Q: I run synthetic checks every minute. Do I still need real-user monitoring?

Q: I run synthetic checks every minute. Do I still need real-user monitoring?

A: Yes, because they answer different questions and the common advice conflates them. Synthetic monitoring runs the same scripted path from fixed locations on a schedule. It's great for catching hard outages and SSL issues consistently.

But it can't see what your actual users experience: a slow CDN node in a region you don't probe, a third-party script timing out on real browsers, a checkout breaking only for logged-in users on mobile.

The myth is that one replaces the other. Synthetic tells you if a known path works; real-user monitoring tells you how real people on real devices and networks actually fare.

Recommendation: synthetic for alerting and SLA proof, real-user data for diagnosing the slow, weird, partial problems.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments.