Free Uptime Monitoring and Status Pages in 2026: 6 Hosted Tiers, 3 Self-Hosted

For a side project, the free tier that covers the most is UptimeRobot's: 50 monitors on a 5-minute interval and one basic status page, and its terms allow commercial use. If you need checks every minute, HetrixTools gives 15 monitors at one-minute checks for free. If you would rather own the whole thing, Uptime Kuma is an MIT-licensed monitor and status page you run with one docker run command.

Six hosted free tiers and three self-hosted tools are below. Every limit was checked against each vendor's own pricing page, docs or GitHub README on 11 November 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a number for its free plan, the entry says so.

What to compare

Four numbers decide whether a free tier fits:

• Monitors. How many URLs, ports or heartbeats you can watch. Some tiers count heartbeats against the same limit.
• Check interval. How often the service looks. At 5 minutes, a short outage can come and go between checks.
• Alert channels. Email is everywhere. Slack, Discord and webhooks vary. SMS and phone calls are almost always paid.
• Status page. Whether you get one, how many, and whether a custom domain is included.

Also read the use terms. A tier labelled "for personal projects" may not be the one to put a paying product on.

Hosted free tiers

UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot's free plan gives 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval and one basic status page, with no card required. The pricing page lists HTTP, port, ping and keyword monitors for free, and caps the plan at 5 integrations. SMS and voice calls need purchased credits. Its terms say the service "is available for any use, including commercial and business use." Data is kept for 3 months.

The pricing page is not fully consistent: its feature list and its FAQ disagree on whether some monitor types (API, UDP, DNS, SSL expiry) are free. Check the type you need when you sign up.

HetrixTools

HetrixTools gives 15 uptime monitors and 15 server monitors free, with checks every minute on all plans. Free monitors run from 4 of its 12 locations. Alerts go to about 19 channels, including email, Slack, Telegram, Discord and webhooks; SMS and phone need paid credits. Public status pages are included.

Better Stack

Better Stack's free tier is "10 monitors & heartbeats, 1 status page", with Slack and email alerts. Its check-frequency docs put free plans at 3 minutes; 30-second checks are paid. The pricing page calls the tier "Free for personal projects."

Checkly

Checkly's Hobby plan is the one to look at if you want more than a ping. It includes 10 uptime monitors at up to every 2 minutes, plus 10,000 API check runs and 1,000 Playwright browser check runs a month, hard-capped: checks stop when the credits are used up. Alerts go to email, Slack and webhooks. A status page is included without a custom domain.

Phare

Phare's free plan is metered in events, not monitors: 100,000 monitoring events a month, which the page estimates at around 5 monitors. Each check from each region counts, so the real number depends on your interval and region count. Alerts are unlimited, but SMS and voice are not included. Public status pages are unlimited, with custom domains and SSL.

OpenStatus

OpenStatus's Hobby plan is small: one monitor, a minimum interval of 10 minutes, and one status page with three components. Its interest is elsewhere: the code is AGPL-3.0 on GitHub and self-hostable with Docker Compose, with monitors and status pages definable in YAML or Terraform.

Self-hosted options

Self-hosting removes the monitor limit, but the monitor now runs on your infrastructure. Put it on a different server, provider or region from what it watches, or it goes down with the thing it is meant to report on.

Uptime Kuma

Uptime Kuma is MIT-licensed and covers HTTP(s), keyword and JSON-query checks, TCP, ping, DNS, WebSocket, push monitors and Docker containers. The README lists 20-second intervals, 90+ notification services and multiple status pages. The README's install command:

docker run -d --restart=always -p 3001:3001 -v uptime-kuma:/app/data --name uptime-kuma louislam/uptime-kuma:2

It is configured through a web UI, which makes it the easiest of the three to start with.

Gatus

Gatus is Apache-2.0 and configured in a YAML file rather than a UI, which suits a repo-and-review workflow. Conditions can check the status code, response time, body and IP. The README lists alerts to Slack, Mattermost, PagerDuty, Teams, Google Chat and others, plus a status dashboard and uptime badges. Start it with:

docker run -p 8080:8080 --name gatus ghcr.io/twin/gatus:stable

Upptime

Upptime needs no server at all. GitHub Actions checks your endpoints as often as every 5 minutes, downtime opens a GitHub issue that closes on recovery, and a static status page is published to GitHub Pages. The code is MIT. The README says it is free for GitHub users; how many Actions minutes it uses depends on your repo and plan, so check GitHub's billing for yours.

Side by side

Tool	Type	Free monitors	Fastest free check	Status page	Notes
UptimeRobot	Hosted	50	5 min	1, basic	Commercial use allowed; 5 integrations
HetrixTools	Hosted	15 uptime + 15 server	1 min	Yes, public	4 of 12 locations
Better Stack	Hosted	10 (incl. heartbeats)	3 min	1	"For personal projects"; Slack + email
Checkly	Hosted	10 uptime	2 min	Yes, no custom domain	Plus 10k API / 1k browser runs
Phare	Hosted	~5 (100k events)	Not published for free	Unlimited, custom domain	Metered per check per region
OpenStatus	Hosted / AGPL	1	10 min	1, 3 components	Self-hostable
Uptime Kuma	Self-hosted, MIT	No limit	20 s	Multiple	Web UI, 90+ notifiers
Gatus	Self-hosted, Apache-2.0	No limit	Your config	Dashboard	YAML config
Upptime	GitHub Actions, MIT	No limit	5 min	GitHub Pages	No server needed

How to choose

• Many small sites, no server to run: UptimeRobot, for the monitor count and the explicit commercial-use terms.
• Outages shorter than five minutes matter: HetrixTools (1 minute) or Checkly (2 minutes) on the hosted side; Uptime Kuma if you self-host.
• You want to test an API response or a login flow, not just a 200: Checkly's API and Playwright check runs.
• A status page on your own domain for free: Phare.
• Config in git, reviewed like code: Gatus, Upptime, or OpenStatus's YAML/Terraform.
• Zero infrastructure and a public repo is fine: Upptime.

FAQ

Is UptimeRobot's free plan allowed for commercial use?

Yes. Its terms say the service is available for any use, including commercial and business use. The free plan is 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval with one basic status page.

Uptime Kuma vs UptimeRobot?

UptimeRobot is hosted: nothing to run, 50 monitors, 5-minute checks on the free plan. Uptime Kuma is self-hosted under MIT: no monitor limit and intervals down to 20 seconds, but you run the server, and it should not share one with the sites it watches.

Which free uptime monitor checks every minute?

HetrixTools checks every minute on its free plan. Among self-hosted tools, Uptime Kuma and Gatus check as often as you configure them.

Can I get a free status page on a custom domain?

Phare's free plan includes unlimited public status pages with custom domains. UptimeRobot's terms limit its free status page to an UptimeRobot URL, and Checkly's free status page has no custom domain.

How current are these limits?

Every figure was checked against the vendor's own page on 11 November 2026. Free tiers change; check the pricing page before you rely on a number.

---

If you self-host the monitor, the Coolify alternatives cover where to run it. Before launch, go through the launch-day SEO checklist, then see where to launch your side project. More tools for shipping and running a project are in the Devtools directory.