Synthetic monitoring is a method to test and monitor applications and systems by simulating user interactions. It uses scripts designed to mimic a real user’s behavior, then uses the data to evaluate response times, error rates, and other performance metrics. Considered a proactive monitoring solution, synthetic monitoring assesses how well an application will respond to user requests before a real user interacts with it. This allows developers to troubleshoot issues before their application is released and for IT operations teams to monitor critical user journeys in a consistent and repeatable way, once in production. Unlike Real User Monitoring (RUM), a monitoring solution that requires human users, synthetic monitoring can be completely automated and run on a schedule. This allows you to detect issues, trigger alerts, and optimize system performance before real users run into issues. The result is a better end product and improved experience for users.