Checkmk vs Zabbix Pricing for 100 to 1,000 Hosts
October 2026 · UptimeHub
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Zabbix is the cheaper of the two at every size both vendors publish. Hosted, Zabbix Cloud costs $1,224 a year for 100 hosts checked every minute against $8,526 for Checkmk Cloud, and Checkmk only becomes the cheaper cloud once each host sends 150 to 500 values a minute. Self-hosted, both have a free edition; with vendor support, Checkmk Pro beats Zabbix plus a Silver subscription only at 100 hosts, $3,300 against $3,900 a year.
That is the price answer. It is not the whole buying decision, because the two products count different things and bundle different amounts of help. Checkmk sells services, Zabbix Cloud sells a data rate, and the support you get on each side is not the same. Every figure below is a US dollar list price read from checkmk.com and zabbix.com, and every total is arithmetic you can redo.
How much does Checkmk cost?
Checkmk Community is free and open source. The paid self-hosted editions are billed annually in five host bands, 100, 200, 400, 600 and 1,000 hosts, which Checkmk counts as 3,000 to 30,000 services at 30 services a host. Checkmk Pro costs $3,300 a year at 100 hosts and $16,500 at 1,000, with 8x5 support included. Ultimate costs $4,800 to $24,000 with 10x5 support. Checkmk Cloud, the hosted edition, starts at $2,880 a year for 1,000 services. Every band, the support upgrade and a calculator are on our Checkmk pricing page.
How much does Zabbix cost?
The Zabbix software has no license fee and no host limit. Zabbix Cloud is priced by new values per second (NVPS): $50 a month for Nano, $100 for Micro, $250 for Small, $750 for Medium and up to $5,000 for 2xLarge, plus storage above 10 GB at $0.30 a GB. An annual plan takes 10% off the compute part. For a self-hosted install, a Silver support subscription costs $325 a month and Gold starts at $825, both billed annually. The tier boundaries and Zabbix's own NVPS formula are on our Zabbix pricing page.
Checkmk Cloud vs Zabbix Cloud at 100 to 1,000 hosts
The fair first comparison is hosted against hosted, since in both cases the vendor runs the server. We used each vendor's own default sizing: Checkmk's 30 services a host, and the 50 metrics a device that Zabbix's calculator starts with, at a one-minute and a five-minute interval. Annual billing on both sides, Zabbix with the storage its calculator suggests for each tier.
| Hosts | Checkmk Cloud, per year | Zabbix Cloud, every 5 min | Zabbix Cloud, every 1 min | Checkmk costs this many times more (1 min) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $8,526 (3,000 services) | $540, Nano | $1,224, Micro | 7.0x |
| 200 | $15,669 (6,000 services) | $540, Nano | $3,024, Small | 5.2x |
| 400 | $26,960 (12,000 services) | $1,224, Micro | $8,784, Medium | 3.1x |
| 600 | $37,329 (18,000 services) | $3,024, Small | $8,784, Medium | 4.2x |
| 1,000 | $51,845 (30,000 services) | $3,024, Small | $8,784, Medium | 5.9x |
On list price this is not close. The reason is the unit. Checkmk charges for every service whether it reports once a minute or once an hour, while Zabbix charges for how fast values arrive. A fleet of quiet hosts is cheap on Zabbix Cloud and costs the same as a busy one on Checkmk Cloud.
When is Checkmk Cloud cheaper than Zabbix Cloud?
Only when each host sends a lot of data. Holding Checkmk's price fixed and raising the values each host sends per minute, Zabbix Cloud overtakes it at 150 values a minute per host for 100 hosts, 300 for 200 hosts, 375 for 400 hosts, 500 for 600 hosts and 300 for 1,000 hosts, where Zabbix jumps to its largest 2xLarge tier. Those are heavy collection rates. A host running a standard template with most items on one to five minute intervals sits far below them, so for most fleets the crossover never arrives.
Two things narrow the gap in practice. Checkmk Cloud includes 10x5 product support, while Zabbix Cloud covers the platform only, so help with your own items, triggers and alerts is extra. And Zabbix's tiers are hard ceilings: values above the limit are discarded at random, so a team running near a tier edge pays for the next tier early. Neither changes the order in the table above.
Checkmk vs Zabbix self-hosted, with and without support
Self-hosted, both start at zero. Zabbix is fully open source with every feature. Checkmk Community is free too, and Checkmk positions it for small setups of around 100 hosts with community support only. The comparison that matters to a business is what each costs once a vendor will pick up the phone.
| Hosts | Zabbix + Silver support | Checkmk Pro (8x5 included) | Checkmk Ultimate (10x5 included) | Cheaper with support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $3,900 | $3,300 | $4,800 | Checkmk Pro by $600 |
| 200 | $3,900 | $4,800 | $6,600 | Zabbix by $900 |
| 400 | $3,900 | $7,800 | $11,100 | Zabbix by $3,900 |
| 600 | $3,900 | $10,500 | $15,300 | Zabbix by $6,600 |
| 1,000 | $3,900 | $16,500 | $24,000 | Zabbix by $12,600 |
Zabbix support is priced by coverage, not by hosts, which is why its column never moves. Silver covers one Zabbix server, eight support cases and a one business day response. A large install with proxies, or a team that needs faster answers, moves to Gold from $9,900 a year, priced per server and proxy. Even then Checkmk Pro is still more expensive from 600 hosts upward ($10,500 against $9,900).
The top end tilts further. Checkmk's 24x5 support is only sold with Ultimate and is a flat $15,000 a year on top of the license, so a 100-host Ultimate install with round-the-clock weekday cover costs $19,800. Zabbix's 24x7 plans (Platinum and above) are quoted individually, so we cannot put a number beside it.
What the price gap buys on the Checkmk side
Checkmk's case is time, not money. It discovers hosts and services automatically, ships more than 2,000 maintained integrations, and its paid editions add agent management with automated updates, built-in reporting and SLA availability reports. Ultimate adds multi-tenancy for managed service providers, application observability and the compliance controls security teams ask about. If a SOC 2 or ISO audit is the reason Ultimate is on your shortlist, the monitoring tool is only one piece of the evidence, and a dedicated compliance automation platform is usually where that work gets organized.
Zabbix asks for more hands-on configuration in return for the lower bill. Teams with an engineer who knows it well rarely regret that trade. Teams without one often end up paying for it in hours, which no price list shows.
Which is cheaper for website and API uptime checks?
Neither tool is built for this job, and both can do it. Zabbix checks a URL with a web scenario, Checkmk with an HTTP check service. If either already watches your servers, add the checks there and spend nothing extra. If you are buying one only to watch public sites and APIs, both run checks from wherever you host them, which is the worst place to see a DNS, CDN or routing failure your customers hit. That is the job UptimeHub does: checks from six regions, confirmation from more than one before an alert, and a branded status page, from $49 a month on Pro billed yearly for 100 monitors. Our uptime monitoring pricing comparison puts that against the other hosted checkers.
Checkmk vs Zabbix pricing questions
Is Checkmk cheaper than Zabbix?
No, not at list price. At one-minute collection, Zabbix Cloud costs between a third and a seventh of Checkmk Cloud for 100 to 1,000 hosts, and less at slower intervals, and self-hosted Zabbix with Silver support is a flat $3,900 a year against $3,300 to $16,500 for Checkmk Pro. Checkmk is cheaper only at 100 hosts with support, or for very data-heavy hosts on the cloud editions.
Is Checkmk free like Zabbix?
Partly. Checkmk Community is free and open source, but distributed monitoring, synthetic tests, advanced reporting and professional support are in the paid editions, and Checkmk Cloud has no free tier. Zabbix puts every feature in its free open-source release and charges only for support and for the hosted Zabbix Cloud.
Does Checkmk or Zabbix charge per host?
Neither, strictly. Checkmk charges per service and labels its bands in hosts at 30 services each. Zabbix Cloud charges by new values per second, so the interval matters as much as the host count. Self-hosted Zabbix support is priced per Zabbix server or proxy, not per monitored host.
Which has better support for the money?
Checkmk includes support in every paid license: 8x5 on Pro, 10x5 on Ultimate and Cloud. Zabbix sells support separately, $3,900 a year for Silver with eight support cases and a one business day response. For a 100-host install, Checkmk Pro gives you a license and support for less than Zabbix Silver alone.
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