Guide to Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring emulates end-user transactions to detect slowness or downtime before real users are impacted. Learn how it covers availability, performance, and reliability.

3–4 minutes

June 23, 2026

Denton Chikura

The quick download:

Your users hit seven checkpoints between their device and your application. Synthetic monitoring tests every single one, around the clock, without waiting for a complaint.

Synthetic monitoring runs scripted transactions from global test points to detect slowness and outages before end users notice.
Every digital service has four non-negotiable needs: availability, performance, reachability, and reliability. Synthetic monitoring tests all four.
Problems hide in the data path, including DNS, CDN, BGP, and ISPs. Synthetic monitoring segments each checkpoint so you can triangulate the root cause in minutes.
Start with your five highest-traffic user journeys and build synthetic checks for each. That baseline alone will catch the majority of production incidents early.

Introduction

Synthetic monitoring can mean the difference between detecting a performance issue at 2 AM and waking up to angry users at 8 AM. This guide answers the most common questions practitioners ask about synthetic monitoring, organized by topic so you can read the series start to finish or jump straight to what you need.

You’ll learn:

The differences between synthetic monitoring and real user monitoring
The benefits of synthetic monitoring for improving end-user experience
Troubleshooting tips for interpreting synthetic monitoring results
What features to look for in a synthetic monitoring tool

What is synthetic monitoring?

Synthetic Monitoring emulates end-user transactions using behavioral scripts to validate and measure workflow performance from multiple test points. This kind of monitoring is well-suited for resolving issues because it detects slowness or downtime before your end-users notice any impact.

Why use synthetic monitoring?

Synthetic monitoring tools enable your team to establish performance benchmarks for your environment at regular intervals, creating a baseline for alerting to sudden deviations. These benchmarks can also be used to contextualize the performance of new features or other staged changes deployed to your testing environment.

Additional uses include:

Performing availability and performance analysis during non-peak hours (low or no traffic)
Performing competitive analyses of responsiveness in comparison to other applications or websites

How synthetic monitoring improves service quality

Product success requires consistency—in content, in availability, in performance—regardless of the target market or service niche. Users have high expectations for application responsiveness and will quickly switch to alternative solutions. Synthetic monitoring helps you manage the perception of your applications across every major dimension of user interactivity.

Much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for human wellness, your service’s wellness also has its own hierarchy of needs. Specific to synthetic monitoring, we have defined the following four levels:

Availability – monitor availability
Performance – measure performance
Reachability – extend reachability
Reliability – trend reliability

At a foundational level, your service must be up and running. Once it’s available, users expect it to be fast. Next, you must enable your users to access the service from anywhere in the world or at least make it accessible from all regions within your target market. And finally, your website must be consistent in how it’s available, performing, and reachable. We have defined this as reliability; however, it is sometimes known as a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which is measured as a percentage of time (such as 99.999%). Fortunately, synthetic monitoring is well suited to test all of the aspects of service quality as defined.

Your digital service’s hierarchy of needs

Where synthetic monitoring happens

Your users are on a quest to achieve a task, discover new information, or experience entertainment. Although seemingly instant, their success requires getting past several checkpoints across the internet. For example, they must:

Use an endpoint device with adequate hardware and software.
Access an active internet connection with sufficient bandwidth.
Resolve your domain name into an IP address to send traffic to it.
Load any cached content from a Content Distribution Network (CDN) node close to their geographic location.
Get routing instructions for their data packets from the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) as they relay through Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Connect to the cloud service provider that is hosting your application service.
And perhaps wait for your application to get additional data from a third-party API before responding.

This journey happens with every user interaction that requires content from your service. Synthetic Monitoring allows your team to segment these checkpoints along your users’ journey to quickly triangulate problems blocking their path to your application in their local region.

Synthetic monitoring exercises all segments of the data path

Why is synthetic monitoring so effective?

Synthetic monitoring validates your application’s health at all hours of the day, in all relevant locations, across every network provider, and for every major or minor transaction. It does not require active users to measure performance. Information gathered by synthetic monitoring is segmented by network checkpoints found along the data path. Without synthetic monitoring, valuable network information is nebulous and often leads to performance blind spots.

Catch issues before they impact users

See how synthetic monitoring validates critical workflows across your infrastructure. Test performance from any location and detect problems before customers notice.

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FAQs

What is synthetic monitoring?

Synthetic monitoring emulates end-user transactions using behavioral scripts to validate and measure workflow performance from multiple test points. It detects slowness or downtime before real users notice any impact.

How does synthetic monitoring differ from real user monitoring?

Synthetic monitoring proactively simulates user transactions in controlled conditions, while real user monitoring (RUM) passively collects data from actual user sessions. Together, they provide a comprehensive view of application performance.

What are the four levels of a digital service’s hierarchy of needs?

The four levels are availability (is the service up?), performance (is it fast?), reachability (can users access it from their location?), and reliability (is it consistently meeting all three over time?).

Why should I use synthetic monitoring if I already have APM?

APM traces transactions through back-end services, but it doesn’t cover the full data path between end users and your application. Synthetic monitoring segments each checkpoint, including DNS, CDN, BGP, ISP, and cloud provider, to triangulate problems that APM can’t see.

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