Is upcheckr a Grafana alternative?

For one specific job — putting your key application numbers live on a wall display — yes. Apps POST values to upcheckr (no scraping, no exporters) and it renders them on one page. For rich ad-hoc querying across many data sources, Grafana is the better tool.

How is upcheckr different from Datadog?

Datadog is a full hosted observability platform (APM, infra, logs) billed per host. upcheckr is a single self-contained binary you run yourself: push-based metrics on a TV-wall dashboard, free to self-host, with an optional €29/mo hosted tier for alerting and managed durability.

Does upcheckr need a separate time-series database?

No. SQLite is embedded in the binary. There is no Prometheus, no external TSDB, no message broker to run.

upcheckr vs Grafana & Datadog — a push-based TV-wall metrics dashboard

	upcheckr	Grafana (self-hosted)	Datadog
How data arrives	Push — apps `POST` a number with an API key	Pull/scrape via data sources (Prometheus, etc.)	Agents installed on each host
What you run	One binary, SQLite inside	Grafana + a time-series database to feed it	SaaS + per-host agents
Where your data lives	On your box — no telemetry, nothing leaves your machine	Your infrastructure	Datadog's SaaS — your data leaves
Built for	An at-a-glance TV/wall dashboard	Dashboards & ad-hoc exploration	Full APM / infra / logs
Setup time	Download, run, push — minutes	Stand up Grafana + a TSDB + scrape config	Account + agent rollout
Self-host cost	€0, forever	€0 (you operate the stack)	—
Hosted cost	€29/mo flat (Cloud tier)	Grafana Cloud — free tier + usage	Per host / per feature, scales up fast
Alerting	Thresholds color the wall free; delivery on Cloud	Yes, rich	Yes, extensive
Query language	None — pick a metric, an aggregation, a range	PromQL / data-source queries	Datadog query syntax

Grafana and Datadog are trademarks of their respective owners; this comparison reflects how each is commonly deployed and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

When upcheckr is the right call

You want a screen in the office (or a browser tab) showing live active users, req/min, p95, signups, revenue — and you want it to look good from across the room.
Your app already computes these numbers; you'd rather POST them than stand up a scrape pipeline.
You don't want to run — or pay for — a metrics stack. One binary, SQLite inside, done.
You're a small team or a side project where Datadog's per-host bill is overkill and Grafana's stack is more than you want to operate.
You've looked at hosted wallboard tools (Geckoboard, Databox) and want the same at-a-glance TV screen — self-hosted, for €0, with your data staying on your box.

When to reach for Grafana or Datadog instead

You need ad-hoc querying across many sources, high-cardinality slicing, or PromQL.
You need full observability — traces, logs, infra metrics, profiling — correlated in one platform (Datadog).
You already run Prometheus and want the mature dashboard ecosystem around it (Grafana).

upcheckr deliberately doesn't try to be those. It's the one-screen-of-truth for the numbers a team checks every day — pushed, not scraped, and built to live on a wall.

Built to stay instant — and honest about it

The wall reads pre-aggregated rollups, so it stays fast as data grows: a 15-tile wall over a 50-million-datapoint database renders in well under a third of a second for the common ranges. On a single 2-vCPU VPS, the push API sustains ~500,000 points/min with zero dropped points. Those are measured numbers from the load-test harness shipped in the repo — not marketing figures.

Download the binary — free See the wall in action