Uptime Kuma vs Beszel for Self-Hosting
They Solve Different Problems
Uptime Kuma and Beszel both fall under “monitoring,” but they monitor fundamentally different things. Uptime Kuma checks whether services are reachable — pinging URLs, ports, DNS records, and Docker containers. Beszel tracks system-level metrics — CPU, RAM, disk, network, and temperature across multiple servers.
If your question is “Is my Nextcloud instance up?” — that’s Uptime Kuma. If your question is “Is my server running out of RAM?” — that’s Beszel. Many self-hosters run both.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Uptime Kuma | Beszel |
|---|---|---|
| Primary function | Uptime/availability monitoring | System resource monitoring |
| What it monitors | URLs, ports, DNS, TCP, Docker, keywords | CPU, RAM, disk, network, temp |
| Multi-server | Single-server (monitors remote via network) | Yes (agent on each server) |
| Architecture | Single Node.js app | Hub + agent model |
| Alert channels | 90+ (Telegram, Slack, Discord, email, etc.) | Email, webhooks |
| Status pages | Yes (public, customizable) | No |
| Dashboard | Web UI with response time graphs | Web UI with system metric graphs |
| Docker monitoring | Yes (container status checks) | Yes (via system metrics) |
| Historical data | Response time history | CPU/RAM/disk history |
| Resource usage | ~80MB RAM | Hub: ~30MB, Agent: ~10MB |
| Language | Node.js | Go |
| Database | SQLite | SQLite |
| Maintenance windows | Yes | No |
When You Need Both
A common self-hosting setup runs Uptime Kuma for availability checks and Beszel for resource monitoring. Here’s why:
Uptime Kuma tells you something is broken. Your reverse proxy returns 502, your database port stops responding, your DNS stops resolving. It checks from the outside in — the same perspective as your users.
Beszel tells you why it’s broken. CPU pegged at 100%, disk full, RAM exhausted, network saturated. It checks from the inside out — the same perspective as a sysadmin SSH’d into the box.
Running both covers the full monitoring picture. Uptime Kuma fires an alert when Nextcloud goes down. Beszel’s historical data shows that RAM hit 95% five minutes before the crash.
Installation Complexity
Uptime Kuma is a single Docker container with a SQLite volume. Deploy in under a minute:
services:
uptime-kuma:
image: louislam/uptime-kuma:1.23.16
volumes:
- uptime-kuma-data:/app/data
ports:
- "3001:3001"
restart: unless-stoppedBeszel requires a hub (central server) plus an agent on each monitored machine. The hub is a single container, but you need to deploy the agent binary or container on every server you want to monitor. More setup, but each component is tiny.
Performance and Resource Usage
| Metric | Uptime Kuma | Beszel Hub | Beszel Agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM (idle) | ~80MB | ~30MB | ~10MB |
| RAM (100 monitors) | ~120MB | N/A | N/A |
| CPU (idle) | Minimal | Minimal | Minimal |
| Disk usage | ~50MB + data | ~20MB + data | ~15MB |
| Startup time | 2-3 seconds | <1 second | <1 second |
Both are lightweight. Uptime Kuma’s RAM scales with monitor count. Beszel’s agent is so small you can run it on a Raspberry Pi Zero without noticing.
Alerting
Uptime Kuma dominates here. Over 90 notification integrations: Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Email (SMTP), Pushover, Gotify, ntfy, Matrix, Webhook, and dozens more. Configure different notification channels per monitor. Set alert thresholds, retry counts, and notification intervals.
Beszel supports email alerts and webhooks. Functional but basic. If you need Telegram notifications when CPU exceeds 90%, you’ll need to wire Beszel’s webhooks to a notification relay (like ntfy or Gotify).
Use Cases
Choose Uptime Kuma If…
- You need to know when services go down (the most common monitoring requirement)
- You want public status pages for users or clients
- You have services spread across multiple hosting providers
- You need rich alerting with 90+ notification channels
- You want maintenance window scheduling
- You’re monitoring external services (APIs, websites, DNS)
Choose Beszel If…
- You need system-level resource monitoring across multiple servers
- You want CPU/RAM/disk historical trends for capacity planning
- You need temperature monitoring (useful for Raspberry Pi and fanless devices)
- You want an extremely lightweight agent that won’t impact monitored systems
- You’re already using Uptime Kuma and need resource-level insights to complement it
Run Both If…
- You want complete monitoring: availability AND resource metrics
- You have 3+ servers and need both “is it up?” and “how’s it performing?” answered
- Combined resource usage is still under 150MB — negligible on any server
Final Verdict
These aren’t competitors — they’re complementary tools for different monitoring layers. If you’re picking one, Uptime Kuma is more immediately useful for most self-hosters. Knowing when services go down is the baseline monitoring requirement, and Uptime Kuma’s alerting ecosystem is vastly superior.
Add Beszel when you outgrow a single server or start hitting unexplained performance issues. Its lightweight agents give you system-level visibility that Uptime Kuma doesn’t provide, and the combined overhead is negligible.
FAQ
Can Uptime Kuma monitor system resources like CPU and RAM?
Not directly. Uptime Kuma monitors service availability (is port X responding?), not system metrics. You can indirectly monitor resources by checking if a service becomes slow (response time degradation), but for actual CPU/RAM/disk metrics, use Beszel, Netdata, or Grafana+Prometheus.
Can Beszel replace Uptime Kuma?
No. Beszel monitors system resources on servers where you install its agent. It doesn’t check whether a URL is responding, whether a port is open, or whether a Docker container is healthy. They serve different purposes.
What about Grafana + Prometheus instead?
Grafana + Prometheus is significantly more powerful than either tool but also significantly more complex to set up and maintain. If you want a full observability stack with custom dashboards, go with Grafana. If you want simple, fast monitoring with minimal setup, Uptime Kuma + Beszel covers 90% of self-hosting monitoring needs.
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