SolidPing vs Checkmate
Checkmate, by Bluewave Labs, is one of the closest things to a peer SolidPing has: AGPL-3.0, self-hosted, ~10,000 stars, with status pages, incident tracking, maintenance windows and a broad notification set. On paper the overlap is large.
Both sides here are self-hosted. Checkmate has no first-party hosted service, so the subject is SolidPing self-hosted — free, AGPL-3.0, no plan and no caps. Our hosted version is described below.
The two grew out of different problems. Checkmate came from server and infrastructure monitoring — it has a hardware agent and Lighthouse page-speed scoring. SolidPing came from protocol-deep, multi-region service monitoring. Which one fits depends on whether the thing you worry about is a machine or a service.
If we've gotten a detail about Checkmate wrong, please open an issue — we want this accurate.
At a glance
| SolidPing (self-hosted) | Checkmate | |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Stars | zEr0 (help us grow) | ~10,000 |
| Cost | Free — unlimited monitors, check rate, workers and status-page domains; 30 members by default | Free — unlimited |
| Runtime | Single Go binary, dashboard embedded | Node.js backend + React frontend |
| Database | SQLite or PostgreSQL | MongoDB |
| Check types | 40 | ~12 |
| Hardware metrics (CPU/RAM/disk) | No dedicated agent | Yes — the Capture agent (Linux, Windows, macOS, RPi) |
| Page-speed / Lighthouse scores | No | Yes |
| Multi-region probing | First-party workers you deploy and control | Via the public GlobalPing network — HTTP, ping, TCP only |
| Private networks | Deported agents, outbound-only, any check type, server cannot decrypt credentials | Capture agent reports hardware metrics outbound |
| Heartbeat / cron checks | Yes | Not available |
| On-call & escalation | Rotation schedules, overrides, iCal, multi-step escalation | Not available |
| Status pages | Public, sections, custom domains, subscribers | Yes, themed |
| Automation | Full OpenAPI spec, generated clients, sp CLI, MCP server | REST API |
| Team roles | Yes | Yes — Admin / Editor / Viewer |
| UI languages | English, French, German, Spanish | 16 languages |
Notification channels are near-parity. Both cover Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, Matrix, ntfy, Pushover, Twilio SMS, PagerDuty, email and webhooks. SolidPing adds Google Chat, Mattermost, Zulip, Gotify, web push and Twilio voice, plus interactive acknowledge-and-comment from Slack and Telegram. Checkmate adds Rocket.Chat. On both tools the Twilio channels run on credentials you supply.
Where SolidPing is the stronger choice
Protocol depth. ~12 monitor types against 40. Checkmate covers HTTP, ping, TCP/port, DNS, gRPC, WebSocket, SSL, Docker, page speed, game servers, JSON query and hardware. SolidPing adds the whole data layer — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, Redis, MongoDB, ClickHouse — plus mail (SMTP, IMAP, POP3 and a passive email-reception check), messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ, MQTT, SIP), SSH/RDP/FTP/SFTP, SNMP, Kubernetes, NTP, DNSBL, domain expiry, headless browser and custom JavaScript.
Multi-region probing you control. Checkmate reaches multiple regions through GlobalPing, a public probe network, and only for HTTP, ping and TCP. SolidPing's workers are yours: you choose where they run, they cover every check type, and for private regions the credentials are sealed so the control plane cannot read them.
Heartbeat and cron monitoring. Checkmate does not do push checks. If you need to know that a nightly job did not run, that is a gap.
On-call. No rotations or escalation in Checkmate.
A single binary and a relational database. One Go binary against a Node.js backend, a React frontend and MongoDB. Fewer moving parts to operate and back up.
Where Checkmate is the stronger choice
Real server metrics. The Capture agent reports CPU, memory and disk from Linux,
Windows, macOS and Raspberry Pi. SolidPing has no equivalent — the closest is a
prometheus check pointed at node_exporter, which is not the same product experience.
If "is the disk filling up?" is your question, Checkmate answers it and we do not.
Page-speed and Lighthouse scores. Our browser check loads a page and asserts on it; it does not score it. Checkmate gives you the scores.
16 UI languages against our four. For a team that is not English-first, that can decide it outright.
A larger community today, with 90+ contributors.
The other model, on both sides
Checkmate has no first-party hosted service — you run it, or you do not use it.
SolidPing has one, on the same binary. SolidPing Cloud is free for 100 monitors and 10 checks a minute, then €5 / €15 / €45, with six shared probe regions. Going hosted re-attaches the plan caps and drops SMS, voice and WhatsApp, which need your own Twilio account and therefore only work self-hosted. For a homelab or a team that chose Checkmate because it self-hosts, the self-hosted SolidPing build in the table above is the like-for-like option; the hosted plan is there for the day nobody wants to patch it.
Which should you pick?
Choose Checkmate if your monitoring question is largely about machines — server health, disk and memory, page-speed scores — and HTTP-level checks cover the services on top.
Choose SolidPing if the question is about services: databases, queues, mail, private networks, checks from several regions, and someone on call when one of them breaks. Plenty of teams could reasonably run both.