Comparison
Regresco vs Checkly
These two tools are often grouped together because both use Playwright and both run browser tests in the cloud. They actually solve different problems. Here's the honest read on which fits your team.
The short version
Checkly if you need continuous monitoring with multi-region runs and alerting. Regresco if you need pre-release regression on staging without writing test code.
Many teams run both. We don't think of Checkly as a competitor in the way Cypress or Playwright Cloud might be.
Different problems, same Playwright underneath
Checkly is a synthetic monitoring platform. The buyer is usually devops, SRE, or a senior engineer who owns reliability. The product runs Playwright-based browser checks and API checks against your production endpoints, every few minutes, from multiple regions, with rich alerting wired into PagerDuty and Slack. The configuration philosophy is monitoring-as-code via Terraform and their CLI.
Regresco is a pre-release regression QA platform. The buyer is usually a founder or a tech lead at a small SaaS team without dedicated QA. The product runs flows you define in a UI (or generate from an AI crawl) against your staging URL, on demand or on a daily/weekly schedule, with failure classification and auto-heal. Configuration is point-and-click.
Same browser engine, very different jobs. Picking between them shouldn't be hard once you know which job you have.
The side-by-side
Only the things that actually matter when a small team is picking a tool:
| Regresco | Checkly | |
|---|---|---|
| No-code flow definition | ||
| AI flow generation from site crawl | ||
| Code-first (TypeScript / full Playwright API) | ||
| Import existing Playwright .spec.ts | native | |
| Managed cloud runners | ||
| Continuous monitoring (every-N-minutes) | ||
| Multi-region check execution | ||
| API testing (single requests) | ||
| Multistep API checks with secrets | ||
| Baseline comparison across runs | ||
| Failure classification (regression / broken / flaky) | ||
| Auto-heal broken selectors at runtime | ||
| Per-step screenshots | ||
| Playwright Trace Viewer | ||
| Scheduled runs (daily/weekly) | ||
| CI/CD webhook trigger | ||
| PagerDuty / OpsGenie / Slack alerting | ||
| Monitoring-as-code (Terraform, CLI) | ||
| Permanent free tier | limited |
"Native" means the feature is the product's primary use case. "Limited" means a free tier exists but is significantly capped relative to ours.
What you'll pay
Regresco
Flat monthly price. Compute included.
- Free: $0 for 5 runs a month, 1 project
- Pro: $49/month for 200 runs, 20 projects
- Business: $149/month for 1000 runs, 100 projects, priority queue
Every feature works on every tier. Only the limits and queue priority change.
Checkly
Tiered, scales with check runs and monitor count.
- Free tier exists, capped on monitors and runs
- Paid plans start higher than our Pro tier and scale up
- Enterprise tier with SAML, audit logs, custom regions
Check checklyhq.com/pricing for current per-tier numbers.
When Checkly is the right call
Pick Checkly if any of these describe you:
- You need continuous synthetic monitoring of production, not just regression on staging
- You require multi-region execution to catch geo-specific issues (Europe vs US vs APAC)
- Your on-call rotation depends on PagerDuty or OpsGenie integrations with rich alert context
- Your team writes infrastructure as code and wants monitoring config in the same place (Terraform, CLI)
- API monitoring with multistep checks, secrets, and response assertions is part of your stack
- The buyer is devops or SRE, not engineering management
When Regresco is the right call
Pick Regresco if any of these describe you:
- Your scope is pre-release regression QA on staging, not always-on production monitoring
- You don't have a dedicated QA engineer and don't want to staff one
- You want AI to draft the first version of your flows from a crawl of your real site
- Flat predictable pricing matters more than the breadth of monitoring features
- You'd benefit from runtime auto-heal and typed failure classification (regression vs broken vs flaky)
- The buyer is a founder, tech lead, or engineering manager looking to cut manual QA
Where we fall short
Checkly has built a serious product over five-plus years. Where they beat us:
We're not a monitoring tool.
Our scheduled runs go up to daily and weekly. Checkly runs checks every minute from multiple regions and alerts the right person when something breaks. If you need that, we don't replace it.
No multi-region execution.
Regresco runs in a single region. Checkly runs from a dozen-plus AWS regions, which matters if you have geo-specific routing, CDN behavior that varies by location, or compliance requirements that need verification from specific regions.
Alerting depth.
We send email notifications today and have Slack/Teams notifications planned. Checkly has deep integrations with PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Slack, MS Teams, Discord, custom webhooks, and email, with alert escalation and on-call routing logic built in.
Code-first power.
If your team prefers writing TypeScript and managing tests in your repo with Playwright's full API, Checkly is built for that workflow. Regresco's five step types (navigate, click, fill, assert, API) cover most user flows but aren't a substitute for code-level control.
Trace Viewer.
Checkly integrates Playwright's Trace Viewer for post-mortem debugging. Timeline scrubbing, network panel, DOM snapshots. We have per-step screenshots and console capture, which covers most failures, but it isn't Trace Viewer.
Questions we get a lot
Is Regresco a Checkly alternative?
Partially. Both run browser tests in the cloud and both use Playwright under the hood. The use cases are different: Checkly is built for continuous synthetic monitoring (run a check every 5 minutes from multiple regions, alert when it breaks). Regresco is built for pre-release regression on staging. If you need both, many teams run both. They aren't really substitutes.
Can I use Checkly for pre-release regression?
Yes, technically. You'd write Playwright tests, schedule them to run on every deploy, and watch the dashboard. It works. It's just overkill and overpriced for that scope alone, since you're paying for monitoring infrastructure (multi-region runners, alerting integrations, monitoring-as-code) you don't need for a once-per-release regression sweep.
Can I use Regresco for production monitoring?
Not really. Our scheduled runs go up to daily/weekly, not every-N-minutes. There's no multi-region execution, no PagerDuty integration, no on-call routing. If you need to know within 60 seconds that checkout is broken in production, use Checkly or Better Stack. Regresco's job is to catch the regression before it ships.
What does Regresco do that Checkly doesn't?
AI flow generation from a site crawl, no-code authoring for non-engineers, failure classification (regression vs broken locator vs flaky from your run history), runtime auto-heal for broken selectors, baseline comparison against the previous run, and a permanent free tier. Checkly is code-first by design and built for a different buyer.
What does Checkly do better than Regresco?
A lot of things, in their lane. Continuous monitoring with multi-region execution, deep alerting (PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Slack with rich context), monitoring-as-code via Terraform and their CLI, full Playwright API in TypeScript, multistep API checks with secrets and response assertions, and a mature product in market since 2018. If you're a devops or SRE team, Checkly is built for you.
What's the pricing difference?
Regresco is flat: $0 free, $49/month Pro, $149/month Business. Checkly's paid plans scale by check runs and monitor counts and start higher than our Pro tier. Their free tier exists but is significantly more capped. Both vendors update pricing, so check checklyhq.com/pricing for the current numbers.
Other comparisons
- Regresco vs Cypress — code-first framework vs managed regression service
- Regresco vs Playwright Cloud — managed Playwright execution vs managed regression suite
- Regresco vs Ghost Inspector — record-and-play vs AI flow generation
Try it on your staging URL
Free plan is 5 runs a month. No credit card. Point it at your staging URL and you'll see a regression pass in under 10 minutes. If it fits your team, upgrade. If it doesn't, no hard feelings.