Compare · third-party
Uptime Kuma vs UptimeRobot
Uptime Kuma and UptimeRobot are the two answers most people weigh when they want uptime monitoring without a large bill: free software you run on your own server, or a hosted service with a large free plan. This page compares them directly on cost, who operates the thing, how each one checks from more than one place, and what each free plan actually includes, with every claim sourced to the project's own repository or the vendor's own pricing page and help center.
Open-source code you can self-host
Have
MIT-licensed, installed with one Docker command; free forever
Don’t have
a hosted service; it publishes no source and no self-hosted edition
Someone else runs, patches, and backs it up
Don’t have
the software is free; the server it runs on, its upgrades, its database, and its backups are yours to operate
Have
hosted service; there is no server of yours in the path
Price to start
Have
no license fee at all; what it costs is the server you run it on
Have
Free plan at $0/mo; Solo runs roughly $9 to $22/mo depending on billing cycle and monitor count
Free monitor allowance
Have
not metered by a plan; the ceiling is the machine you installed it on
Have
50 monitors on the free plan, checked every 5 minutes
Checks from a vantage independent of your infrastructure
Partial
checks run from wherever you install the instance; hosting it beside the systems it watches means it goes down with them, so an independent vantage requires a second server you also maintain
Have
checks run from UptimeRobot's own locations, across 4 regions (North America, Europe, Asia, Australia)
Multiple named regions shown together per check
Don’t have
one instance probes from its own location; there is no built-in multi-region probe fleet to compare readings across
Don’t have
rotates through selected regions, one per check, per their own help docs; region selection itself needs a paid plan
Built-in status pages
Have
built-in status pages, mappable to their own domains
Have
status pages on every plan including Free (1 page on Free)
On-call rotations and escalation policies
Partial
notifications to a long list of services (Telegram, Discord, Slack, email, and many more), but no rotation or escalation scheduling documented
Partial
notify seats are a paid add-on on Solo, and the Team plan includes 3 login and 3 notify seats
Monitor types beyond HTTP(S)
Have
a long list of monitor types, per the project's own docs
Have
port, ping, keyword, cron/heartbeat, and other protocol checks
Where RealUptime Monitor fits
Uptime Kuma and UptimeRobot are both real answers to this problem, and this page is not built to argue RealUptime Monitor beats either of them. The difference worth knowing is where the check runs from and what you see afterwards: Uptime Kuma checks from wherever you installed it, UptimeRobot rotates a check through one region at a time, and RealUptime Monitor checks from named regions on infrastructure that shares nothing with your servers and shows each region's reading separately, so 'down from one continent' and 'down everywhere' read as different facts. The free rung is 10 monitors and 5 server-agent slots with no card. One honest caveat, stated plainly: we page by email, Slack, webhook, or your existing PagerDuty, and we have no phone-call or SMS paging of our own. Which of the three fits is a decision this page leaves to you.