Catchpointvs
Kentik
Kentik: For internal network flow and traffic analytics rather than external internet path and digital experience monitoring
Catchpoint
Internet and digital experience monitoring, with a genuinely published entry price through its WebPageTest product line
As of 1 September 2026, Catchpoint is free to use. A monitoring platform for internet performance, digital experience and internal application delivery, run from a global network of vantage points. Softwr lists it under Networking. Catchpoint is made by Catchpoint Systems, available on Web.
Overview
What Catchpoint does
Catchpoint runs synthetic and real user monitoring from thousands of vantage points and agents worldwide, checking website, API, DNS, CDN and BGP-level performance to catch problems in the internet path between users and an application, not just inside a company's own infrastructure. It also owns and operates WebPageTest, the widely used web performance testing tool, as a productised, tiered offering. Catchpoint's pricing is genuinely published at multiple points, unusually for this category: WebPageTest has a free Starter tier (150 monthly test runs), a Professional tier from $180/year, and an Expert tier from $11,988/year adding real user monitoring with session replay. Separately, its enterprise Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) product has a published Quick Start Package at $10,000/year with a 12-month minimum, before Enterprise-tier pricing reverts to a custom quote for unlimited users and full platform access. A token-based points model underlies usage across products, so buyers are not billed per check but draw down a shared quota. Buyers range from web performance engineers wanting a dedicated, better-featured version of WebPageTest through to enterprise network and site reliability teams monitoring internet-dependent applications, CDN performance and BGP routing at scale. The trade-off against ThousandEyes, its closest direct competitor, is that Catchpoint publishes more of its pricing structure, which helps early evaluation, while enterprise-grade IPM commitments still require the same kind of annual contract negotiation as ThousandEyes.
What people use it for
- A web performance engineer wanting a fuller-featured, paid version of WebPageTest with longer retention and more locations
- An enterprise SRE or network team monitoring internet-dependent application delivery, DNS and CDN performance at scale
- An organisation wanting BGP-level visibility into internet routing issues affecting its services
- A team wanting real user monitoring with session replay alongside synthetic testing from one vendor
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Catchpoint.
- Its flagship enterprise Internet Performance Monitoring product reverts to custom Enterprise pricing beyond the Quick Start package, so full-scale deployment cost is not knowable from the public site
- The token-based points model, while flexible, requires understanding point consumption per test type to budget usage accurately, which is not always intuitive upfront
- The IPM Quick Start Package carries a 12-month minimum commitment, so there is no genuinely short-term way to trial the enterprise product at scale
- WebPageTest's published tiers are aimed at web performance testing specifically; the broader enterprise IPM feature set (BGP, DNS, CDN monitoring) is not available at those lower published prices
- As with ThousandEyes, meaningful internet path visibility depends on a large distributed vantage point network that only the vendor controls, so coverage gaps in specific regions are not something a buyer can fix themselves
- Session replay and RUM features are gated to the Expert tier and above, so lower tiers give synthetic testing only, without the real user data many teams actually want
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Catchpoint
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CatchpointvsThousandEyes
ThousandEyes: For a comparable internet and digital experience monitoring platform, owned by Cisco
Pricing
What Catchpoint costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
WebPageTest Starter
Free
- 150 monthly test runs
- 60-day retention
- 30 global locations
WebPageTest Professional
$180 /yr
- 1,000-20,000 monthly test runs
- 13-month retention
- 40 global locations
WebPageTest Expert
$11,988 /yr
- Real user monitoring with session replay
- Unlimited users with SSO
- 3,000+ agents across 300+ cities
IPM Quick Start
$10,000 /yr
- Single end-to-end journey monitoring
- DNS, SSL, CDN and API monitoring
Capabilities
Features
Global vantage point network
Thousands of monitoring agents and locations for synthetic and real user testing
WebPageTest integration
Owns and productises the WebPageTest tool with published tiered pricing
BGP and DNS monitoring
Visibility into internet routing and DNS resolution issues affecting application delivery
Real user monitoring
Session replay and RUM data available at higher tiers
Token-based points model
Usage drawn from a shared points allowance rather than billed per individual check
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is there a free tier?
Yes, WebPageTest Starter is free with 150 monthly test runs.
Is enterprise IPM pricing published?
Only the entry Quick Start Package at $10,000/year with a 12-month minimum; full Enterprise pricing is custom.
Does Catchpoint own WebPageTest?
Yes, Catchpoint operates WebPageTest as a productised offering with its own tiered pricing.
Keep looking
Where to go from Catchpoint
- Catchpoint alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Catchpoint pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Catchpoint badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Networking softwareThe full category
- Best Networking softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Networking software for
Compare Catchpoint with
- ThousandEyes
- Kentik
- HiveMQ
- Cloudflare
- NetBird
- Domotz
- Cisco Meraki
- OpenVPN
- Icinga
- Ubiquiti UniFi
- ZeroTier
- Consul
- LibreNMS
- MikroTik RouterOS
- Zabbix
- OpenVPN
- Icinga
- Ubiquiti UniFi
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Catchpoint, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Catchpoint
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Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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