Best free uptime monitors in 2026

The short answer

If you have a server and like running things, Uptime Kuma gives you the most for nothing. If you want a hosted monitor with no maintenance, UptimeRobot is the simplest start, HetrixTools adds blacklist and server monitoring to the free tier, and MoniterMySite's Starter plan is the one to choose when you want a full status page and a shared team workspace for free, with multi-region confirmation available when you are ready to pay. Better Stack's free tier suits a small engineering team that expects to grow into on-call tooling.

How we evaluated

Only tools with a permanent free plan or an open-source licence qualify; trials are excluded because a trial is a paid tool you have not paid for yet. Facts were checked on 7 October 2026 and are kept qualitative. Each free tier was judged on:

• Check interval on the free plan: whether an outage is caught within minutes rather than tens of minutes.
• Regions and confirmation: whether free checks run from more than one place, and whether paid plans add confirmation.
• Alert channels on the free plan: email and webhooks at minimum, and what chat or paging integrations cost extra.
• Status page: included for free, and how complete it is.
• Free tier honesty: no card to start, no expiry, and a clear statement of where the free plan stops.

1. UptimeRobot

Verdict: the most widely used free plan, and enough for a handful of personal or small-business sites. It is hosted, needs nothing beyond a URL to get going, and has stayed free through years of product changes.

• Best for: anyone who wants a hosted free monitor with the least possible setup.
• Strength: standard monitor types on the free plan, not a cut-down subset.
• Strength: a public status page is included without payment.
• Strength: mobile apps and email alerts work on the free tier.
• Keep in mind: free checks are slower than paid ones, and monitor count is capped; check their current pricing for today's figures.
• Keep in mind: most chat and advanced alert integrations are paid features.
• Skip it if: you need a check interval under a few minutes without paying, or a team workspace.

2. Better Stack

Verdict: a small free tier of a large platform. Better Stack's free plan is deliberately an entry point to its monitoring, on-call and status page product, but it is a real one: multi-location checks and a polished status page without a card.

• Best for: small engineering teams that plan to adopt on-call and incident tooling as they grow.
• Strength: checks from several locations on the free plan.
• Strength: status page included.
• Strength: no migration later; the paid tiers are the same product.
• Keep in mind: the free tier is sized for a few monitors; anything beyond a side project will outgrow it quickly.
• Keep in mind: the bundle's on-call and log features are the paid draw; check their current pricing for what stays free.
• Skip it if: you want a free plan you can stay on indefinitely with a meaningful number of monitors.

3. Uptime Kuma

Verdict: free with no asterisk. Uptime Kuma is open source and self-hosted, so there are no tiers: every feature belongs to everyone who runs a copy. A small VPS or home server with Docker is the usual host.

• Best for: technical users with a server to spare who want unlimited monitors and complete control.
• Strength: unlimited monitors, any interval, every monitor type.
• Strength: one of the widest notification catalogues anywhere.
• Strength: public status pages and an active community.
• Keep in mind: it checks only from where it is installed, so it cannot tell you whether your site is unreachable from another continent.
• Keep in mind: if the host goes offline, monitoring and alerting go with it; backups and updates are your job.
• Skip it if: you do not want to operate another service, or you need confirmation from several regions.

4. HetrixTools

Verdict: the free tier that does more than ping. HetrixTools is hosted and known for blacklist monitoring, which warns you when your domain or IP lands on a spam or malware list, plus an agent that reports server resource usage, alongside uptime checks.

• Best for: self-hosters and small agencies running their own mail or web servers.
• Strength: blacklist monitoring on the free plan.
• Strength: server resource monitoring through a lightweight agent.
• Strength: public uptime reports you can share.
• Keep in mind: the interface is functional rather than polished.
• Keep in mind: free monitor count and check frequency are capped; check their current pricing for the details.
• Skip it if: blacklist and server monitoring are irrelevant to you and you want a cleaner uptime-only tool.

5. MoniterMySite

Verdict: our free plan, so read with that in mind. Starter is free for as long as you want it, with no card: 10 monitors checked every 5 minutes from one of our five regions, one public status page, email and webhook alerts, 20 alert e-mails per UTC day, 30 days of raw check history and unlimited team members. All seven monitor types are available: HTTP(S), keyword, ping, port, DNS, SSL certificate expiry and heartbeat checks for cron jobs and backups.

Upgrading happens in place. Launch ($9 a month) raises limits to 100 monitors, 60-second checks, up to three regions per monitor, Slack, Discord, Teams, Google Chat and Telegram alerts, and a custom domain. Growth ($29) adds 30-second checks, every region with multi-region confirmation, PagerDuty and password-protected pages. The first paid subscription has a 14-day money-back guarantee.

• Best for: teams that want multi-region confirmation and status pages on a free-to-start plan.
• Strength: the free status page is complete: component groups, 7, 30 or 90-day uptime bars, email subscribers and posted incident updates.
• Strength: unlimited seats with four roles, so a team shares monitors, incidents and alert contacts instead of a login.
• Strength: signed webhooks and the fail threshold are on the free plan, so alert automation and blip filtering start at zero cost.
• Keep in mind: Starter checks from one region every 5 minutes; faster checks and region confirmation are paid.
• Keep in mind: chat integrations such as Slack start on Launch, and the 20 e-mails a day allowance means noisy monitors belong on a webhook.
• Skip it if: you want unlimited monitors for free, or need Slack alerts without paying.

What free plans usually leave out

Free tiers exist because vendors expect some users to upgrade, so the features held back are the ones that matter once a site earns money:

• Fast intervals: free plans check every few minutes; paid plans go to a minute or less.
• Several locations with confirmation: one vantage point means every blip at that location looks like an outage.
• Chat and paging: email and webhooks are usually free; Slack, Teams and PagerDuty often are not.
• Custom domains and branding on status pages.
• History: weeks on free tiers, months or years on paid ones, which matters for SLA reporting.

Decision table

Qualitative facts as of 7 October 2026. Monitor counts and intervals on hosted free tiers change, so verify them on each vendor's site.

Swipe sideways to see every column.

How to choose

Pick by what you will actually use rather than by the longest free feature list. A server and the patience to maintain it points to Uptime Kuma. No server and a single site points to UptimeRobot. Mail or web servers of your own point to HetrixTools. A small team that wants to share a workspace and publish a proper status page without paying points to MoniterMySite, and a team already eyeing on-call tooling points to Better Stack.

If you only remember one thing

A free plan is only worth having once its alerts are wired up. Add an email or webhook contact, send a test, attach it to every monitor, and then decide whether the free interval is fast enough for the site you are protecting.