterprise.
See Sematext vs. Uptrends to see how we stack up.
5. AppDynamics
A powerful API monitor that is currently part of the Cisco product suite. AppDynamics offers real-time data visualization in a simple to comprehend and concise way allowing you to avoid user-impacting experiences with out-of-the-box monitoring solutions.
With AppDynamics, you can stay confident that your app or web service is ready and able to serve users at any point in time by measuring your entire workflows, including data and user actions, through Selenium-based tests.
You’ll be able to measure and track end-user experience as perceived by your customers, not some proxy metric, with full resource waterfalls and page performance load times from the browser timing and navigation APIs.
AppDynamics has a 15-day trial, and when you’re ready to commit pricing, it starts at $3300/year which is by far the most expensive offer in this list.
Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs AppDynamics.
6. Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs (formerly API Fortress) is a leading provider of cloud-based API monitoring solutions. It enables you to create and run tests for RESTful APIs, SOAP APIs, and other web services to ensure optimal performance and prevent issues before they impact users. Features include custom scripting, data-driven testing, powerful reporting, and integrations with popular DevOps tools.
Pricing for Sauce Labs API monitoring starts at $50/month for the Starter plan, which includes up to 25,000 monthly credits. A free plan is also available with 2,000 included credits per week. Higher-tier plans including 200,000 credits cost $400 per month.
7. Runscope
Runscope is a no thrills API monitoring solution that works by preventing slow or broken APIs from affecting your apps or web services. It will schedule tests that run from any of the 16 locations worldwide and identify any issues within your system and send an alert immediately.
It has four simple pricing plans starting at $79 and features integrations with Slack, AlertOps, PagerDuty, and many more. You can schedule up to 1-minute tests and up to 250,000 requests. For the Small package, you can invite up to 5 team members.
Before you pick a plan, you can choose to test all Runscope features for 14 days without having to add a credit card to your account.
8. Speedcurve
Unlike some of the other tools I’ve discussed in this article, Speedcurve focuses on API monitoring and real user monitoring. It will help you measure when your most important content renders, correlate web performance with user experience, and you can even benchmark your competitors.
Speedcurve will provide information on your ads’ effects and third parties’ APIs on your website’s performance. It enables you to compare real user and synthetic monitoring data allowing you to better understand and debug web performance at a page level.
Plans start at $12/month for the Starter plan, which comes with 1K Synthetic checks per month. The Large plan costs $1,680/month and includes 50K synthetic checks per month. Before picking any of their services, you can use their free trial for 30 days.
9. UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot is a simple API monitoring tool that works great, especially for small businesses. It provides website monitoring, SSL certificate monitoring, and cron job monitoring. This solution features a custom HTTP request monitoring system that allows you to check on your third-party APIs and make sure they all work as they are supposed to.
UptimeRobot has three plans, a free plan that allows you to run 5-minute interval checks on 50 monitors, a Pro plan that’s customizable based on your needs, and features SMS and voice alerts. A final third plan for Enterprise provides a custom number of monitors and SMS alerts with high priority support.
The pricing plans start at $7 per month and go all the way up to $54/month, the main difference being the number of monitors and alerts you get. They also have a free tier that will allow you to monitor 50 APIs at 5 minute intervals.
Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs UptimeRobot.
10. Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is a powerful and versatile monitoring service that provides a wide range of monitoring capabilities for AWS resources. With its API monitoring feature, CloudWatch allows users to gain deep insights into the performance and health of their APIs, making it an essential tool for modern application development and operations.
One of the key features of CloudWatch API monitoring is its flexible pricing model. CloudWatch follows a pay-as-you-go approach, which means that users only pay for the resources they actually use, without any upfront costs or long-term commitments. This makes it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes, as they can start small and scale up as their monitoring requirements grow.
CloudWatch has a free tier with 10 custom metrics and 10 alarms, and beyond the free tier, prices start at $0.30 per custom metric per month, $0.10 per alarm per month, and $0.01 per custom event.
11. Datadog
Datadog, a leading observability platform, provides a comprehensive solution for API monitoring that provides deep visibility into the performance, availability, and reliability of your APIs. You can proactively monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize APIs to ensure smooth operations and deliver high-quality digital experiences to your users.
Advanced alerting capabilities enable you to set up proactive alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. Users can define alert rules based on metrics collected from their APIs, and receive notifications via various channels, such as email, SMS, Slack, PagerDuty, and more, when alerts are triggered. This allows you to quickly detect and respond to any potential issues with your APIs, ensuring timely resolution and minimizing downtime.
Datadog’s paid plans start at $5/month for 10K API tests per month. Custom pricing is available for larger organizations or higher usage needs.
Want to read a more detailed review of this option? Check out our guide to Datadog alternatives or similarly, see how Sematext compares to Datadog in more areas than API monitoring.
12. Checkly
While still being considered a new player to the market, Checkly provides the tools that support the building of modern systems with a focus on JavaScript-based tech stacks. Among the features that Checkly provides, one of their more popular ones is the API monitors that run monitors to check the correctness and performance of your APIs.
Checkly records the response for your requests, checks the payload, response codes, headers, and authentication. It allows you to run your monitors from 20 different locations globally, which is less than what we usually get with the other vendors on the list.
Every time Checkly runs into an error or your API performance dips, you’ll get an error containing the right information you need in order to debug the issue. You can choose from a number of different alerting mediums from Slack, SMS, email, PagerDuty, and more.
Pricing is relatively simple as you are given two options. A Free plan that gets you 10K API checks/mo, a team plan that costs $30 and a custom plan option. Every plan starts with a free 14-day trial.
13. Assertible
Assertible offers a flexible and customizable API testing and monitoring platform that empowers you in ensuring the reliability and performance of your APIs. With features such as scheduled tests, email notifications, integrations, reporting, historical data retention, and customizable testing capabilities, Assertible provides a comprehensive solution for effectively monitoring and testing APIs.
You can configure scheduled tests to run at specific intervals, receive email notifications for alerts, and access historical data for trend analysis. Additionally, Assertible’s API testing capabilities allows you to create and execute tests for various aspects of API behavior, ensuring comprehensive testing coverage.
There is a free tier with limited features, the Standard plan costs $25/month for up to 5,000 tests per service each month.
14. Postman
Postman offers a powerful API monitoring tool as part of its API development and testing solution. Postman will empower you to effectively monitor API performances with advanced capabilities, strong testing features, complete reporting, and historical data retention. Its flexible pricing plans can also help you to use the tool to its fullest extent for the lowest expenses. Additionally, you can create and configure monitors, set up alerts and notifications, and generate customizable reports to gain deep insights into API performance trends.
Postman’s solution is highly customizable, allowing you to tailor the monitoring approach to your specific needs. With its intuitive interface, integrations with popular tools, and range of features, Postman provides a robust solution for ensuring the reliability and availability of your APIs and delivering exceptional digital experiences to your users.
Postman’s paid plans start at $12/month and include features like 10x calls to Postman API, 10 integrations, collection recovery for 30 days and team collaboration features. Custom pricing is available for larger teams or enterprise-level needs.
API Monitoring Tools Comparison Table
| Tool | Monitoring features | Alerting and notifications | Dashboard and visualization | Integration library | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sematext | Comprehensive monitoring and logging for APIs, applications, and infrastructure | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Interactive dashboards with pre-built widgets and customizable visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | No 14-day free trial available |
| Prometheus | Advanced monitoring and alerting for infrastructure and applications | Flexible alerting and notifications based on metrics and events | Flexible visualization and dashboarding options | Rich ecosystem of exporters, integrations, and plugins | Yes |
| Graphite | Metrics collection and monitoring for applications and systems | Alerting based on metrics and events | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools | Yes |
| Uptrends | Uptime monitoring for APIs and websites | Alerting via email, SMS, and integrations with popular messaging platforms | Simple and intuitive dashboard for monitoring API uptime and response times | Webhooks, integrations with popular messaging platforms, and API for custom integrations | No 30-day free trial available |
| AppDynamics | Real-time monitoring and analytics for application performance | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | No 15-day free trial available |
| Sauce Labs | Real-time monitoring and testing of APIs and web applications | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | Yes |
| Runscope | Automated testing of APIs with pre-built checks and custom scripts | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | No 14-day free trial available |
| Speedcurve | Real-time monitoring and alerting for web performance | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Webhooks, integrations with popular messaging platforms, and API for custom integrations | No 30-day free trial available |
| UptimeRobot | Uptime monitoring for APIs and websites | Alerting via email, SMS, and integrations with popular messaging platforms | Simple and intuitive dashboard for monitoring API uptime and response times | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | Yes |
| Amazon CloudWatch | Monitoring and alerting for AWS resources and applications | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with AWS services and applications | Yes |
| Datadog | Monitoring and alerting for logs, metrics, and traces | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | No 14-day free trial available |
| Checkly | Synthetic API monitoring with pre-built checks and custom scripts | Alerting based on metrics and events | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | Yes |
| Assertible | Automated API testing with pre-built checks and custom script | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visual | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | Yes |
| Postman | API testing, monitoring, and documentation | Customizable alerting rules and notifications via various channels | Customizable dashboards and visualizations | Integrations with popular monitoring and logging tools, chat platforms, and notification systems | Yes |
What Is the Right API Monitoring Solution for You?
With that, we end our list with the top API monitoring tools and services. We included options for everyone, from DevOps to engineers, product managers, or business owners, whether they need a basic service or have more complex needs. You can learn how to choose the right one for you from our guide on API monitoring.
Whatever your case, Sematext Synthetics can definitely help. Try it out yourself! There’s a free 14-day trial available for you to test-drive it.
Another tip from our team is to look beyond APIs and add synthetic and real user monitoring to your website monitoring strategy. We explained the benefits of using them together in about RUM vs. Synthetic Monitoring. And we compiled a list with the top website monitoring tools that feature the best of both worlds to help you get started in your journey to lightning-quick performance.