Uptime Kuma is a uptime & monitoring tool for Developers, offered as open source. Founded in in 2021. Popular alternatives include UptimeRobot.
About Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a free, open-source, self-hosted monitoring tool created by developer Louis Lam and released under the MIT license. It has become one of the most popular monitoring projects on GitHub, with more than 60,000 stars, because it does the essential job of checking whether websites and services are up through a clean web interface that takes minutes to deploy with a single Docker container.
Monitor types include HTTP(s) with keyword and JSON query checks, TCP ports, ping, DNS, Docker containers, databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis, game servers, and push monitors that receive heartbeats from cron jobs or scripts. Checks can run as often as every 20 seconds, TLS certificate expiry is tracked, and maintenance windows pause alerts. More than 90 notification providers are supported, including email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, PagerDuty and webhooks, and multiple status pages with custom domains can be published. Everything is free; the only cost is the server you run it on.
Uptime Kuma fits indie developers, homelab users and small teams comfortable running their own infrastructure. Because it is self-hosted, you need to monitor the monitor, ideally from another server or region, and it lacks on-call rotations, escalation policies, multi-region checks and full multi-user permissions. Better Stack and UptimeRobot are hosted alternatives with free tiers, PagerDuty and incident.io handle on-call and incidents, and Gatus is another self-hosted option configured in code.
Key features of Uptime Kuma
- HTTP, TCP, ping, DNS, keyword, JSON and Docker monitors
- Push monitors for cron and heartbeat checks
- 90+ notification providers including Slack, Telegram, Discord
- Status pages with custom domains
- Certificate expiry monitoring
- Single-container Docker deployment
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free and open source
- Very easy to deploy
- Huge range of notifications
- Active community and frequent updates
Cons
- Self-hosted only; you monitor the monitor
- Single-user by default
- Basic incident management
- Status page features are simple
Uptime Kuma pricing
Uptime Kuma uses a open source model.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | $0 | MIT license, self-hosted via Docker or Node |
Source: github.com · checked on Oct 20, 2026
How Uptime Kuma compares in Uptime & monitoring
- Rank by votes
- #1 / 16
- Starting price
- $0
- Free alternatives
- 3
0 votes from members
Category median is $24/mo
Free or open-source tools in Uptime & monitoring
Uptime Kuma ranks #1 of 16 uptime & monitoring tools by community votes and is not directly comparable on price.
Common use cases
- 1Indie developer monitoring side projects
- 2Homelab and self-hosted services
- 3Small company's internal monitoring
- 4Cron job heartbeat tracking
Best for
Developers and small teams comfortable self-hosting who want free, reliable uptime checks.
Not ideal for
Teams needing on-call rotations, SLAs and multi-user management.
Integrations
- Slack
- Discord
- Telegram
- Webhooks
- PagerDuty
- 90+ notification providers
- Docker
Our take
Uptime Kuma is the obvious free monitoring choice for anyone running a server. Add Better Stack when you need on-call and incidents.
FAQ
- What is Uptime Kuma?
- Uptime Kuma is a Uptime & monitoring tool: Self-hosted uptime monitoring.
- How much does Uptime Kuma cost?
- Uptime Kuma is Open source; there is no mandatory paid plan.
- What are the best alternatives to Uptime Kuma?
- Community-listed alternatives to Uptime Kuma include UptimeRobot.
- What does Uptime Kuma integrate with?
- Uptime Kuma integrates with Slack, Discord, Telegram, Email, Webhooks, PagerDuty and more.
- Which platforms does Uptime Kuma support?
- Uptime Kuma is available on web.
- Who is Uptime Kuma for?
- Developers and small teams comfortable self-hosting who want free, reliable uptime checks.
Alternatives to Uptime Kuma
UptimeRobot
▲ 0Uptime, SSL and cron monitoring with status pages and a free tier
Freemium · $10DevelopersSmall businesses
More Uptime & monitoring tools
Dynatrace
▲ 0AI-driven observability and app security for large cloud estates
PaidEnterpriseDevelopers
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share real experience.
Sign in to write a review.