Uptime Kuma is an open source uptime and status monitoring tool you can self-host — a UptimeRobot and Pingdom alternative that checks your sites, APIs, and services over HTTP, TCP, DNS, and more, then alerts you and shows a public status page.

What is Uptime Kuma?

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted uptime monitoring tool that watches your websites, APIs, and servers and tells you the moment one goes down. You add a monitor, pick how it should be checked, and Uptime Kuma probes it on a schedule, records the history, fires alerts, and shows the results on a clean dashboard and optional public status page.

What is Uptime Kuma best for?

Developers, sysadmins, and small-to-medium teams who want UptimeRobot-style monitoring without per-monitor SaaS fees or sending their endpoints to a third party. It’s a strong fit when you need to watch internal services a cloud checker can’t reach, run unlimited monitors for free, and host a branded status page on your own infrastructure.

What can Uptime Kuma do?

Monitor over HTTP(s), TCP, ping, DNS records, keyword match, HTTP JSON query, WebSocket, push, Steam game servers, and Docker containers
Check as often as every 20 seconds and view ping and response-time charts
Send alerts to 90+ notification services, including Telegram, Discord, Slack, Gotify, Pushover, and email (SMTP)
Publish one or more public status pages, with custom-domain mapping
Track TLS certificate expiry so you’re warned before a cert lapses
Secure the dashboard with two-factor authentication, route checks through a proxy, and switch the UI across many languages

Is Uptime Kuma free?

Yes — Uptime Kuma is fully free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tier, feature gating, or monitor limits. There’s no managed cloud edition to upsell, so the only cost is the server you run it on. Every feature, including unlimited monitors and all notification integrations, is available at no charge.

Where does Uptime Kuma fall short?

It checks from a single location — wherever you install it. There’s no built-in multi-region or global probing, so it can’t tell you a site is slow or down only for users in another part of the world.
Running one instance means no built-in redundancy: if your Uptime Kuma server goes down, you lose visibility until it’s back, so critical setups need a second monitor or external watchdog.
A single instance can strain when you push it to very large numbers of monitors, and there’s no managed edition or paid support to fall back on.

What does Uptime Kuma replace?

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted alternative to UptimeRobot and Pingdom. It covers the core job those services do — uptime checks, alerting, and a public status page — but you run it yourself, keep your data, and pay nothing per monitor. For deeper synthetic transactions or global multi-point checks, a commercial SaaS still goes further.

FAQ

Is Uptime Kuma open source? Yes. It’s released under the permissive MIT license, so the code is fully open and free to use, modify, and self-host with no restrictions.

Can I self-host Uptime Kuma for free? Yes. Self-hosting is free and there’s no paid edition — you only pay for the server it runs on. The easiest path is the official Docker image; a non-Docker install needs Node.js 20.4 or newer.

Is Uptime Kuma a good UptimeRobot alternative? For technical users, yes — you get unlimited monitors and all alert channels for free, and you can watch internal services. If you’d rather avoid running a server, or need SMS/voice alerts and global checks out of the box, hosted UptimeRobot may suit you better.

What do I need to run Uptime Kuma? A server with Docker (recommended) or Node.js 20.4+. It stores its data in a local SQLite database by default, so there’s no separate database to set up for a basic install.

If you want a lighter, config-file-driven option in the same space, see Gatus, another self-hosted uptime monitor in the roster.