Uplapse vs Uptime Kuma
An Uptime Kuma alternative you do not have to host
Uptime Kuma is a popular open-source monitor you run on your own server, often next to Grafana. This page sets out, from its own README and wiki, where it is the better choice and where a hosted service like Uplapse is.
At a glance
| Compared | Uptime Kuma | Uplapse |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free and open source (MIT licence); you pay for the server it runs on and the time to look after it | Free plan: 5 monitors, checks every 3 minutes. Starter $29/month: 25 monitors, 30-second checks |
| Where it runs | On your own machine or server, installed with Docker or Node.js | Hosted: nothing to install, patch or back up |
| If the monitoring host goes down | Checks and alerts stop with it, unless you run a second instance somewhere else | Checks run from Uplapse locations outside your network, with confirmation settings before an alert is sent |
| Shortest interval | 20 seconds | 3 minutes on Free, 30 seconds on Starter, 15 seconds on Growth |
| Grafana and Prometheus | A /metrics endpoint in Prometheus format (monitor_status, monitor_response_time) for Grafana dashboards | No Prometheus endpoint; history, SLOs and reports are in the Uplapse app |
| Certificates, domains, email authentication | Certificate info is listed; domain expiry and SPF/DKIM/DMARC checks are not listed in its README | Certificate, domain expiry, SPF/DKIM/DMARC and Certificate Transparency checks on every plan, including Free |
| Team access | 2FA is listed; multiple users and roles are not listed in its README | Team members included: 3 on Free, 10 on Starter, 50 on Growth; no per-seat fee |
Uptime Kuma details are from its public pricing page, read on . Prices change; check Uptime Kuma README, Uptime Kuma wiki: Prometheus integration for current terms. Something missing from a pricing page is not proof the product lacks it.
Where Uptime Kuma is the better choice
- It costs nothing to licence. It is MIT-licensed open source with no monitor limit. If you already run a server and are happy to maintain one more container, it is hard to beat on price.
- Grafana dashboards. Its /metrics endpoint feeds Prometheus, so uptime and response time sit next to the rest of your Grafana dashboards. Uplapse has no Prometheus endpoint.
- More check types. Besides HTTP, TCP, ping, DNS and push monitors, it checks databases, Docker containers, MQTT, SNMP, game servers and more, and it has a real-browser monitor type. Uplapse covers web, API, TCP, DNS, heartbeat and the expiry checks, but not databases or game servers.
- Your data stays with you. Everything lives on your own machine, which suits home labs and networks that cannot send data out.
Where a hosted monitor is the better choice
- It does not go down with your server. A monitor on the same host, network or cloud account as the thing it watches can fail at the same moment and tell no one. Uplapse checks from outside, from more than one location.
- No upkeep. Upgrades, security fixes, backups and the alerting host itself are Uplapse’s job, not yours.
- A team, not one login. Members with roles, escalation that stops when someone acknowledges, and maintenance windows.
What Uplapse does differently
- The failures that come before an outage. Certificate expiry and changes, domain registration expiry read from the registry over RDAP, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, and Certificate Transparency monitoring for certificates issued in your name. They are on every plan, not held back for higher tiers.
- Evidence, not just up or down. Content and response assertions, multi-step HTTP journeys that pass values between requests, and heartbeat monitors for cron jobs and backups. A check that could not run is reported as unknown, never as a pass.
- Incident response in the same place. Alert routing to email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, Google Chat, Mattermost, PagerDuty, Splunk, Zapier or webhooks; escalation that stops when someone acknowledges; maintenance windows; status pages; and SLOs with error budgets.
- SSL, domain and DMARC checks on the free plan. The free plan has the same check types as the paid plans, including SPF, DKIM, DMARC and Certificate Transparency; it is limited by monitor count and frequency only.
Using both
Some teams keep Uptime Kuma inside the network for internal services and Grafana, and use a hosted monitor for the public site, the API, certificates and domains, so that an outage of the network itself still raises an alert.
Switching from Uptime Kuma
There is no importer for Uptime Kuma exports yet, so monitors are created again in Uplapse. Most teams start with the few URLs that matter most, add a certificate and domain expiry check for each domain, and run both tools side by side for a week before moving alerting over. Uplapse can export and import its own monitor definitions as JSON, so a setup built once can be copied between accounts.
Try it on the sites you already run
Start with the free plan: SSL, domain and DMARC checks are included.