Developer tools · Ranked by price to features
9 Best Uptime Monitoring Tools of 2026
By the Rankozo research desk · Updated November 4, 2026
HetrixTools is the best value: its free plan covers 15 uptime monitors checked every minute, and paid plans start at $9.95 a month. Better Stack is the best pick for teams that need on-call alerts, at $29 per responder per month billed annually, and Site24x7 and Uptime.com are the cheapest paid entry points at $9 a month.
- Tools ranked
- 9
- With free plan
- 7
- Cheapest paid plan
- Cronitor, $2
- per monitor per month, plus $5 per user
By the numbers
- $15,000The average cost of unplanned downtime reached $15,000 per minute in 2026, according to a Splunk survey of 2,000 executives at Global 2000 companies.Splunk (Cisco)
- $300,000One hour of downtime costs more than $300,000 for over 90% of mid-size and large enterprises, according to ITIC's 2024 survey of more than 1,000 firms worldwide.Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC)
- 68%68% of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during IT incidents, according to PagerDuty's 2026 survey of 1,000 business and IT leaders.PagerDuty
- $600 billionUnplanned downtime costs Global 2000 companies $600 billion a year in total, 50% more than two years earlier, according to Splunk's 2026 study.Splunk (Cisco)
- $168 billionWorldwide enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $168 billion in the third quarter of 2026, up 55% year over year.Synergy Research Group
- $1 trillionIDC forecasts global public cloud services spending to pass $1 trillion in 2026, growing over 21%, and to double by 2029.IDC
Comparison table
| Tool | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HetrixTools | 01 | 8.7 | 9.4 | $9.95per month | Yes |
| UptimeRobot | 02 | 8.6 | 8.6 | Free plan | Yes |
| Better Stack | 03 | 8.5 | 7.6 | $29per responder license per month | Yes |
| Site24x7 | 04 | 8.4 | 8.8 | $9per month | Yes |
| StatusCake | 05 | 8.2 | 8.0 | $20.41per month | Yes |
| Uptime.com | 06 | 8.2 | 8.0 | $9per month | No |
| Checkly | 07 | 8.0 | 7.6 | $24per month | Yes |
| Cronitor | 08 | 8.0 | 7.8 | $2per monitor per month, plus $5 per user | Yes |
| Oh Dear | 09 | 8.0 | 6.9 | $17per month | No |
Click a column to sort. Prices are the cheapest paid plan quoted from each vendor's US pricing page; "Check price" means the US price check is pending.
How this ranking works
One method for every tool. We compared documented features and published prices; we did not run hands-on tests. Value carries the most weight.
Full methodThis ranking is for site owners, small dev teams and agencies who need to know within minutes when a website or API goes down. We compared documented features and published prices for nine monitoring services, with every price taken from the vendor's own pricing page in US dollars on November 4, 2026. Watch three numbers when you compare: how many monitors a plan includes, how often it checks, and whether SMS or phone alerts cost extra.
The verdict
HetrixTools gives the most monitoring per dollar: 15 free monitors with one-minute checks and a $9.95 paid plan that doubles the count and adds SMS alerts. Better Stack costs more but adds on-call scheduling, unlimited phone and SMS alerts and status pages in one product, which makes it the stronger choice once a team shares responsibility for uptime. For a fixed low bill, Site24x7's $9 Web Uptime plan watches 25 websites.
- 01Top value
HetrixTools
8.7/10An uptime and server monitoring service with one-minute checks and status pages on every plan, including the free one.
Price
$9.95per month
Free plan with 15 uptime monitors; Professional $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year
“Professional $9.95 /month or $99.95/year” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Value (40%)
- 9.4
- Features (35%)
- 8.3
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.0
Best forSmall businesses and hosting resellers who want many monitors and server stats for little or no money.
HetrixTools gives away more than most rivals sell. The free plan includes 15 uptime monitors and 15 server monitors, checked every minute from four of its twelve locations, with public status pages and a 15-day activity log. The one rule is that you must log in every 90 days. Professional costs $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year and doubles the monitor count to 30, adds a sixth location, a sub-account, a 30-day log, 25 SMS alerts a month and premium support. Business at $19.95 doubles that again to 60 monitors. The server agent tracks CPU, RAM, disks, network, RAID and drive health alongside each uptime monitor, which is useful for anyone who runs their own VPS. What HetrixTools lacks is incident workflow: alerts can go out by email, SMS or phone call, but there is no on-call rotation or escalation policy, so teams that page engineers at night will want something like Better Stack on top.
- ✓Free plan includes 15 uptime and 15 server monitors
- ✓One-minute checks are not reserved for paid tiers
- ✓Extra monitors can be added to any paid plan at the same rate
- ✕Free accounts must log in every 90 days
- ✕SMS alerts are capped at 25 a month on Professional
- ✕No on-call scheduling or incident management
- Free plan:
- Yes, 15 uptime monitors and 15 server monitors
- Check interval:
- Every minute on all plans
- Professional:
- $9.95 per month, 30 uptime monitors
- Locations:
- 4 of 12 on Free, 6 on Professional, all 12 on Enterprise
- SMS:
- 25 a month on Professional
Bottom line: The most monitoring per dollar in this ranking, free or paid. Add a separate on-call tool if your team needs rotations and escalation.
- 02
UptimeRobot
8.6/10A popular uptime monitor known for its generous free plan, with paid tiers that add faster checks, SSL monitoring and status pages.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Value (40%)
- 8.6
- Features (35%)
- 8.2
- Ease of use (25%)
- 9.2
Best forIndividuals and small sites that want a large free monitor allowance and a simple dashboard.
UptimeRobot is the default many people reach for, mostly because of its free plan: 50 monitors at a five-minute interval, usable for personal and commercial projects, with HTTP, port, ping and keyword checks and one basic status page. The paid ladder is easy to follow. Solo adds 60-second checks, API, UDP, DNS and SSL monitoring, three status pages on your own domain and 12 months of data retention. Team moves to 100 monitors, 30-second checks, three seats, white-label status pages and integrations such as webhooks, Zapier and PagerDuty. Scale goes to 15-second checks and 200 or 500 monitors. The weakness of the free tier is the interval: five minutes can miss short outages, and SSL expiry and DNS checks need a paid plan. The pricing page showed euros from our location, so we could not confirm the US dollar price; check it on UptimeRobot's site before you buy.
- ✓Free plan allows 50 monitors and commercial use
- ✓Very simple setup and dashboard
- ✓Clear plan ladder from Solo to Scale
- ✕Free plan checks only every 5 minutes
- ✕API, DNS and SSL monitoring are limited to paid plans
- ✕Free plan is limited to 5 integrations
- Free plan:
- Yes, 50 monitors, 5-minute interval
- Paid tiers:
- Solo, Team, Scale, Enterprise
- Fastest check:
- 15 seconds on Scale
- Team plan:
- 100 monitors, 30-second interval, 3 seats
Bottom line: The easiest tool to start with and a strong free plan for 50 monitors. Upgrade if five-minute checks are too slow for your site.
- 03
Better Stack
8.5/10An observability platform that combines uptime checks, on-call scheduling, incident management and status pages.
Price
$29per responder license per month
Free plan with 10 monitors; Responder license $29 per month billed annually ($34 monthly)
“$34 $29 per license per month” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Value (40%)
- 7.6
- Features (35%)
- 9.4
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.8
Best forEngineering teams that need phone and SMS escalation and on-call rotations, not just email alerts.
Better Stack is the most complete product here for teams that actually get paged. The free plan includes 10 monitors and heartbeats, one status page and Slack and email alerts, along with small allowances for logs, traces and error tracking. The paid model is per responder: a license costs $29 a month billed annually or $34 monthly and gives that person unlimited phone call and SMS alerts, on-call scheduling, escalations and incident management. Checks can run as often as every 30 seconds, from multiple locations, and failing checks capture screenshots. Additional monitors cost $21 a month per 50 on annual billing. Status pages can be branded on your own domain. The value score is lower only because a solo site owner pays $29 for features they may never touch. For a team of two or three engineers sharing nights, the bundle is cheaper than separate uptime, paging and status page tools.
- ✓Free plan covers 10 monitors and heartbeats with a status page
- ✓Unlimited phone and SMS alerts on each responder license
- ✓Incident management and status pages built in
- ✕$29 per responder adds up for larger on-call rotations
- ✕Extra monitors cost $21 per 50 per month billed annually
- ✕Many features beyond uptime that small sites will not use
- Free plan:
- Yes, 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page
- Responder license:
- $29 per month annually, $34 monthly
- Fastest check:
- 30 seconds
- Extra monitors:
- 50 for $21 per month annually
- Alerts:
- Unlimited phone calls and SMS per responder
Bottom line: The best all-in-one choice for teams that need paging and status pages. Overkill for a single site that only needs email alerts.
- 04
Site24x7
8.4/10Zoho's monitoring suite, with a low-cost website uptime plan and options to grow into server, application and real user monitoring.
Price
$9per month
Free plan for up to 50 resources with email alerts; Web Uptime $9 per month paid annually ($10 monthly), 25 websites
“Web Uptime $ 10 /month $ 9 /month paid annually” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Free trial
- 30 days
- Value (40%)
- 8.8
- Features (35%)
- 8.5
- Ease of use (25%)
- 7.5
Best forSmall companies that want 25 websites watched for a flat low fee, with room to add infrastructure monitoring later.
Site24x7 is Zoho's monitoring platform, and its Web Uptime plan is a cheap way into it: $9 a month paid annually, or $10 monthly, for 25 websites polled every minute. The plan also includes transaction monitors, real user monitoring page views, three status pages, multiple users and third-party integrations, with email support. The main limit is that Web Uptime checks from one monitoring location, so a regional network problem can look like an outage. The next tier, Web Perf at $36 a month paid annually, moves to eight locations and 40 websites. Site24x7's strength is breadth: the same account can add server, network, cloud and application monitoring as you grow, priced through add-on packs. That breadth also makes the pricing page and dashboard harder to read than a focused tool like UptimeRobot. The 30-day free trial is long enough to judge it properly, and a free forever plan covers uptime checks for up to 50 resources with email alerts.
- ✓$9 a month for 25 websites is one of the lowest per-site prices
- ✓30-day free trial, plus a free forever plan for up to 50 resources
- ✓Same platform covers infrastructure and app monitoring
- ✕Web Uptime checks from a single monitoring location
- ✕Pricing page is long and add-on heavy
- ✕Interface is denser than single-purpose uptime tools
- Entry plan:
- Web Uptime
- Price:
- $9 per month paid annually, $10 monthly
- Websites:
- 25
- Check interval:
- 1 minute
- Free trial:
- 30 days
- Free plan:
- Yes, uptime for up to 50 resources with email alerts
Bottom line: A low flat fee for 25 sites and a long trial. Choose a higher tier or another tool if you need checks from several regions.
- 05
StatusCake
8.2/10A UK monitoring service covering uptime, page speed, domain, SSL and server checks in one account.
Price
$20.41per month
Free plan; Superior $20.41 per month billed annually ($24.49 monthly)
“Superior Access more monitoring tools and more customisation. $20.41 $24.49 per month” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Free trial
- 7 days
- Value (40%)
- 8.0
- Features (35%)
- 8.4
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.2
Best forTeams that want 100 monitors plus page speed, SSL and domain checks on a mid-priced plan.
StatusCake's free plan includes 10 uptime monitors at a five-minute interval, plus one page speed, one domain and one SSL monitor. Superior, at $20.41 a month billed annually or $24.49 monthly, is the plan most small teams will want: 100 uptime monitors checked every minute, 15 page speed monitors, 50 domain monitors, 50 SSL monitors and three server monitors, with reporting and free SMS credits. That bundle replaces several single-purpose tools, which is where its value comes from. Business, at $66.66 a month annually, raises the limits to 300 uptime monitors with 30-second checks and adds team tools. Every plan can be tried free for seven days without a card. The weak spots are the slow free tier and the price gap between Superior and Business. Payment by invoice is limited to Business yearly plans and above.
- ✓Free plan with 10 uptime monitors
- ✓Superior bundles page speed, SSL and domain checks
- ✓7-day free trial on any plan without a card
- ✕Free plan checks every 5 minutes
- ✕Jump from Superior to Business is large at $66.66
- ✕Invoice payment only on Business yearly plans
- Free plan:
- Yes, 10 uptime monitors, 5-minute interval
- Superior:
- $20.41 per month annually, $24.49 monthly
- Superior monitors:
- 100 uptime, 1-minute interval
- Business:
- $66.66 per month annually, 300 monitors, 30-second interval
- Free trial:
- 7 days
Bottom line: A good mid-priced bundle of uptime, speed, SSL and domain checks. The free plan is fine for testing but slow for production.
- 06
Uptime.com
8.2/10A dedicated monitoring service with a wide range of check types, from HTTP and DNS to transactions and APIs.
Price
$9per month
Website Monitoring from $9 per month on yearly billing ($108 per year)
“Website Monitoring STARTING AT $ 9 / mo” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- No
- Value (40%)
- 8.0
- Features (35%)
- 8.6
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.0
Best forBusinesses that want many check types and unlimited users under one subscription.
Uptime.com starts at $9 a month on yearly billing, which works out to $108 a year, and says yearly plans save over 20%. That entry price covers website monitoring at a one-minute interval with email and SMS alerting, more than 20 integrations, maintenance windows, customizable reporting, group checks and unlimited users. The check catalog is wide: SSL certificates, TCP ports, DNS, domain and WHOIS expiry, blacklists, malware, SSH, SMTP, IMAP, POP, FTP and ping, plus advanced API, transaction and page speed checks. There is no free plan, but new users get a 30-day money-back guarantee. The pricing works through a quantity calculator rather than fixed tiers, so you need to know how many checks of each type you want before the number means much. For a business that wants one vendor for many kinds of checks and does not want to pay per seat, it is a fair deal.
- ✓Broad catalog of basic and advanced check types
- ✓Unlimited users on the plan
- ✓30-day money-back guarantee for new users
- ✕No permanent free plan
- ✕Plan size is set through a quantity calculator, which makes comparison harder
- ✕Advanced checks raise the bill quickly
- Starting price:
- $9 per month, $108 per year
- Check interval:
- 1 minute
- Users:
- Unlimited
- Refund window:
- 30 days
Bottom line: A wide check catalog and unlimited users from $9 a month. Use the calculator before you buy, since advanced checks push the price up.
- 07
Checkly
8.0/10A developer-focused synthetic monitoring platform that runs Playwright browser checks and API checks alongside uptime monitors.
Price
$24per month
Free Hobby plan; Starter $24 per month billed annually
“Starter $ 24 per month, billed annually” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Value (40%)
- 7.6
- Features (35%)
- 9.0
- Ease of use (25%)
- 7.4
Best forDev teams that want to monitor login flows and checkouts with code-based browser tests.
Checkly is built for developers who want to know not only that a site responds but that the login, search and checkout still work. Its browser checks run Playwright scripts on a schedule, and API checks validate responses, alongside plain uptime monitors. The free Hobby plan includes 10 uptime monitors at a two-minute interval, 1,000 browser checks and 10,000 API checks from six locations. Starter, at $24 a month billed annually, raises that to 50 uptime monitors at one minute, 3,000 browser checks and 25,000 API checks, and adds SMS alerting. Team at $64 a month moves to 30-second checks, 22 locations and private locations. The trade-off is effort: to get value from browser checks you write and maintain test scripts, which is natural for an engineering team and a chore for a marketing site owner. As a pure uptime tool, Checkly costs more than HetrixTools or Site24x7.
- ✓Free Hobby plan with 10 uptime monitors and browser checks
- ✓Tests full user flows, not just page responses
- ✓Monitoring defined as code fits developer workflows
- ✕Browser checks need Playwright knowledge to get full value
- ✕Starter uses 6 locations; 22 locations need the $64 Team plan
- ✕More than a simple site owner needs
- Free plan:
- Hobby, 10 uptime monitors, 2-minute interval
- Starter:
- $24 per month billed annually
- Starter limits:
- 50 uptime monitors, 3,000 browser and 25,000 API checks
- Team:
- $64 per month annually, 30-second checks, 22 locations
Bottom line: The strongest option for testing real user flows. Choose a simpler tool if you only need to know whether a page loads.
- 08
Cronitor
8.0/10A usage-priced monitoring service for cron jobs, heartbeats, websites and APIs.
Price
$2per monitor per month, plus $5 per user
Free Hacker plan with 5 monitors; Business $2 per monitor per month plus $5 per user
“Business $2 /mo per monitor + $5 /mo per user” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Free trial
- 14 days
- Value (40%)
- 7.8
- Features (35%)
- 8.0
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.4
Best forDevelopers who mostly need to watch scheduled jobs and a handful of endpoints, and want to pay only for what they use.
Cronitor charges for exactly what you use. The free Hacker plan watches five monitors at a five-minute interval with email and Slack alerts and a basic status page. Business has no base fee: $2 a month per monitor plus $5 per dashboard user, after a 14-day free trial, billed monthly with no contract. Cronitor's own example puts 20 monitors and three users at $55 a month. Business adds 30-second checks, SMS alerts, on-call integrations with PagerDuty, Datadog On-Call, OpsGenie and Splunk On-Call, 12 months of retention and unlimited API requests. Every plan covers cron jobs and heartbeats as well as websites and APIs, and that is Cronitor's real strength: few uptime tools handle scheduled jobs this well. The model punishes scale, though. At 100 monitors you would pay $200 a month before users, far more than StatusCake or HetrixTools charge for similar counts.
- ✓No base fee or minimum on Business
- ✓Strong cron and heartbeat monitoring
- ✓Monthly billing with no contract
- ✕Per-monitor pricing gets expensive past a few dozen checks
- ✕Free Hacker plan has no SMS alerts and 5-minute checks
- ✕Branded and private status pages cost extra
- Free plan:
- Hacker, 5 monitors, 5-minute checks
- Business:
- $2 per monitor and $5 per user per month
- Free trial:
- 14 days on Business
- Example bill:
- 20 monitors and 3 users cost $55 per month
- Enterprise:
- From $6,000 per year
Bottom line: The best fit when cron jobs matter as much as web pages. Pricey for large numbers of simple uptime checks.
- 09
Oh Dear
8.0/10An all-in-one website monitor that checks uptime, certificates, broken links, DNS and scheduled tasks, priced by number of sites.
Price
$17per month
Solo $17 per month for 2 sites; every plan has every feature
“Solo 2 $17 /mo Start trial” Quoted from the pricing page, November 4, 2026.
- Free plan
- No
- Free trial
- 10 days
- Value (40%)
- 6.9
- Features (35%)
- 8.8
- Ease of use (25%)
- 8.6
Best forAgencies and site owners who want uptime plus broken-link and certificate checks without managing several tools.
Oh Dear prices by site rather than by monitor, and every plan gets the full feature set. Solo costs $17 a month for two sites and servers, Solo Plus $32 for five and Freelance $55 for ten, with two months free on annual billing. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT. What you get for each site goes well beyond a ping: uptime checks, status pages, SSL certificate monitoring, a broken-link crawler, DNS change detection and cron job monitoring, which Oh Dear pitches as replacing six separate tools. There is a 10-day free trial without a card and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Per site, it is the most expensive service in this ranking, so it only makes sense if you will use the extra checks. For an agency that would otherwise pay for an uptime tool, a link checker and a certificate monitor, the bundle can still come out cheaper.
- ✓Every feature is available on every plan
- ✓Broken-link crawler is rare among uptime tools
- ✓10-day free trial without a credit card
- ✕$17 a month for 2 sites is the highest per-site price here
- ✕No free plan
- ✕Prices exclude VAT, and the default pricing page shows euros outside the US
- Entry plan:
- Solo, 2 sites and servers
- Price:
- $17 per month
- Free trial:
- 10 days
- Refund window:
- 30 days
- Annual billing:
- 2 months free
Bottom line: The richest per-site check set in this ranking. Poor value if all you need is an uptime ping.
What to check before you pay
Count monitors, not plans
Prices only make sense per monitor. Site24x7 Web Uptime covers 25 websites for $9 a month, HetrixTools Professional 30 monitors for $9.95 and StatusCake Superior 100 monitors for $20.41. Cronitor charges $2 per monitor, so it is cheap for five checks and expensive for fifty.
Check the interval on the plan you can afford
Free plans usually check every five minutes, which can hide short outages. HetrixTools checks every minute even on its free plan, Checkly Hobby every two minutes and UptimeRobot's free plan every five. Thirty-second checks appear on paid tiers at Better Stack, Cronitor, StatusCake Business and Checkly Team.
Price the alerts
Email and Slack alerts are nearly always included, but SMS and phone calls are often capped or paid. Better Stack includes unlimited phone and SMS alerts per responder license, HetrixTools Professional includes 25 SMS a month and Cronitor's free Hacker plan has no SMS at all.
Decide whether you need more than uptime
Some tools bundle extra checks. Oh Dear adds broken-link crawling, DNS and certificate checks, Checkly runs Playwright browser tests, and Cronitor focuses on cron jobs and heartbeats. If you only need to know whether a page answers, a simpler and cheaper tool will do.
FAQ
What is the best free uptime monitoring tool?
HetrixTools has the strongest free plan we found, with 15 uptime monitors checked every minute and status pages. UptimeRobot's free plan allows more monitors, 50, but checks every five minutes, and Site24x7's free plan covers up to 50 resources with email alerts.
What is the cheapest paid uptime monitoring plan?
Site24x7 Web Uptime and Uptime.com both start at $9 a month on annual billing, and HetrixTools Professional costs $9.95 a month. Cronitor can be cheaper for very small setups at $2 per monitor plus $5 per user.
How often should an uptime monitor check my site?
One minute is a good default for business sites. Five-minute checks, common on free plans, can miss short outages, while 30-second checks are available on paid tiers from Better Stack, Cronitor, StatusCake and Checkly.
Do I need on-call scheduling?
Only if more than one person shares responsibility for fixing outages outside office hours. Better Stack includes on-call scheduling and unlimited phone and SMS alerts at $29 per responder license per month billed annually.
How did you rank these tools?
We compared documented features and published prices from each vendor's pricing page, then scored value, features and ease of use. Value carries 40% of the overall score, so monitors per dollar and free plan limits weigh heavily.
Questions or corrections: editorial@rankozo.comSee our disclosure. Prices change; confirm on the vendor page before buying.
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