<b>Q: Synthetic monitoring or real-user monitoring? Which one do I actually need?</b>

<b>Q: Synthetic monitoring or real-user monitoring? Which one do I actually need?</b>

A: They answer different questions, so most serious setups run both.

Synthetic checks hit your site on a schedule from a fixed location. They tell you "is it up right now" even at 3am with zero traffic, and they catch problems before users do. Great for uptime, SSL, and critical paths.

Real-user monitoring (RUM) records what actual visitors experience: their browsers, their networks, their geographies. It catches things synthetics miss, like a checkout that breaks only on Safari in Brazil.

Start with synthetic for alerting and SLA proof. Layer in RUM once you want to understand performance for real people, not a robot in a datacenter.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments.