Checkmk pricing and cost per host for Pro, Ultimate and Cloud
Checkmk sells by services, not hosts, and its self-hosted and SaaS editions price that unit very differently. Enter your hosts, how many services each one runs, any synthetic tests and the support level, and the calculator reads Checkmk's own dollar price list to show every edition side by side.
Pro, 100 hosts
$275
Ultimate
$400
Cloud, annual
$711
Checkmk cost calculator, USD
LivePrices are the USD list read from the price data on checkmk.com/pricing. Self-hosted editions are billed annually in fixed service bands; Cloud is priced to the nearest step Checkmk sells. Above 1,000 hosts or 50,000 Cloud services Checkmk quotes individually.
How much does Checkmk cost?
Checkmk Community is free and open source. The paid self-hosted editions are billed annually in host bands: for 100 hosts, Checkmk Pro costs $3,300 a year ($275 a month), Ultimate $4,800 ($400 a month) and Ultimate with multi-tenancy $5,100 ($425 a month). At 1,000 hosts those become $16,500, $24,000 and $26,400. Checkmk Cloud, the SaaS edition, starts at 1,000 services (about 33 hosts) for $290 a month on monthly billing or $2,880 a year.
The pricing page opens in euros, and most cost sites copy those starting prices and stop. That misses three things a US buyer needs. The dollar list is not a currency conversion of the euro one. Support above 10x5 is a fixed fee that dwarfs small licenses. And Cloud's monthly and annual prices drift further apart the bigger you get. Checkmk ships its entire price list, in both currencies, inside the page, and every figure here is read from it.
The short version
- Community
- $0, open source, community support
- Pro
- $3,300 to $16,500 a year, 100 to 1,000 hosts
- Ultimate
- $4,800 to $24,000 a year, 100 to 1,000 hosts
- Ultimate with multi-tenancy
- $5,100 to $26,400 a year
- Cloud
- From $290 a month or $2,880 a year for 1,000 services
- 24x5 support
- A flat $15,000 a year extra, Ultimate only
Checkmk Pro and Ultimate pricing for 100 to 1,000 hosts
Self-hosted Checkmk comes in five bands. Each band is a service count, and Checkmk labels it in hosts at 30 services a host, so 3,000 services is sold as 100 hosts. You buy the band at or above your real count; there is nothing between 100 and 200 hosts. All prices are per year, billed annually.
Price per host per month
100 hosts
200 hosts
400 hosts
600 hosts
1,000 hosts
| Hosts (services) | Pro | Ultimate | Ultimate, multi-tenancy | Ultimate with 24x5 | Appliance add-on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 (3,000) | $3,300 | $4,800 | $5,100 | $19,800 | $480 |
| 200 (6,000) | $4,800 | $6,600 | $7,500 | $21,600 | $840 |
| 400 (12,000) | $7,800 | $11,100 | $12,600 | $26,100 | $1,020 |
| 600 (18,000) | $10,500 | $15,300 | $16,800 | $30,300 | $1,140 |
| 1,000 (30,000) | $16,500 | $24,000 | $26,400 | $39,000 | $1,320 |
The appliance add-on is Checkmk's virtual appliance, for teams that want to run Checkmk inside a virtualization platform rather than install it on a Linux server. Above 1,000 hosts every edition moves to a custom quote.
The bands are generous at the top and harsh at the bottom. Pro falls from $2.75 a host a month at 100 hosts to $1.38 at 1,000, and Ultimate from $4.00 to $2.00. One coincidence is worth knowing when you budget: Pro for 200 hosts and Ultimate for 100 hosts are the same $4,800 a year, and Ultimate for 200 hosts works out at $2.75 a host, exactly what Pro charges at 100. If you sit just above a band edge, compare the bigger Pro band with the smaller Ultimate one before you assume Pro is the cheap choice.
Four things in the Checkmk price list the starting prices hide
$15,000
24x5 support is one flat fee
Moving Ultimate from 10x5 to 24x5 support costs exactly $15,000 a year at 100, 200, 400, 600 and 1,000 hosts. For a 100-host install that turns a $4,800 license into a $19,800 contract, 4.1 times the price. At 1,000 hosts the same upgrade adds 62.5%.
2.4x
Cloud monthly billing never gets cheaper
Monthly Cloud is $0.29 a service at every size. Annual Cloud gets volume discounts, so the gap grows: 21% more at 1,000 services, 51% at 10,000, and 2.4 times the annual price at 50,000 services, $174,000 a year against $72,008.
$1.38 to $1.46
What a US buyer pays per euro of list price
Checkmk keeps a separate dollar price list. On the self-hosted editions it charges between $1.38 and $1.46 for every euro a European customer pays. On Cloud the ratio is $1.20, and on synthetic tests $1.22. Converting the euro starting prices at the exchange rate understates what you will be quoted.
$1,980
The price of the fourth synthetic test
Pro and Ultimate include three synthetic tests. The next step Checkmk sells is a block of 15 tests at $1,980 a year, so going from three tests to four costs the full block. From there it is $11 a test a month until 50 tests, falling to $2.80 at 1,000.
Checkmk Cloud pricing on monthly and annual billing
Checkmk Cloud is the hosted edition: Checkmk runs the server, promises 99.5% availability and includes 10x5 support. It is sold from 1,000 to 50,000 services in steps of 10, 100 and then 1,000 services. Below is the dollar price at seven points, with the per-host figure at Checkmk's 30 services a host.
| Services (about hosts) | Annual billing, year | Per host a month, annual | Monthly billing, month | Monthly billing over a year | Monthly costs more by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 (33) | $2,880 | $7.20 | $290 | $3,480 | 21% |
| 3,000 (100) | $8,526 | $7.11 | $870 | $10,440 | 22% |
| 5,000 (167) | $13,442 | $6.72 | $1,450 | $17,400 | 29% |
| 10,000 (333) | $23,043 | $5.76 | $2,900 | $34,800 | 51% |
| 20,000 (667) | $40,324 | $5.04 | $5,800 | $69,600 | 73% |
| 30,000 (1,000) | $51,845 | $4.32 | $8,700 | $104,400 | 101% |
| 50,000 (1,667) | $72,008 | $3.60 | $14,500 | $174,000 | 142% |
Monthly billing makes sense for a pilot or a short project. For anything you expect to keep, the annual price is the real one, and it is worth knowing that the annual discount only starts after 2,500 services; between 1,000 and 2,500 it is a flat $2.88 a service a year.
Checkmk Cloud vs self-hosted at the same size
Cloud bundles the server, upgrades and backups that a self-hosted license leaves to you, and it charges for that. Against self-hosted Ultimate, which has the same feature tier and support hours, annual Cloud costs between 1.78 and 2.44 times as much.
| Hosts | Pro, self-hosted | Ultimate, self-hosted | Cloud, annual | Cloud vs Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $3,300 | $4,800 | $8,526 | 1.78x |
| 200 | $4,800 | $6,600 | $15,669 | 2.37x |
| 400 | $7,800 | $11,100 | $26,960 | 2.43x |
| 600 | $10,500 | $15,300 | $37,329 | 2.44x |
| 1,000 | $16,500 | $24,000 | $51,845 | 2.16x |
The gap is the price of not running the server. Whether that is good value depends on what an engineer's time costs you and how much of it a Checkmk server actually takes, which no price list can answer. What the list does show is that the difference is $3,726 a year at 100 hosts and $27,845 at 1,000.
Checkmk synthetic monitoring pricing
Synthetic monitoring runs scripted user journeys against web and desktop applications. It is an add-on to self-hosted Pro or Ultimate, not available on Community, and priced per test per year on top of the license.
The per-test price holds flat at $132 a year up to 50 tests, then falls. A team that only needs a login check and a checkout check fits in the three free tests. A team that needs four pays $1,980.
| Tests | Per year | Per test a month |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Included | $0 |
| 15 | $1,980 | $11.00 |
| 50 | $6,599 | $11.00 |
| 100 | $11,880 | $9.90 |
| 200 | $18,479 | $7.70 |
| 500 | $27,399 | $4.57 |
| 1,000 | $33,600 | $2.80 |
What Checkmk costs if you only need website and API uptime checks
Checkmk is a server and network monitor first. An HTTP check is one service, so in principle a site costs $0.29 a month on Cloud. In practice the minimums decide it: Cloud starts at 1,000 services and self-hosted Pro at 3,000. If Checkmk already watches your servers, adding a few web checks to it is close to free and we would tell you to do that. If you are pricing it only to watch public sites and APIs, the comparison looks like this.
| 100 public sites and APIs | Checkmk Cloud | Checkmk Pro, self-hosted | UptimeHub Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price, annual billing | $2,880 a year (1,000-service minimum) | $3,300 a year plus your server | $588 a year ($49 a month) |
| Price, monthly billing | $290 a month | Not offered | $99 a month |
| Where checks run from | Your Checkmk site and the agents you deploy | Your own server, or sites you add | 6 global regions, confirmed before an alert |
| Fastest interval | Under 1 minute | Configurable | Every 30 seconds |
| Public status page for customers | No status page product; dashboards can be shared by public link | No status page product; dashboards can be shared by public link | Branded pages with your own domain |
| Set-up per site | Rule for an HTTP check on a host | Rule for an HTTP check on a host | Paste the URL, alerts on by default |
The location column matters more than the price for a public site. A check that runs from inside your own network cannot see a DNS, CDN or routing failure that only your customers hit. UptimeHub checks from six regions, confirms a failure from more than one before it pages anyone, and puts the result on a branded status page. See multi-location monitoring for how that works, or keep Checkmk for the servers and use us for the outside view.
Where these numbers come from, and what we do not claim
The checkmk.com pricing page stores its complete price list as data inside the page: one table for the self-hosted editions, one for Cloud and one for synthetic tests, each with a euro and a dollar figure for every step. We read the dollar values directly. To make sure we read them the way Checkmk does, we reproduced the page's default euro display from the same data and its own price script: Pro at 190 euros a month and 1.90 a host, Ultimate at 275 and 2.75, Cloud at 240 and 7.20. All matched. Edition features and support hours come from the same page and its feature comparison.
We do not state prices above 1,000 hosts or 50,000 Cloud services, which Checkmk quotes individually, nor partner or multi-year discounts, nor the cost of the server, database and staff time a self-hosted install needs. The 30 services a host figure is Checkmk's own rule of thumb; count your real services before you buy a band. For other infrastructure tools on the same footing, see Zabbix pricing, PRTG pricing , Nagios XI pricing and OpManager pricing, which licenses per device rather than per service.
Checkmk pricing questions
How much does Checkmk cost?
Checkmk Community costs nothing. Checkmk Pro is $3,300 a year for 100 hosts, Ultimate is $4,800 and Ultimate with multi-tenancy is $5,100, all billed annually and rising to $16,500, $24,000 and $26,400 at 1,000 hosts. Checkmk Cloud starts at $290 a month, or $2,880 a year, for 1,000 services.
Is Checkmk free?
Checkmk Community is free and open source, and Checkmk describes it as suited to personal projects and small setups of around 100 hosts, with community support only. Distributed monitoring, advanced reporting, synthetic tests and professional support are in the paid Pro and Ultimate editions, and the SaaS edition, Checkmk Cloud, has no free tier.
How much does Checkmk Cloud cost?
Checkmk Cloud is priced by services. On monthly billing it is a flat $0.29 a service, so $290 a month for the 1,000-service minimum and $8.70 a host at 30 services each. Annual billing starts at $2,880 a year for 1,000 services and gets cheaper per service as you grow, down to $72,008 a year for 50,000.
Does Checkmk charge per host or per service?
Per service. A service is one thing Checkmk checks, such as a disk, an interface or an HTTP endpoint. Checkmk sells the self-hosted editions in bands of 3,000 to 30,000 services and labels them as 100 to 1,000 hosts, using its own rule of thumb of 30 services per host. A host with 60 services counts as two.
Checkmk Pro vs Ultimate, which one do I need?
Pro covers infrastructure monitoring with distributed setups, automation, reporting and 8x5 support. Ultimate adds full-stack application observability, advanced cloud integrations, security compliance features, automated mass rollouts and 10x5 support, and it is the only edition that can buy 24x5 support. At 100 hosts the step up costs $1,500 a year; at 1,000 it costs $7,500.
How much is Checkmk MSP pricing?
Managed service providers buy Ultimate with multi-tenancy, which adds data segregation between customers. It costs $5,100 a year for 100 hosts, $7,500 for 200, $12,600 for 400, $16,800 for 600 and $26,400 for 1,000. The multi-tenancy premium over plain Ultimate grows from $300 a year at 100 hosts to $2,400 at 1,000.
How much does Checkmk synthetic monitoring cost?
Synthetic monitoring is an add-on for Pro and Ultimate. Three tests are free; the smallest paid step is 15 tests for $1,980 a year, which is $11 a test a month and stays at that rate up to 50 tests. Larger blocks are cheaper per test, reaching $33,600 a year for 1,000 tests, or $2.80 a test a month.
Does Checkmk offer monthly billing?
Only on Checkmk Cloud. The self-hosted Pro and Ultimate editions are billed annually. On Cloud, monthly billing costs 21% more than annual at 1,000 services, and the gap widens as you grow because only the annual price has volume discounts: at 50,000 services monthly billing costs 2.4 times as much as annual.
How much is Checkmk premium support?
Upgrading Ultimate from 10x5 to 24x5 support adds a flat $15,000 a year at every size from 100 to 1,000 hosts, with or without multi-tenancy. That quadruples the bill for 100 hosts, from $4,800 to $19,800, and adds 62.5% at 1,000 hosts. Pro includes 8x5 support and cannot take the 24x5 upgrade.
Is Checkmk good for website uptime monitoring?
Checkmk can check HTTP endpoints and certificates as services, which is handy if it already watches your servers. For public website uptime alone it is an expensive route: Checkmk Cloud starts at 1,000 services, so even ten URLs cost $290 a month, and checks run from your own Checkmk site rather than from several outside regions.
Let Checkmk watch the servers and watch your public side from outside
UptimeHub checks sites, APIs, ports, SSL certificates and cron jobs from six regions, every 30 seconds on Pro and above, retries before it pages anyone, and powers a branded status page. No service bands, no server to run, monthly or yearly billing.
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