Uptime Kuma as an UptimeRobot alternative: what do I give up?

If you want an UptimeRobot alternative you run yourself, start with what UptimeRobot's Free plan leaves out. It covers 50 monitors at five-minute checks, but it doesn't send SSL certificate alerts, its five alert integrations don't include Slack, and there's no login seat for anyone else on your team.

The trade at a glance

UptimeRobot rows come from its pricing, terms, locations and Uptime Kuma comparison pages, read again on October 15, 2026, and the Uptime Kuma rows from its README, its GitHub issues and its 2.5.6 source code, read on October 9.

How each one decides a site is down

When an UptimeRobot check fails, it doesn't call the site down straight away. It verifies the downtime with more checks from different servers and providers within the same region. Paid plans can also check one monitor from up to 4 regions (North America, Europe, Asia and Australia) with a separate alert threshold for each.

Uptime Kuma checks from whatever server it's running on. In version 2.5.6 a new monitor starts with a 60-second interval and 0 retries. We read that default in the monitor editor's source code and used it for our own test run, further down. Kuma's Retries setting is the maximum number of retries "before the service is marked as down and a notification is sent", so with 0 a single failed check sends the alert.

Kuma can't check from several places on its own. Remote probes that report back to one Kuma have been a feature request since July 2021. Version 2 added a partial route, the Globalping monitor type, which sends each check through one probe in Globalping's community network, at a location you pick for that monitor.

Globalping's free limit is 250 tests an hour without an account and 500 with one. A monitor that checks once a minute uses 60 of those an hour, so the allowance covers at most about 4 monitors, or 8 with an account. At five-minute checks it stretches to about 20, or 40 with an account, and every retry Kuma runs spends another test. That's room for an outside check on your most important sites, and hosting a Globalping probe of your own adds 150 tests a day per probe.

Logins, API, app and support

Uptime Kuma doesn't have separate user accounts, and basic user management has been an open request since July 2021. UptimeRobot's Free and Solo plans don't include login seats for a second person either, and Team includes 3.

The API gap matters most if you launch sites often. UptimeRobot includes its REST API on every plan, Free included, so a deploy script can add a monitor when a site launches and remove it when the site goes away. Kuma's API request is still open.

UptimeRobot has iOS and Android apps on every plan. Kuma has no official app, so alerts reach your phone through a push service such as Pushover, ntfy or Telegram. UptimeRobot sells text messages as credits that any plan can buy: Free includes none, Solo 10 to 20, Team 30, and a voice call uses 2. Kuma sends SMS through a provider account you open yourself, such as Twilio or ClickSend.

When UptimeRobot misbehaves, you can reach its live chat or email support. Kuma's maintainer asks people not to email him, since he's unable to provide support in that manner, so questions go to GitHub issues and r/UptimeKuma. On a DreamHost server, DreamHost support is available 24/7 for the hardware, network and connectivity, while the Uptime Kuma app and its settings are yours to manage.

Keeping Kuma updated and backed up

Uptime Kuma ships often. The project put out seven 2.5.x releases between August 1 and October 9, 2026.

On DreamHost's Uptime Kuma server, updating is one command, uptime-kuma-update. You're the one who runs it, since Debian patches itself in the background but the Uptime Kuma container doesn't update itself. A new server can start on a tested 2.x release older than the latest, so back up and update on your first login. The setup steps cover both commands and copying the backup off the server.

A monitor can't report its own outage, so run Kuma away from the sites it watches, and our guide to Uptime Kuma's requirements and where to run it covers placement, setup and the off-server backup.

What Kuma gives you for the work

UptimeRobot charges by plan. In US dollars, its paid plans start at $144 a year for 10 monitors at 60-second checks (Solo). On Solo, 50 monitors cost $288 a year, and Team's 100 cost $468, both billed yearly on UptimeRobot's pricing page on October 15, 2026. With Kuma you pay for the server, at the plan price in our recommendation, and nothing per monitor. Our bill guide sets out UptimeRobot pricing next to Pingdom and Better Stack at your monitor count.

Kuma's 20-second checks run three times as often as Solo's 60-second ones. UptimeRobot's 15-second checks start on Scale, and you can push Kuma below 20 seconds if you click past its warning that performance may suffer with a lot of monitors.

Uptime Kuma doesn't publish how many monitors one install can carry, though one user reported about 250 monitors on a version 2 beta. In our own test on a 2 vCPU, 4 GB test machine (not a DreamHost server), 200 website monitors at Kuma's defaults all went in without errors and ran at about 240 MiB of memory. On our Uptime Kuma server, every check is stored in one SQLite database. Faster checks and longer history both make it bigger.

Kuma also checks DNS records and lets you schedule maintenance windows, which UptimeRobot leaves off its Free plan.

Which one fits

Uptime Kuma and UptimeRobot FAQs