Freedom251 › Uptime Monitoring Software
Cabot
What Cabot is
Cabot is a free, open-source watchdog that you host yourself for websites and infrastructure. It monitors logical services across one or more machines, combining related checks into service statuses. Built-in monitoring covers Graphite metrics, Jenkins jobs, and web endpoints. Graphite checks can compare a selected metric with an equality, greater-than, or less-than threshold. Services use Passing, Warning, Error, and Critical states, with alert frequency tied to severity. Notifications can be sent through email, Hipchat, Slack, SMS, telephone, or webhooks; telephone alerts are limited to qualifying Critical conditions. Cabot can synchronize an on-duty rota from a shared calendar using an iCalendar feed every 30 minutes. It documents a browsable API with HTTP Basic or session authentication and Django permissions for write methods. Docker Compose is recommended for setup, with Caddy or another reverse proxy supported. The project is stable and used in production, but not actively maintained.
Who it suits
Cabot suits technical teams wanting self-hosted monitoring for services, metrics, jobs, and endpoints. Its free MIT-licensed project can fit organizations comfortable managing deployment and maintenance themselves.
What it does well
- Free and open source under an MIT license
- Monitors Graphite, Jenkins, and web endpoints
- Groups checks into logical services
- Offers email, Slack, SMS, and webhook alerts
- Provides a browsable authenticated API
What to know first
- The project is not actively maintained
- Listed plugins may not be validated
- Rota lacks escalation and shift-swap support
- Telephone alerts require qualifying Critical conditions
Verdict
Cabot covers service checks, threshold monitoring, severity states, alert channels, and a calendar-based on-call rota without a license fee. Its self-hosted deployment and inactive maintenance status mean teams need to handle operations and evaluate plugin reliability themselves.
Facts from Cabot's own pages
- Alert channels
- The alerting documentation lists email, Hipchat, Slack, SMS, and telephone as supported out of the box, with other channels available through plugins. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Alert severity
- Service statuses include Passing, Warning, Error and Critical, with alert frequency depending on status. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- API
- Cabot documents a browsable API with HTTP Basic or session authentication and Django permission checks for write methods. · github.com, 11 Oct 2026
- API access
- The API supports HTTP basic authentication and session authentication, with Django permissions controlling access to write methods. · github.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Built-in checks
- The homepage lists Graphite metrics, Jenkins jobs, and web endpoints as things Cabot can monitor. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Deployment
- The quickstart recommends Docker Compose and supports running Cabot behind Caddy or a separately configured reverse proxy. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Free plan
- Yes · cabotapp.com, 20 Sept 2026
- Graphite thresholds
- Graphite checks support equality and greater-than or less-than comparisons against a chosen metric threshold. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Keyword monitoring
- Yes · cabotapp.com, 20 Sept 2026
- License and cost
- The project describes Cabot as free and open source, and its repository identifies an MIT license. · github.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Logical service monitoring
- Cabot monitors logical services across one or many machines and combines related checks into service statuses. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Maintenance
- The repository says Cabot is stable and used in production but is not actively maintained, and that maintainers are wanted. · github.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Monitoring
- It can monitor Graphite metrics, Jenkins jobs and web endpoints. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- On-call rota
- Cabot can sync an on-duty rota from a shared calendar with an iCalendar feed; syncing runs every 30 minutes. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Plugins
- Plugins can add alerting and check functionality, but the documentation says listed plugins may not have been validated and should be tested at the user's own risk. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Project status
- The project README says Cabot is stable and used in production but is not actively maintained, and seeks maintainers. · github.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Cabot is a self-hosted watchdog for websites and infrastructure that alerts when services go down or metrics exceed thresholds. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Rota limitation
- Cabot does not support several support layers, alert escalation or shift swaps through its rota feature. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Server monitoring
- Yes · cabotapp.com, 20 Sept 2026
- Service monitoring
- Cabot groups checks into logical services, which can run across multiple machines. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- Severity levels
- Services have Passing, Warning, Error, and Critical statuses, and telephone alerts are limited to Critical status when the listed service and duty-officer conditions are met. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
- SSL expiry alerts
- Yes · cabotapp.com, 20 Sept 2026
- Support and limitations
- The services documentation says a formal alert acknowledgement and escalation procedure may suit larger organizations, and invites suggestions and pull requests. · cabotapp.com, 11 Oct 2026
Where Cabot stands on Freedom251
- Uptime Monitoring Software#9 of 48
- Uptime monitoring services#23 of 48