I need synthetic monitoring for end-to-end user journeys, what should I use?

For end-to-end user journey monitoring, the thing you want is usually synthetic monitoring, specifically browser-based synthetic tests (also called scripted journeys or transaction monitoring).

What to use

• Browser synthetics / real-browser tests
  Best for simulating login, search, checkout, form submission, etc.
• API synthetics
  Useful for backend steps in the same journey, or when UI isn’t needed.
• Multi-step synthetic transactions
  Ideal when you want to verify the whole path from user click to completed outcome.

Good choices by need

• Best for realistic E2E checks: Browser-based synthetic monitoring
• Best for fast, stable checks: API-level synthetic monitoring
• Best for both: Combine browser + API synthetic tests

Common tools

• Datadog Synthetic Monitoring
• New Relic Synthetics
• Dynatrace Synthetic Monitoring
• Pingdom
• Catchpoint
• Grafana k6 browser / browser checks
• Playwright or Selenium-based custom monitors
• Checkly (very popular for Playwright-based synthetic monitoring)

Recommended approach

For user journeys, a good setup is:

1. Critical-path browser tests for major flows
2. API checks for dependencies and faster failure detection
3. Run from multiple geographies
4. Use alerts on failures and performance thresholds
5. Keep tests short, stable, and idempotent

If you want a simple answer

Use browser-based synthetic monitoring with scripted end-to-end tests, ideally backed by API checks for the underlying services.

If you want, I can also recommend the best tool based on your stack (AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes, frontend framework, budget, etc.).