Self-Hosted Alternatives to UptimeRobot

Why Replace UptimeRobot?

UptimeRobot’s free tier monitors 50 endpoints with 5-minute intervals. That sounds generous until you realize: your monitoring data lives on their servers, check intervals are slow for production use, and the free status page is branded. The paid plan ($7/month) removes limits but costs more than a VPS running your own monitoring.

The cost argument: UptimeRobot Pro costs $7/month for 50 monitors at 1-minute intervals. A self-hosted Uptime Kuma instance monitors unlimited endpoints at 1-second intervals for the cost of a $5 VPS — or free on existing hardware.

The control argument: Self-hosted monitoring checks from your network — you see the same response times your users see. UptimeRobot checks from their servers, which may differ significantly from your users’ experience.

The privacy argument: UptimeRobot has visibility into every URL you monitor. For internal services, API endpoints, or private infrastructure, self-hosted monitoring keeps that information private.

Best Alternatives

Uptime Kuma — Best Overall Replacement

Uptime Kuma is the most popular self-hosted monitoring tool. It monitors HTTP, TCP, DNS, Docker containers, and more with a beautiful UI, push notifications, and built-in status pages. It’s the direct drop-in replacement for UptimeRobot.

Strengths:

• Beautiful, responsive web UI
• 20+ notification methods (Discord, Slack, Telegram, email, etc.)
• Built-in status pages (public and private)
• Docker container monitoring
• 1-second minimum check interval
• Certificate expiry monitoring
• Maintenance windows

Weaknesses:

• UI-configured only (no config-as-code)
• Single-node (no built-in clustering)
• SQLite-based (fine for most use cases)

Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Uptime Kuma

Gatus — Best for DevOps Teams

Gatus uses YAML configuration for endpoint monitoring — infrastructure-as-code for your monitoring. It’s lighter than Uptime Kuma and supports complex health checks with multiple conditions.

Strengths:

• Config-as-code (YAML) — version controllable
• Extremely lightweight (~30 MB RAM)
• Complex condition support (status + response time + body content + cert expiry)
• Clean public status page
• HTTP, TCP, ICMP, DNS, SSH, WebSocket monitoring

Weaknesses:

• No web UI for configuration (YAML only)
• Requires container restart for config changes
• Smaller community than Uptime Kuma

Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Gatus

Beszel — Best for Server Monitoring

If you need server-level monitoring (CPU, RAM, disk) rather than endpoint monitoring, Beszel is a lightweight multi-server monitoring hub with per-container stats.

Strengths:

• Multi-server monitoring with hub-agent architecture
• Per-Docker-container resource stats
• Clean, modern dashboard
• Very lightweight

Weaknesses:

• Not endpoint-focused (monitors servers, not URLs)
• Newer project, less mature

Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Beszel

Cost Comparison

	UptimeRobot (Free)	UptimeRobot (Pro)	Self-Hosted
Monthly cost	$0	$7/month	$0 (existing server)
Monitors	50	50	Unlimited
Check interval	5 min	1 min	1 sec (Uptime Kuma)
Status pages	1 (branded)	Unlimited	Unlimited
Notifications	Email, webhook	All channels	All channels
Data retention	2 months	24 months	Unlimited
Privacy	URLs visible to UptimeRobot	URLs visible	Full control

What You Give Up

External perspective. UptimeRobot checks from multiple global locations. Self-hosted monitoring checks from one location (your server). If your server goes down, your monitoring goes down with it. Mitigation: run a second monitoring instance on a different server or VPS.

Zero maintenance. UptimeRobot just works. Self-hosted monitoring needs Docker updates, disk management, and occasional troubleshooting.

Historical reliability. UptimeRobot has years of operational history. It’s a mature SaaS product. Self-hosted tools depend on your infrastructure reliability.

Recommended hybrid approach: Self-host Uptime Kuma for detailed internal monitoring. Keep UptimeRobot’s free tier monitoring your primary domain from outside — best of both worlds.

FAQ

Can Uptime Kuma monitor from multiple locations?

Not natively. Run separate Uptime Kuma instances on different servers. Or use the free tier of an external service (UptimeRobot, BetterUptime) for outside-in monitoring alongside your self-hosted tool.

What if my monitoring server goes down?

Your monitoring goes down with it — you won’t know your services are down. Solutions: monitor from a separate server, use a free external service as backup, or set up Healthchecks.io (free tier) to alert if Uptime Kuma stops checking in.

Can I import my UptimeRobot monitors?

Not automatically. You’ll need to recreate your monitors manually. For Uptime Kuma, this is straightforward — add each URL in the web UI. For Gatus, add them to the YAML config.

Related

• How to Self-Host Uptime Kuma
• How to Self-Host Gatus
• How to Self-Host Beszel
• Grafana vs Uptime Kuma
• Best Self-Hosted Monitoring Tools