Uptime Kuma vs Better Stack
Better Stack starts free but limits you to 5 monitors and 1 team member. Their paid plan is $25/mo per seat. Uptime Kuma gives you unlimited monitors and users for $3/mo on InstaPods.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Better Stack | Uptime Kuma |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | Free (5 monitors), $25/seat/mo | $3/mo total (self-hosted on InstaPods) |
| Monitors (Free) | 5 monitors | Unlimited |
| Team Members | 1 (Free), per-seat pricing | Unlimited users |
| Check Interval | 3 min (Free), 30s (paid) | Down to 20 seconds |
| Status Pages | 1 (Free), branded (paid) | Unlimited status pages |
| Incident Management | Built-in (paid plans) | Basic incident tracking |
| On-Call Scheduling | Included in paid plans | Not included |
| Multi-Location | Yes (global network) | Single location |
| Notification Channels | Email, SMS, Slack, etc. | 90+ channels |
| Source Code | Closed source | Open source (MIT license) |
Where Better Stack Gets Expensive
Trade-offs to weigh before committing.
Per-Seat Pricing Adds Up
Better Stack charges $25/seat/month. A 4-person team pays $100/mo just for uptime monitoring. The free tier with 5 monitors and 1 seat is too limited for real use.
5 Monitor Limit on Free
Five monitors covers one small project at best. Most teams need 20-50 monitors for APIs, frontend, databases, and background services.
Feature Gating
Shorter check intervals (30s), phone call alerts, custom domains for status pages, and audit logs all require paid plans.
Bundled Complexity
Better Stack bundles uptime monitoring, incident management, on-call, and logging into one platform. If you only need uptime monitoring, you're paying for features you don't use.
Why Self-Host with Uptime Kuma?
What you get when you pick this stack.
Unlimited Everything for $3/mo
Unlimited monitors, unlimited users, unlimited status pages. No artificial limits to push you to higher tiers.
90+ Notification Channels
Slack, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, Gotify, Pushover, webhooks, and dozens more. Better Stack charges extra for phone alerts.
Beautiful Status Pages
Create professional status pages with custom branding, grouped monitors, and incident history. No paid plan required.
No Vendor Dependency
Your monitoring runs on your infrastructure. If Better Stack has an outage, it doesn't affect your monitoring.
Real Cost Comparison
Monitoring 30 endpoints with a 3-person team and 2 status pages.
- Better Stack Team plan: $25/seat x 3 = $75/mo
- 30 monitors: included
- 2 status pages: included in paid
- Phone call alerts: paid add-on
- InstaPods Launch plan: $3/mo
- Uptime Kuma: free (open source)
- Unlimited monitors, users, status pages
- All notification channels included
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Uptime Kuma as feature-rich as Better Stack?
For uptime monitoring and status pages, Uptime Kuma is comparable or better (more notification channels, more monitor types). Where Better Stack excels is in incident management, on-call scheduling, and log aggregation - features that Uptime Kuma doesn't include.
Does Uptime Kuma support phone call alerts?
Not directly. Uptime Kuma sends alerts via webhook, which you can connect to services like PagerDuty or Twilio for phone calls. Better Stack includes phone calls natively in paid plans.
Can Uptime Kuma handle incident management?
Uptime Kuma tracks incidents through its status page feature (incident creation, updates, resolution). For full incident management with runbooks, escalation policies, and post-mortems, you'd need a separate tool.
Which is better for a small team?
Uptime Kuma. Better Stack's per-seat pricing makes it expensive for teams, and their free tier is too limited. Uptime Kuma gives you unlimited monitors and users from day one for $3/mo.
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