Synthetic Testing and Monitoring

Join an enablement webinar session

Explore and register for Foundation Enablement sessions. Learn how Datadog Synthetic Monitoring is a proactive monitoring solution that enables you to create code-free API, browser, and mobile tests to automatically simulate user flows and requests to your applications, key endpoints, and network layers.

Synthetic tests allow you to observe how your systems and applications are performing using simulated requests and actions from around the globe. Datadog tracks the performance of your webpages and APIs from the backend to the frontend, and at various network levels (HTTP, SSL, DNS, WebSocket, TCP, UDP, ICMP, and gRPC) in a controlled and stable way, alerting you about faulty behavior such as regressions, broken features, high response times, and unexpected status codes.

Computing SLOs on your key endpoints and user journeys makes it easier to stick to your application performance targets and ultimately provide a consistent customer experience.

You can create Synthetic tests in the Datadog application, with the API, or with Terraform.

Set up API tests and multistep API tests

API tests allow you to launch single or chained requests to perform verifications on your key systems at various network levels: HTTP test, SSL test, DNS test, WebSocket test, TCP test, UDP test, ICMP test, and gRPC test.

Record browser tests

Use Synthetic browser tests to monitor how your customers experience your webpages end-to-end from around the world.

Record mobile application tests

Use Synthetic mobile application tests to monitor how your customers experience your iOS and Android applications end-to-end from different device types.

Examples of the recording workflow for a Synthetic Mobile Test

Launch private locations

Use Synthetic private locations to monitor internal APIs and websites or create custom locations in areas that are mission-critical to your business.

Connect data and traces

Use the integration between Synthetic tests and APM traces to find the root cause of failures across frontend, network, and backend requests.

Access out-of-the-box dashboards

Analyze performance information about your API tests, multistep API tests, browser tests, and private locations, as well as Datadog events, with out-of-the-box Synthetic dashboards.

Synthetic Monitoring & Continuous Testing Summary Dashboard

Use the Synthetic Monitoring & Testing Results Explorer

Create search queries and visualizations for your Synthetic test runs or batches of tests running in CI/CD pipelines.

Track testing coverage

Optimize your test suite by ensuring that your application’s most critical workflows are being tested.

Synthetic Monitoring notifications

Use and enrich Synthetic monitors to send notifications when a Synthetic Monitoring test is failing. The following features are available:

Pre-filled monitor messages: Pre-filled monitor messages provide a structured starting point for Synthetic test alerts. Each message includes a standardized title, summary, and footer containing test metadata, making it easier to understand the alert at a glance.
Template variables: Template variables let you inject test-specific data into monitor notifications dynamically. These variables pull from the synthetics.attributes object.
Advanced usage: Advanced usage includes techniques for surfacing deeper test insights or structuring complex messages using handlebars templating.
Conditional alerting: Conditional alerting allows you to change the content of a monitor notification based on specific test results or failure conditions.

For more information, see Synthetic Monitoring notifications.

Version History

Use Version History in Synthetic Monitoring to run a previous version of a test, restore your test to any saved version, or clone a version to create a new Synthetic Monitoring test.

Ready to start?

See Getting Started with Synthetic Monitoring for instructions on creating your first Synthetic test and monitoring your web applications. Then, explore Getting Started with Private Locations for instructions on creating your private location and running Synthetic tests with your private location.