The best uptime monitoring tool for most small apps is UptimeRobot, whose free plan covers 50 monitors at 5-minute intervals and allows commercial use. Choose Better Stack if you want on-call and incident management in one place, Checkly for browser checks written as code, Cronitor or Healthchecks.io for scheduled jobs, Pingdom for an established paid service, and Uptime Kuma if you want to self-host for free. Whichever you pick, monitor the login flow and background jobs as well as the homepage, because a homepage can stay up while the rest of the product is broken.
A green status page next to a broken product is the normal outcome of default uptime monitoring. Plans and prices below were checked on each vendor's own site on November 2, 2026.
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Free option | Paid from | Self-host |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UptimeRobot | Simple HTTP checks at low cost | 50 monitors, 5-minute interval | Solo, from $12/month billed annually | No |
| Better Stack | Monitoring plus incident management | 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page | Responder from $29/month billed annually | No |
| Checkly | Monitors as code, browser checks | Hobby, $0 | Starter, $24/month | No |
| Cronitor | Cron and background jobs | Hacker, $0 | Business, $2 per monitor and $5 per user a month | No |
| Healthchecks.io | Simple cron monitoring | Hobbyist, $0 | $5/month | Yes, open source |
| Pingdom | Established paid monitoring | Free trial | From $16.50/month, varies by volume | No |
| Uptime Kuma | Self-hosted monitoring | Free software, you pay for hosting | None | Yes, open source |
What uptime monitoring software should check
There are three levels, and most teams only do the first:
- Is it reachable? A ping or an HTTP 200 from the homepage.
- Does it work? A real request through the critical path: log in, load the dashboard, submit the form.
- Did the background work happen? The nightly invoice job, the webhook processor, the queue that drains.
Levels two and three are where real outages hide, because level one keeps returning 200 throughout.
The best uptime monitoring tools
1. UptimeRobot: best free uptime monitoring for most small apps
UptimeRobot's free plan includes 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval, and the page describes it as good for personal and commercial projects, with no credit card required. Paid plans shorten the interval: its plan comparison lists 60 seconds on Solo, 30 seconds on Team and 15 seconds on Scale.
Pricing: Free; Solo from $12/month billed annually ($13 monthly); Team $39/month billed annually ($46 monthly); Scale from $79/month billed annually ($98 monthly).
Limits: it's strongest at simple checks, so a browser check through your login flow needs a different tool.
2. Better Stack: best for monitoring plus on-call
Better Stack combines uptime monitoring, transaction monitoring, heartbeats for cron jobs and incident management. Its free plan, described as free for personal projects, includes 10 monitors and heartbeats and 1 status page.
Pricing: Free; a responder starts at $29/month billed annually ($34 monthly) and includes unlimited phone call alerts.
Limits: you pay more than a simple pinger, and the value comes from using the incident features.
3. Checkly: best for developers and browser checks
Checkly suits developers who want checks in version control, reviewed like code, running real browser flows rather than HTTP pings. That is the level-two monitoring above.
Pricing: Hobby $0; Starter $24/month; Team $64/month.
Limits: it assumes someone is comfortable writing and maintaining checks.
4. Cronitor: best for scheduled jobs at a team
A scheduled job that stops running produces no error, no alert and no downtime, only data that quietly stops updating. Cronitor catches this by having the job check in.
Pricing: Hacker is free forever; Business has a 14-day free trial, then costs $2 per monitor and $5 per user a month.
Limits: per-monitor pricing means you should count your jobs first.
5. Healthchecks.io: simplest cron monitoring
Healthchecks.io does one job: it alerts you when a job doesn't check in on time. It's open source, so you can also self-host it.
Pricing: Hobbyist $0; a $5/month plan; Business $20/month; Business Plus $80/month.
Limits: it's focused on cron and heartbeats rather than full website monitoring.
6. Pingdom: the established option
Pingdom is a long-running paid monitoring service, offering a free trial rather than a free plan.
Pricing: the pricing page starts at $16.50/month, and the price depends on the volume you choose.
Limits: for small apps, the free plans above may be enough.
7. Uptime Kuma: best self-hosted uptime monitor
Uptime Kuma is an open-source, self-hosted tool that monitors HTTP(s), TCP, ping, DNS records, Docker containers and more.
Pricing: the software is free; you pay for the server.
Limits: it needs to run somewhere that isn't the thing it monitors, and you maintain that server yourself.
Got an idea? Build it now!
Just start with a simple prompt. No coding required: Greta.sh turns your idea into a working app in minutes.
The best free uptime monitoring tools
- Hosted, general purpose: UptimeRobot, with 50 monitors at 5-minute intervals.
- Hosted, with a status page: Better Stack, with 10 monitors and heartbeats and 1 status page, for personal projects.
- Scheduled jobs: Healthchecks.io or Cronitor's Hacker plan.
- Browser checks: Checkly's Hobby plan.
- No usage limits except your own server: Uptime Kuma.
Check the interval before you rely on a free plan. At 5 minutes, you could be down for several minutes before the first alert.
The checks worth having on a small app
Start with five:
- The critical user path, as a browser check rather than a ping.
- The payment or billing webhook endpoint.
- Every scheduled job, through check-in monitoring.
- SSL certificate expiry, since it's an entirely preventable outage.
- A check from a second region, because "down for everyone" and "down from one datacentre" need different responses.
Send alerts somewhere you will actually see at 3am, and test that path deliberately once. An alert route nobody has exercised is a guess. Uptime checks only tell you the app is reachable. For exceptions inside a page that loads fine, pair them with one of the error monitoring tools we compared.
How to choose
- You want free and simple: UptimeRobot.
- You want on-call schedules and incidents in one place: Better Stack.
- You want tests in version control: Checkly.
- Your main worry is a nightly job failing silently: Healthchecks.io or Cronitor.
- You have a spare server and like control: Uptime Kuma.
Got an idea? Build it now!
Just start with a simple prompt. No coding required: Greta.sh turns your idea into a working app in minutes.
If you built the app with AI
The monitoring story is the same, because the app is deployed software and needs checking from outside. Greta.sh builds and deploys apps and isn't an uptime monitor, so install one of the tools above. Its incident handoff template covers what to record before you start fixing something. The free plan is 5 credits a day and cannot deploy; deployment starts on Starter, a $5/month welcome offer (normally $20/month).
FAQ
What is the best free uptime monitoring tool?
UptimeRobot for hosted monitoring, with 50 monitors at 5-minute intervals on its free plan. Uptime Kuma is the best free option if you can self-host, and Healthchecks.io is a good free choice for cron jobs.
What is uptime monitoring software?
It's software that checks your website, app or server at regular intervals from outside your own systems, then alerts you when a check fails. More advanced tools also run browser flows, track scheduled jobs and manage incidents.
How often should uptime checks run?
Often enough that you hear about a problem before your users do: every minute or two for a critical path, if your plan allows it. Free plans often run less frequently, such as every 5 minutes.
What is the most commonly missed check?
Scheduled jobs. They fail silently, produce no downtime and are usually discovered later, when someone notices stale data. Check-in monitoring catches this.
Do I need uptime monitoring if my host has a status page?
Yes. A host's status page reports the host's view of the host. It can't tell you that your app returns a 500 on login, or that your nightly job stopped running three days ago.
Is UptimeRobot free for commercial use?
UptimeRobot's pricing page describes its free plan as good for personal and commercial projects. Better Stack's free plan, by contrast, is described as free for personal projects, so check the terms if you're monitoring a business.
