Compare · Alternatives · checked 26 Oct 2026

Best UptimeRobot alternatives in 2026

Six services compared on the things that actually differ: how a failure becomes an alert, what 10 or 50 monitors cost, what the free tier covers, and what sits behind a higher plan. Every price and feature below comes from the vendors’ own pages, linked at the end, and a column says where we didn’t find an answer.

Who is writing this: Alex, who runs PingWise, one of the six tools below. That is a bias, so the page is built to be checked: the order is ours, by the criteria in the next section, and the tables let you judge by yours; the numbers are the same ones on our comparison page, each tool has a “where it falls short” section, including ours, and if you work at one of these companies and something here is wrong, email us and we correct it within one working day.

Key takeaways

In our view the strongest reason to leave UptimeRobot is confirmation, not price. It documents up to 3 retries in the same region before it alerts. If a false alarm at night costs you more than a few euros a month, look first at how each alternative confirms an outage.
Free tiers moved. UptimeRobot’s free plan covers 50 monitors at 5 minutes from one region. HetrixTools gives 15 monitors every minute for free, and PingWise’s 650,000 free credits a month cover 15 monitors every minute or 75 at 5 minutes.
At 50 monitors every minute the spread is wide: free on nothing, €7.55 at PingWise, $15 at HetrixTools, €16.66 at StatusCake, €19 at UptimeRobot, $21 at Better Stack, €21.60 at updown.io, and $0 plus a server for Uptime Kuma.
If you need SMS or phone calls today, UptimeRobot, Better Stack, StatusCake, HetrixTools and updown.io have them. PingWise does not yet.

Why people look for an UptimeRobot alternative

UptimeRobot is the tool most people start with, and for good reason: it is simple, it has a large free plan, and it has been around for a long time. The reasons to look elsewhere are specific, and they are the criteria for this list.

Confirmation from one region

UptimeRobot documents that a failed check is retried up to 3 times in the same region before you are alerted. A retry from the same place cannot tell a site outage from a bad route between that region and your server. The alternatives below range from the same in-region re-checks (StatusCake) to “one more location” and “two thirds of 15 probes on three continents”.

Checks run from one place at a time

UptimeRobot has 4 regions, but each scheduled check runs from one of them at a time, and the documented retries come from that same region. HetrixTools and PingWise document that every scheduled check runs from several locations at once.

Team members and integrations on higher plans

UptimeRobot’s documentation lists 3 team members on its Team plan, and webhook and PagerDuty alerts on Team as well. If you are a small team that wants everyone in the account and a webhook on day one, that is a plan step up.

Paying for a plan, not for use

UptimeRobot sells plans by monitor count and interval. Two alternatives below, updown.io and PingWise, sell prepaid credits instead, so a quiet month costs less and nothing renews. Whether that is better depends on how steady your monitoring is; a flat plan is easier to approve in some finance departments.

The six UptimeRobot alternatives, side by side

HTTP monitors at the given interval, on each service’s cheapest plan that covers it, per month. “Before alerting” is each vendor’s documented confirmation rule.

Service	Cheapest paid	10 × 1 min	50 × 1 min	50 × 5 min	Free tier	Locations	Before alerting
PingWise ours	credits from €5	free	€7.55	free	650,000 credits every month	15 cities, 6 continents	Two thirds of 15 probes (10), 3 continents, 3 providers, 2 rounds in a row
updown.io	€5 pack · 200k credits	€4.32	€21.60	€4.32	100,000 credits, once	10 cities, 5 continents	3 failures, at least one from another location
HetrixTools	$8.33/mo · Professional, annual	$0	$15.00	$15.00	15 monitors @ 1 min, 4 locations	12 cities, 5 continents	More than half of the selected locations
Better Stack	$21/mo · +50 monitors, annual	≥ $21	$21	$21	10 monitors @ 3 min	4 regions	At least 3 of 4+ locations fail
StatusCake	€16.66/mo · Superior, annual	€16.66	€16.66	€16.66	3–10 monitors @ 5–15 min	~41 locations	0–3 re-checks in the same region
Uptime Kuma	free, self-hosted	$0 + server	$0 + server	$0 + server	unlimited, your server	1 · wherever you run it	Retries from the same server

PingWise prices use the rate of the credit pack a year of that usage would use up; the free 650,000 credits a month are subtracted first. Other prices are as published on the sources at the end, in the currency the vendor shows there. All prices are before VAT. UptimeRobot itself is in the full table further down.

1. PingWise

Ours. Confirmed alerts from 15 probes on 6 continents, prepaid credits, no seats.

Who it is for

People whose main complaint about UptimeRobot is being paged for outages that weren’t there: hosting companies, agencies and anyone who is on call for several sites. Also small accounts, because the free monthly credits cover more than most of them use.

What stands out

Every scheduled check runs from several cities at once, not from one region with retries. Nothing pages you until two thirds of 15 probes (10) fail, on at least 3 continents and 3 different providers, two rounds in a row. A Cloudflare challenge or block is reported as “blocked”, not as down. Every alert says what each probe saw: resolved IP, status code, timing and error. Team members are unlimited.

Compared with UptimeRobot

Confirmation is the difference: 3 retries in one region there, 10 of 15 probes across continents here. The free tier is larger in use: 650,000 credits a month run 15 monitors every minute or 75 at 5 minutes, against 50 at 5 minutes. Importing is built in: a read-only UptimeRobot key brings the monitors over with a preview, and the two can run side by side for 14 days so you can count the false alerts yourself before deciding.

Price

10 monitors every minute: free. 50 every minute: €7.55 a month. 50 every 5 minutes: free. Packs from €5 for 250,000 credits, valid 24 months, no subscription.

Where it falls short

No SMS or phone-call alerts yet. No browser or transaction checks, no server agent, no blacklist monitoring, 15 probes rather than the hundreds some older vendors list. 15-second intervals, custom ports and POST requests need a domain you have verified with us. It is also the youngest service on this list.

2. updown.io

The service closest to ours in shape: prepaid credits, no subscription, a small and focused product.

Who it is for

Developers who want a cheap, simple monitor that charges for use, with 15-second checks and an API, and who don’t need an incident-management layer around it.

What stands out

Prepaid credits from a €5 pack, 10 cities on 5 continents, custom HTTP requests with any method, headers and a body on any domain, an Apdex score per check, SMS alerts, status pages and heartbeat monitors.

Compared with UptimeRobot

Confirmation is better than one-region retries: updown.io documents three failures with at least one from another location. Pricing is per use rather than per plan, which suits small and uneven setups. Its free credits are a one-off 100,000 at sign-up rather than a monthly allowance.

Price

10 monitors every minute: €4.32 a month. 50 every minute: €21.60. 50 every 5 minutes: €4.32. Cheapest pack €5 for 200,000 credits.

Where it falls short

Unlimited team members are not found in its documentation, and neither are PagerDuty alerts, monitor groups, bulk changes or slow-response alerts. The free credits don’t renew. One other location is a lighter confirmation rule than a cross-continent quorum.

3. HetrixTools

The most generous free 1-minute plan in this comparison, with every check run from several locations.

Who it is for

Hosting companies and anyone who runs a mail server: it bundles uptime with blacklist monitoring and a free server agent, and its free plan is enough for a small fleet.

What stands out

15 monitors every minute from 4 locations, free. Every scheduled check runs from several locations at once, like ours. Blacklist monitoring of IPs and domains, a server agent for CPU, memory, disks and services at no extra cost, SMS alerts, status pages, heartbeats.

Compared with UptimeRobot

A better free tier for 1-minute checks (15 monitors every minute against 50 at 5 minutes), multi-location checks on every round rather than retries, and the tools a hosting company needs around uptime. Alerts fire when more than half of the locations you selected fail.

Price

10 monitors every minute: free. 50 every minute: $15 a month. 50 every 5 minutes: $15. Cheapest paid plan $8.33 a month, Professional, billed annually.

Where it falls short

A public API for uptime monitors, monitor groups and bulk changes are not found in its documentation, and unlimited team members are listed on the Business plan only. “More than half of the selected locations” is a looser rule than a fixed cross-continent quorum, and 12 cities on 5 continents is less ground than some rivals cover.

4. Better Stack

Uptime monitoring inside an incident-management suite: on-call, escalation, phone calls, logs.

Who it is for

Teams with an on-call rota. If several people share night duty and you want rotations, escalation policies and a phone that rings, Better Stack is built around that, and UptimeRobot is not.

What stands out

On-call scheduling, SMS and phone calls, Playwright browser checks billed by browser minute, UDP, POP3 and IMAP monitors next to the usual ones, a status page, and log management and infrastructure monitoring from the same vendor. It also works behind a dedicated monitor, taking confirmed outages by webhook.

Compared with UptimeRobot

A stronger confirmation rule, at least 3 of 4 or more locations failing, and a much broader product. The trade is cost and complexity: it is a platform priced per monitor pack and per on-call seat, not a simple monitor.

Price

Cheapest paid plan $21 a month for an extra 50 monitors, billed annually; 10, 50 at 1 minute and 50 at 5 minutes all land on that $21. Free plan: 10 monitors at 3 minutes. On-call seats are listed at $29 per user.

Where it falls short

On-call responder seats are paid ($29 each, billed annually), the fastest interval is 30 seconds, and if you only need monitoring the incident-management layer is weight you pay for.

5. StatusCake

Flat yearly plans with page-speed, SSL and domain tools.

Who it is for

People who want one fixed yearly price and extra tools beyond uptime, and a finance department that prefers the same invoice every year.

What stands out

Page-speed monitors, SSL scoring, domain monitors with blacklist and DNS-record checks, a Linux server agent and SSH tests, about 41 locations, SMS alerts, invoice billing on Business. The Superior plan covers up to 100 monitors at one price.

Compared with UptimeRobot

Similar shape: plans by monitor count, retries in the same region (StatusCake documents 0 to 3 confirmation re-checks). The reasons to pick it over UptimeRobot are the extra tools and the flat yearly bill, not the alerting rule.

Price

Superior, billed annually: €16.66 a month, whether you run 10 or 50 monitors every minute. Free plan: 3 to 10 monitors at 5 to 15 minutes.

Where it falls short

Confirmation is in-region re-checks, the same single-region confirmation as UptimeRobot. Logins are limited to 1 or 2 on the lower plans, 30-second checks are on Business only, and the status page is a separate product.

6. Uptime Kuma

Free, open source, on your own server. The right answer for some people, and we say so.

Who it is for

Homelabs, side projects, and anyone whose policy forbids sending target lists and results to a third party. Also anyone who needs to check things that are not reachable from the internet: databases, Docker containers, private services.

What stands out

No limits beyond your server, a very long list of check types, every notification channel you can name, status pages, groups, heartbeats, and your data never leaves your machine.

Compared with UptimeRobot

It replaces the bill with a server to run and patch. It checks from one place, wherever you run it, with retries from the same server, so it has the same blind spot as a single-region monitor, only more so: if its own host or network goes down, it either goes quiet or reports everything down.

Price

$0 plus a server, for any number of monitors. A documented REST API for managing monitors was not found in its public documentation.

Where it falls short

One location, no confirmation from elsewhere, and somebody has to maintain it. Inside the network it is excellent; for the outside view it needs a hosted service next to it.

Also considered

Three more services we compare on this site, left out of the shortlist for the reasons given, not because they are bad.

Pingdom

About 146 probes in 26 countries, real-browser transaction checks, page speed and real-user monitoring, from SolarWinds. Left out because of price at small sizes: €14.33 a month for 10 checks and €60.50 for 50, with no free plan. If you need an enterprise supplier or a probe in a specific country, it belongs on your list.

Hyperping

18 regions, status pages, SMS and phone calls, browser checks, from $24 a month. Left out because we did not find a published confirmation rule and the entry plan costs more than most of the shortlist for the same monitoring.

Cronitor

Built around cron-job monitoring, with SDKs and per-run metrics, priced per monitor and per user ($2 and $5). Left out because its product is built around cron-job monitoring, and 50 monitors every minute cost $105 there. If scheduled jobs are your main worry, it is the specialist.

Features, side by side

On each service’s cheapest paid plan, as documented by that vendor.

✓ documented by the vendor · – documented as not offered, or ruled out by the vendor’s own documented behaviour (for example same-region retries) · n/d not found in the vendor's public documentation · text = yes, with that limit

Feature	PingWise	updown.io	HetrixTools	Better Stack	StatusCake	Uptime Kuma
Every check from several locations at once	✓	n/d	✓	n/d	–	–
Confirmation before paging	2 rounds, all 15 probes	2 more checks, ≥1 other location	majority of selected locations	≥3 locations must fail	0–3 re-checks, same region	retries, same server
Confirmation must span continents	✓	≥1 other location	n/d	3 of 4 regions	–	–
Confirmation must span providers	✓	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	–
Broken probes removed automatically	✓	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	–
WAF challenge shown as “blocked”, not down; Cloudflare allow-list managed for you	✓	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d
What each probe saw, in the alert	✓	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d
Prepaid credits, no subscription	✓	✓	–	–	–	free
Unlimited team members	✓	n/d	Business plan	$29/seat for monitoring; free members see Telemetry only	1–2 logins	n/d
Telegram and webhook alerts	✓	✓	✓	webhook	✓	✓
Slack, Teams and Discord alerts	✓	✓	✓	Slack, Teams	✓	✓
PagerDuty alerts	✓	n/d	✓	✓	✓	✓
15-second checks	verified domains	✓	1 min	30 s	30 s on Business	20 s
Ping (ICMP) to any host	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
SMS and phone alerts	soon	SMS	✓	✓	✓	via Twilio
Public status pages	✓	✓	✓	1 incl.	separate product	✓
Monitor groups: a status page, an alert channel and a maintenance window per group	✓	n/d	n/d	✓	tags	✓
Bulk changes across every monitor that matches a filter	✓	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	pause, resume, delete
Import from other monitoring tools, with a preview first	UptimeRobot, updown.io, Uptime Kuma, CSV	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	its own backups
Heartbeat / cron monitoring	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Domain expiry alerts	free · date by hand where the registry hides it	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Slow-response alerts	median of all probes, not one slow city	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d	n/d
Public API	✓	✓	n/d	✓	✓	n/d

All nine, including UptimeRobot

The same columns for every service we compare.

Service	Cheapest paid	10 × 1 min	50 × 1 min	50 × 5 min	Free tier	Locations	Before alerting
PingWise ours	credits from €5	free	€7.55	free	650,000 credits every month	15 cities, 6 continents	Two thirds of 15 probes (10), 3 continents, 3 providers, 2 rounds in a row
UptimeRobot	€9/mo · Solo, annual	€9	€19	€0	50 monitors @ 5 min	4 regions	Up to 3 retries in the same region
updown.io	€5 pack · 200k credits	€4.32	€21.60	€4.32	100,000 credits, once	10 cities, 5 continents	3 failures, at least one from another location
HetrixTools	$8.33/mo · Professional, annual	$0	$15.00	$15.00	15 monitors @ 1 min, 4 locations	12 cities, 5 continents	More than half of the selected locations
Better Stack	$21/mo · +50 monitors, annual	≥ $21	$21	$21	10 monitors @ 3 min	4 regions	At least 3 of 4+ locations fail
StatusCake	€16.66/mo · Superior, annual	€16.66	€16.66	€16.66	3–10 monitors @ 5–15 min	~41 locations	0–3 re-checks in the same region
Uptime Kuma	free, self-hosted	$0 + server	$0 + server	$0 + server	unlimited, your server	1 · wherever you run it	Retries from the same server
Pingdom	€14.33/mo · 10 checks, annual	€14.33	€60.50	€60.50	none · 30-day trial	~146 probes, 26 countries	One second probe, as far away as possible
Hyperping	$24/mo · Essentials, annual	$24	$24	$24	20 monitors @ 5 min	18 regions	Re-checked from other regions; rule not published
Cronitor	$2/monitor + $5/user	$25	$105	$105	5 monitors @ 5 min	11 regions	Consecutive failures; no second location documented

Per-vendor pages with features and sources: PingWise vs UptimeRobot · updown.io · HetrixTools · Better Stack · StatusCake · Uptime Kuma · Pingdom · Hyperping · Cronitor.

How to try an alternative without a gap

Keep UptimeRobot running. Nothing here requires cancelling first. Monitor the same sites from both for two weeks and compare the alerts you got.
Count the false alerts, not the features. Write down every alert from the old tool and check whether the site was really down. That number decides more than any table.
Import instead of retyping. UptimeRobot has an API with read-only keys; a service that can read it saves an afternoon. PingWise’s switch page imports from an UptimeRobot key with a preview of what will and won’t come over, and keeps the key, encrypted, only if you ask for the 14-day comparison report.
Check the free tier in your own numbers. Monitors × checks per month is the only honest unit. A 1-minute monitor is 43,200 checks a month; 50 at 5 minutes is 432,000.

UptimeRobot alternatives: common questions

What is the best free UptimeRobot alternative?

For 1-minute checks, HetrixTools (15 monitors every minute, 4 locations) and PingWise (650,000 credits a month, enough for 15 monitors every minute, confirmed by 15 probes) both give more than UptimeRobot’s free 50 monitors at 5 minutes. For unlimited monitors with your own server, Uptime Kuma.

Which alternative has the fewest false alerts?

Judge by the documented confirmation rule. UptimeRobot and StatusCake re-check in the same region; updown.io adds one other location; Better Stack needs 3 of 4 or more locations; HetrixTools needs more than half of the selected locations; PingWise needs 10 of 15 probes on 3 continents and 3 providers, twice. HetrixTools and PingWise document that every scheduled check runs from several locations, not only the confirmation.

Can I import my UptimeRobot monitors?

PingWise imports them from a read-only API key with a preview, including keyword, ping, port and heartbeat monitors, and shows by name what won’t come over (alert contacts and status pages). We did not find an UptimeRobot import documented by the other five.

Which alternatives have SMS or phone alerts?

UptimeRobot, Better Stack, StatusCake and HetrixTools document SMS and phone calls; updown.io documents SMS. PingWise alerts by email, Telegram, Slack, Teams, Discord, Google Chat, PagerDuty, ntfy, Pushover and webhook, and no SMS yet.

Is a self-hosted tool a real alternative?

For checks inside your network, yes, and it is free. For telling your site’s outage from your own network’s outage, no: a monitor in one place cannot do that. A sound pairing is Uptime Kuma inside the network and a hosted service outside.

How were these prices checked?

From each vendor’s public pricing and documentation pages on 26 Oct 2026, linked under Sources. Dollar prices are shown as published. We re-check quarterly and correct errors within one working day when a vendor tells us.

Sources

Compiled from each vendor's own pricing and documentation pages on 26 Oct 2026, linked under Sources. Vendors change plans and features; we re-check quarterly. All product names are trade marks of their owners and are used only to identify them. If you work at one of these companies and something here is wrong or out of date, email [email protected] and we will correct it within one working day.