Seven uptime monitoring tools, and where each one wins

UptimeRobot has the largest free tier of the seven. Uptime Kuma is the one to install if what you watch is infrastructure. Better Stack is the answer when the real question is who gets woken up. And not one of the seven announces reading the page a visitor actually sees.

Every figure below comes from their own pages, read on 2026-07-29. Where their page does not mention something, the cell says "not announced" rather than "cannot do it".

The seven, on the five questions that decide a purchase

Tool Free hosted tier Entry price Runs on your own server Reads the rendered page Tells you what to fix What it wins against UptimeEZ
UptimeRobot Advantage: UptimeRobot. 50 monitors, 5 minute interval 9 EUR a month for 10 monitors No, hosted only Not announced A status and a keyword result Free hosted tier
Uptime Kuma No reading on file No reading on file Docker, or Node.js 20.4 and up with PM2 Not announced The check result Monitor types, Notification services, Interface languages
Better Stack Advantage: Better Stack. 10 monitors and heartbeats No reading on file No, hosted only Not announced No reading on file On-call rotations and escalation
StatusCake Advantage: StatusCake. 10 tests, 1 SSL, 1 domain 16.66 EUR a month, billed annually No, hosted only Not announced The test result Page speed and server monitoring
Pingdom Trial only, 30 days 14.33 EUR a month for 10 uptime checks No, hosted only Not announced Metrics and alerts Real User Monitoring, Transaction monitoring
Site24x7 Advantage: Site24x7. 5 monitors, 3 locations No reading on file No, hosted only Not announced No reading on file Monitoring locations, Server and network monitoring
Hyperping Advantage: Hyperping. 20 monitors, 5 minute checks No reading on file No, hosted only Not announced The check result Browser checks, Status page on your own domain
UptimeEZ None. The self-hosted engine is free forever 9.90 EUR a month, monitors not counted Yes, MIT licensed, or hosted by us Nine signals and a silhouette One of twenty-five causes, with the remedy Takes 65 of the 98 rows across the seven comparisons

the tool takes this criterion our own line, for reference

We chose these five criteria, so read the column that matters to you rather than the count. "Not announced" means their page does not mention the feature, which is not the same as the product not doing it. "No reading on file" means that criterion is not part of that tool's comparison, so we carry no figure for it: it says nothing about the product either way.

Uptime Kuma is why two cells are empty rather than zero: its repository announces no hosted service, so it has neither a free tier nor an entry price to read. It is MIT licensed software you install yourself, which is what its "runs on your own server" cell says.

Which one to pick, including when the answer is not us

Every one of the seven below has a job it does better than we do, and each entry says which. Pretending otherwise would cost us the reader who already runs one of these tools, and that reader is most of the people on this page.

Take UptimeRobot if

You watch a handful of sites, a status code is the answer you need, and you want it for nothing. Fifty monitors at a five minute interval, no card asked, and four monitoring regions. If what you must know is that the site is unreachable from Sydney specifically, they do that and we do not.

The full UptimeRobot comparison, criterion by criterion

Take Uptime Kuma if

You monitor infrastructure rather than websites, and you have a machine with Docker or Node.js 20.4 and up. TCP ports, ping, DNS records, Steam servers, Docker containers, and more than ninety notification services against our four. For that job it is the better tool, and we would tell you so.

The full Uptime Kuma comparison, criterion by criterion

Take Better Stack if

A person has to be woken up, and the question is which one. On-call rotations, escalation policies and incident management sit in the same product, and we do none of the three. If you have a rota, they are built for you and we are not.

The full Better Stack comparison, criterion by criterion

Take StatusCake if

You want certificate and domain expiry watched for free alongside your uptime tests, or a saturated server matters to you as much as the page it serves. Server resources are something we do not watch at all.

The full StatusCake comparison, criterion by criterion

Take Pingdom if

You have to prove a service level using data from your client's own visitors, or a checkout has to be clicked through rather than requested. Real User Monitoring and scripted multi-step journeys are both real capabilities we do not have.

The full Pingdom comparison, criterion by criterion

Take Site24x7 if

You answer for a whole estate rather than a list of websites, or something sits behind a firewall. Sixteen measurement locations, on-premise pollers, servers and networks and clouds in one console: a category we do not compete in.

The full Site24x7 comparison, criterion by criterion

Take Hyperping if

What you are really buying is a public page your clients refresh during an incident, on your own domain. Their status pages are the best made of the seven, and their browser checks drive a real browser through a page, which is the one thing our HTTP reading cannot replace.

The full Hyperping comparison, criterion by criterion

Take UptimeEZ if

The sites are not yours. Thirty of them, mostly WordPress, mostly on shared hosting, and the client calls you before you know. It reads the answer instead of counting it: nine layout signals, forty-one signatures for a database error printed inside a valid page, a noindex caught on every pass. When something breaks it names one of twenty-five causes and the first thing to check, in ten languages. One read-only link per client, monitors not counted, 9.90 EUR a month with no commitment. The engine is MIT and runs on PHP 8.2 with no Docker, so you can also host it yourself for nothing.

Every number in this last clause is countable in the engine source, which is public and MIT: src/Check/Css.php for the layout signals, src/Check/Database.php for the error signatures, src/Diagnose.php for the causes and their fixes, and lang/ for the interface catalogues.

The rows where all seven pages say the same thing

Out of every criterion in the seven comparisons, these are the ones where not one of the seven pages announces anything, read on 2026-07-29.

  • Reads the rendered layout
  • Finds a database error inside a 200

Seven tools answer whether the server replied, in seven different ways and some of them better than ours. The page a visitor actually gets is a different reading, and it is the one nobody puts on their pricing page. A stylesheet that failed still returns 200. So does a database error printed inside an otherwise valid page.

Their pages saying nothing about it does not prove the product cannot do it. It does mean nobody is selling it, and that is the gap this one was built in.

Each comparison in full, criterion by criterion

Where these figures come from, and how to prove us wrong

Nothing here comes from another comparison site or from memory. Each fact was read on the page linked below, on the date shown, and it lives in one place in our code so the seven pages and this one cannot drift apart. Three rules apply without exception: no fact that is not on their own page, "not announced" is never written as "does not do it", and every comparison must say what the other tool does better.

Found a figure that is out of date, or a limit we got wrong? Tell us and we will correct it, including when the correction favours a competitor: we would rather be right than flattering. support@uptimeez.com.

Questions buyers ask before they shortlist

Which of these tools has the largest free hosted tier?

UptimeRobot, with 50 monitors at a five minute interval and no card asked. Hyperping follows with 20 monitors at the same interval, StatusCake gives 10 tests plus one SSL and one domain monitor, Better Stack 10 monitors and 10 heartbeats, Site24x7 5 monitors from 3 locations at a one minute interval. Pingdom has no free plan, only a 30 day trial. UptimeEZ has no free hosted tier either: the engine itself is MIT and free forever, but you install it yourself.

Which of them can I run on my own server?

Uptime Kuma and the UptimeEZ engine. Kuma needs Docker, or Node.js 20.4 and up with PM2, so it wants a machine you control. The UptimeEZ engine is MIT too and needs PHP 8.2 with a database, which plain shared hosting already gives you. The other six announce a hosted service only.

Which one handles on-call alerting and escalation?

Better Stack, where on-call rotations, escalation policies and incident management are a core feature rather than an add-on. Its free tier carries 10 monitors and 10 heartbeats. UptimeEZ does not do on-call at all, so if the real question is who gets woken up, this comparison is not the one that decides it.

What is the cheapest of these to start paying for?

Of the figures on their own pricing pages: UptimeRobot at 9 EUR a month for 10 monitors, UptimeEZ at 9.90 EUR a month with monitors not counted, Pingdom at 14.33 EUR a month for 10 uptime checks and one advanced check, StatusCake at 16.66 EUR a month billed annually. For Better Stack, Site24x7 and Hyperping we carry no entry figure at all, and we would rather say so than guess at one.

Do any of them check that the page still looks right?

None of the seven announces it. Hyperping comes closest with browser checks that drive a real browser through a page, on the middle tier and up. Reading the rendered layout, and catching a database error printed inside a page that returns 200, are not on any of the seven pages we read. That is a statement about their pages, not a proof about their products.

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