Overview

Uptime Kuma is a free, MIT-licensed monitoring application that you host yourself. It is best suited to technically comfortable operators who want broad checks and control over deployment, while organisations seeking a managed service should look elsewhere. The main trade-off is clear: there is no licence fee, but installation, security and ongoing operation remain your responsibility.

Key features

Monitoring intervals can be as short as 20 seconds. Checks cover HTTP(S), TCP, WebSocket, Ping, DNS records, Push endpoints, Steam game servers and Docker containers, with keyword and JSON-query checks for inspecting response content rather than only connectivity. That range lets one deployment watch websites, infrastructure and selected application behaviour.

You can create multiple status pages and map them to specific domains, useful when separate products or customers need distinct public views. Published pages cache results for five minutes and refresh on that schedule, so a status page can lag behind the underlying checks by several minutes.

Native notifications include Telegram, Discord, Gotify, Slack, Pushover and SMTP email, with more than 90 services listed. Apprise integration adds another route for notification delivery. Prometheus-compatible metrics are exposed at /metrics and can use basic authentication or API-key authentication, making Kuma a sensible companion to an existing metrics stack.

Proxy support and two-factor authentication are supported. Official guidance covers Docker Compose, a Docker command and non-Docker installation on major Linux distributions. The project provides a temporary Frankfurt demo, but its data is deleted after 10 minutes, so it is for a quick look rather than a persistent evaluation.

Pricing

There is one plan: Self-hosted Uptime Kuma is free. It is MIT-licensed software, so the licence permits use, copying, modification, distribution, sublicensing and sale. There are no paid tiers or subscription renewal terms. This is an unusually flexible price model, but infrastructure, administration and any hosting costs are outside the software plan.

Platforms

Uptime Kuma is available for self-hosted Linux deployments and is accessible through the web. Its platform listing also includes API and Windows, making it relevant to mixed environments, although the official installation paths focus on Docker and major Linux distributions.

Who it's for

Choose Kuma if you can run and maintain a monitoring service, need DNS or synthetic checks alongside ordinary uptime checks, or want status pages and notifications without sending monitoring data to a vendor. It is also a strong fit for operators already using Prometheus. It is less suitable when you need a fully managed monitor, guaranteed hosted availability for the monitor itself, or a support model beyond the project’s security-reporting process.

Pros and cons

Pros

Broad check coverage: website, network, DNS, content, containers and game-server checks fit varied environments.
Fast intervals: checks can run every 20 seconds, useful when rapid detection matters.
Flexible alerting: major chat, push and email channels plus Apprise and more than 90 listed services.
Self-hosting freedom: MIT licensing and domain-mapped status pages support control over deployment and presentation.
Metrics integration: authenticated Prometheus output suits established observability setups.

Cons

Operational burden: you must deploy, secure and maintain the monitoring instance.
Status-page delay: five-minute caching means public pages are not an immediate reflection of checks.
Short-lived demo: the Frankfurt demonstration deletes data after 10 minutes.

Alternatives

Site24x7 Website Monitoring is the better choice for a hosted, freemium service, with a free tier for up to 50 resources and instant downtime email alerts. Dotcom-Monitor suits readers wanting a free hosted tier with up to 25 targets, five-minute checks and two monitoring locations. HetrixTools offers a free-for-life account with 15 uptime monitors, 15 server monitors, one-minute checks and four locations.

Better Stack is aimed at personal projects needing monitors, heartbeats, a status page and broader incident data in one free tier. Prometheus Node Exporter is a free, Apache 2.0-licensed self-hosted option when the priority is exporting host metrics rather than Kuma’s varied service checks. UptimeRobot fits hobby and nonprofit projects wanting a hosted free tier with 50 monitors and five-minute intervals.

Checkly is preferable for teams focused on API and browser checks, with a free Hobby tier covering 10 uptime monitors and usage quotas. SmokePing is a free self-hosted alternative for Unix-based latency monitoring that requires Perl, RRDtool, FPing and a web server. Browse more options in Internet Performance Monitoring Software.

Verdict

Uptime Kuma is a strong recommendation for self-hosting practitioners who want diverse checks, flexible alerts and no licence cost. Choose a hosted alternative instead if maintaining the monitoring infrastructure or tolerating five-minute public-page freshness is unacceptable.

	SmokePing	Uptime Kuma
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	No
Paid from	Free	Free
Open source		Yes
Platforms	Linux, self-hosted, Web	api, Linux, self-hosted, Web, Windows
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Synthetic checks	Yes
Alert channels	email
Deployment	self_hosted
Synthetic monitoring		Yes
DNS monitoring		Yes

SmokePing vs Uptime Kuma

SmokePing

Uptime Kuma