Recommended Developer Tools

Tools we use, trust, and recommend for API monitoring, cloud hosting, observability, and developer productivity. Each tool has been evaluated for reliability, developer experience, and value.

Transparency note: Some links on this page are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. We only recommend tools we genuinely believe in. Our recommendations are based on our own experience and research.

Monitoring & Observability

Better Stack

Best all-in-one monitoring

All-in-one observability platform with uptime monitoring, incident management, and beautiful status pages. Excellent for teams that want monitoring, logging, and alerting in a single tool.

Free tier available, from $24/moTry Better Stack

Datadog

Enterprise-grade observability

Enterprise-grade monitoring and observability platform. Best for large teams managing complex microservices architectures with deep APM, infrastructure monitoring, and log management.

Free tier (5 hosts), from $15/host/moTry Datadog

New Relic

Generous free tier

Full-stack observability platform with APM, infrastructure monitoring, browser monitoring, and more. Strong free tier with 100GB/month of data ingest.

Free tier (100GB/mo), from $49/user/moTry New Relic

Cloud Hosting

DigitalOcean

Simple, predictable pricing

Developer-friendly cloud platform with simple, predictable pricing. Great for hosting APIs, databases, and Kubernetes clusters without enterprise complexity.

From $4/mo (Droplets)Try DigitalOcean

Vultr

Global edge locations

High-performance cloud computing with global data centers. Competitive pricing for compute, bare metal, and managed databases. Great DigitalOcean alternative.

From $2.50/moTry Vultr

Deployment & Hosting

Vercel

Best-in-class DX

The platform for frontend developers. Deploy Next.js, React, and other frameworks with zero configuration. Excellent DX with preview deployments and edge functions.

Free tier, from $20/user/moTry Vercel

API Development

Postman

Industry standard for API testing

The most popular API development and testing platform. Essential for testing API reliability, creating collections, and monitoring API performance.

Free tier, from $14/user/moTry Postman

SEO & Marketing

SEMrush

Complete SEO toolkit

All-in-one SEO and marketing toolkit. Monitor your API documentation and developer content performance in search. Track competitors and find content opportunities.

From $129.95/moTry SEMrush

Why These Tools?

As developers who build and maintain API monitoring infrastructure, we've used dozens of tools across the stack. This list represents the tools that have consistently delivered the best combination of reliability, developer experience, and value.

We update this page regularly as we discover new tools or our recommendations change. Last updated: February 2026.

Missing a tool you think we should include? Let us know.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you. This helps support API Status Check and allows us to continue providing free monitoring tools.