Is Checkmk or Hookdeck better?

Neither clearly leads. Checkmk starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Checkmk or Hookdeck?

Checkmk starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free.

Does Checkmk or Hookdeck run on more platforms?

Checkmk runs on Web. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.

Can I use Checkmk for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Checkmk best used for?

Checkmk is most often used for infrastructure monitoring, system observability, enterprise compliance monitoring. Of those, infrastructure monitoring and system observability are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.

What can Checkmk do that Hookdeck cannot?

Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Technology · head to head

Checkmk vs Hookdeck

Checkmk

Technology

Comprehensive IT monitoring, open and flexible

From: Free
Free plan: Yes

Full review Website

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From: Free
Free plan: Yes

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Checkmk pricing calculated by service count, not hosts (approximately 30 services per host on average); Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Checkmk and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Checkmk and Hookdeck differ
Attribute	Checkmk	Hookdeck
Pricing model	subscription	Per month by delivered event count
Platforms	Web	Web, Linux, macOS, Windows
Category	Technology	Developer Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Checkmk

Nothing recorded that Hookdeck does not also cover.

Only in Hookdeck

Ingest and persist
Automatic retries
Filters and fan-out
Transformations
Local development CLI
Rate limiting

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Checkmk

Infrastructure monitoringnot Hookdeck
System observabilitynot Hookdeck
Enterprise compliance monitoringnot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Checkmk
Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Checkmk
Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Checkmk
Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Checkmk

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Checkmk

Pricing calculated by service count, not hosts (approximately 30 services per host on average)
Professional support limited to 8-10 hours per week on base plans
Synthetic monitoring is separate add-on with per-test pricing

Hookdeck

Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Pricing, plan by plan

Checkmk

Free

Community (Self-Hosted)Free
- No cost, forever
- Up to ~100 hosts
- Basic infrastructure monitoring
Pro (Self-Hosted)$190/month
- Advanced analytics
- Reporting
- Distributed monitoring
Ultimate (Self-Hosted)$275/month
- Full-stack observability
- Advanced security compliance
- 10 hours x 5 days professional support (upgradable to 24/7)
CloudAI (SaaS)$240/month
- Fully managed cloud hosting
- 99.5% uptime SLA
- Supports up to 50000 services

Hookdeck

Free

DeveloperFree
- Up to ten thousand events per month
- Three-day retention
- One user
Team$39/month
- Ten thousand events included
- Unlimited users
- Pay as you go metering above the included events
Growth$499/month
- Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
- Thirty-day retention
- Uptime and latency SLAs
Enterprise$undefined/year
- Negotiated event volume
- Custom retention
- Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Checkmk if

You want to start without paying.

Checkmk review

Choose Hookdeck if

You need ingest and persist.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
You also want automatic retries.

Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Checkmk or Hookdeck better?: Neither clearly leads. Checkmk starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Checkmk or Hookdeck?: Checkmk starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free.
Does Checkmk or Hookdeck run on more platforms?: Checkmk runs on Web. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Checkmk for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Checkmk best used for?: Checkmk is most often used for infrastructure monitoring, system observability, enterprise compliance monitoring. Of those, infrastructure monitoring and system observability are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Checkmk do that Hookdeck cannot?: Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Checkmk: Is there a free version of Checkmk?

Yes, Checkmk Community edition is free forever and supports up to approximately 100 hosts for basic infrastructure monitoring with no cost.

Source

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Checkmk: How does Checkmk calculate pricing by host count?

Checkmk uses service-based pricing where each monitored aspect (file system, hardware sensor, switch port, metric) counts as one service. On average, there are approximately 30 services per host.

Source

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Checkmk: What is the difference between Checkmk Pro and Ultimate tiers?

Pro tier at 190 EUR/month includes advanced analytics and 8x5 support, while Ultimate at 275 EUR/month adds full-stack observability, advanced compliance features, and upgradable 24/7 support.

Source

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Checkmk: Does Checkmk offer a managed SaaS option?

Yes, Checkmk CloudAI is a fully managed SaaS tier at 240 EUR/month with 99.5% uptime SLA and support for up to 50000 services.

Source

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

Checkmk vs Hookdeck

Checkmk

Hookdeck

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Checkmk

Only in Hookdeck

What people use each for

Checkmk

Hookdeck

Where each one falls short

Checkmk

Hookdeck

Pricing, plan by plan

Checkmk

Hookdeck

Which should you pick?

Choose Checkmk if

Choose Hookdeck if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Checkmk

More on Hookdeck

Keep looking

Other head to heads