Uptime Kuma vs Grafana: Which Do You Need?

They Solve Different Problems

Uptime Kuma tells you “is this service up or down?” Grafana tells you “what’s happening inside this service?” Comparing them head-to-head is like comparing a smoke detector to a home security camera system — both monitor your house, but at completely different levels. Most serious self-hosters run both.

Uptime Kuma is an uptime monitoring tool. It pings your services (HTTP, TCP, DNS, Docker containers, etc.) on a schedule and alerts you when something goes down. Beautiful dashboard, 90+ notification integrations, public status pages. Zero configuration needed beyond adding monitors.

Grafana is a visualization platform. It connects to data sources like Prometheus, InfluxDB, or PostgreSQL and renders dashboards with graphs, charts, and alerts. It doesn’t collect metrics itself — it displays whatever data you feed it. With the right data sources, it can show CPU usage, memory trends, request latencies, container performance, and thousands of other metrics.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Uptime Kuma 2.1.1	Grafana OSS 12.3.3
Primary purpose	Uptime monitoring	Data visualization & dashboards
Collects its own data	Yes (pings, HTTP checks)	No (needs external data source)
Setup complexity	Single container, no config	Needs Prometheus/InfluxDB + exporters
Dashboard	Pre-built, works immediately	Custom, requires building
HTTP(S) monitoring	Yes	Via Blackbox Exporter
TCP/DNS/ping monitoring	Yes	Via Blackbox Exporter
Docker container monitoring	Yes (via socket)	Via cAdvisor + Prometheus
Server metrics (CPU/RAM/disk)	No	Yes (via node_exporter)
Application metrics	No	Yes (via app-specific exporters)
Log aggregation	No	Yes (via Loki)
Alerting	90+ notification providers	AlertManager, PagerDuty, Slack, etc.
Public status page	Yes (built-in)	Via Grafana On-Call / external tools
Notification channels	Discord, Slack, Telegram, email, 90+	Email, Slack, PagerDuty, webhooks
Database	SQLite (embedded)	SQLite/PostgreSQL (for config only)
RAM usage	~100 MB	~200 MB (Grafana alone), 1+ GB (full stack)
License	MIT	AGPL-3.0

When the Lines Blur

Grafana can do basic uptime monitoring through the Blackbox Exporter (a Prometheus component that probes endpoints). But setting that up requires:

1. Deploying Blackbox Exporter as a separate container
2. Configuring Prometheus to scrape Blackbox Exporter
3. Building a Grafana dashboard to display the results
4. Setting up AlertManager for notifications

Uptime Kuma does all of that in a single container with zero configuration. You add a URL, pick a notification method, and you’re done.

Conversely, Uptime Kuma cannot show you server CPU trends, memory usage over time, or container-level metrics. It knows if a service responds — not how well it responds (beyond response time and status codes).

Deployment Comparison

Uptime Kuma — one container, one volume, one port:

services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:2.1.1
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"
    volumes:
      - uptime-kuma-data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  uptime-kuma-data:

Grafana (minimal useful stack) — Grafana + Prometheus + Node Exporter:

services:
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana-oss:12.3.3
    container_name: grafana
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD: "changeme"
    volumes:
      - grafana-data:/var/lib/grafana
    restart: unless-stopped

  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:v3.3.0
    container_name: prometheus
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:ro
      - prometheus-data:/prometheus
    restart: unless-stopped

  node-exporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter:v1.9.1
    container_name: node-exporter
    pid: host
    volumes:
      - /proc:/host/proc:ro
      - /sys:/host/sys:ro
      - /:/rootfs:ro
    command:
      - '--path.procfs=/host/proc'
      - '--path.sysfs=/host/sys'
      - '--path.rootfs=/rootfs'
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  grafana-data:
  prometheus-data:

Plus a prometheus.yml configuration file. This is the minimal stack — production deployments often add cAdvisor, AlertManager, Loki, and application-specific exporters.

Resource Usage

Resource	Uptime Kuma	Grafana Stack (minimal)
Containers	1	3+ (Grafana, Prometheus, exporters)
RAM (idle)	80–150 MB	500 MB–1.5 GB
CPU	Negligible	Low–moderate (Prometheus scraping)
Disk	~50 MB + DB	200 MB+ (grows with retention)
Config files needed	0	1+ (prometheus.yml minimum)

The Right Answer: Run Both

For any self-hosting setup beyond a single app, the practical answer is to run both:

• Uptime Kuma for “is it up?” monitoring, instant alerts, and a public status page
• Grafana + Prometheus for “how is it performing?” dashboards, trend analysis, and capacity planning

They don’t overlap significantly, and together they cover the full monitoring spectrum. Uptime Kuma catches outages in seconds with zero setup. Grafana shows you why the outage happened when you investigate.

Choose Uptime Kuma Only If…

• You have a small setup (under 10 services) and just need to know if things are running
• You want a public status page with zero effort
• You don’t need server-level metrics (CPU, RAM, disk trends)
• Simplicity is your top priority

Choose Grafana Only If…

• You need deep observability (metrics, logs, traces)
• You’re monitoring infrastructure performance, not just availability
• You’re comfortable configuring Prometheus, exporters, and building dashboards
• You need to correlate metrics across multiple services and time ranges

FAQ

Can Uptime Kuma send alerts to the same channels as Grafana?

Yes — Uptime Kuma supports 90+ notification providers natively, including all the major ones (Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, PagerDuty, Gotify, ntfy). Grafana’s alerting covers fewer channels natively but can reach anything via webhooks.

Does Grafana have a built-in status page?

Not exactly. Grafana dashboards can be made public (anonymous access), but there’s no purpose-built status page like Uptime Kuma’s. For a dedicated status page with incident management, look at Gatus or Upptime.

Can I monitor Docker containers with Uptime Kuma?

Yes. Mount the Docker socket (/var/run/docker.sock) and Uptime Kuma can check container status directly. But it only tells you running/stopped — not CPU or memory usage inside the container.

Related

• How to Self-Host Uptime Kuma
• How to Self-Host Grafana
• Grafana vs Prometheus
• Grafana vs Netdata
• Uptime Kuma vs Gatus
• Best Self-Hosted Monitoring Tools
• Replace UptimeRobot