Free uptime monitoring tools compared: what each free plan really includes
Figures are taken from each vendor's own page on 3 Nov 2026 and can change. Check the linked pages before you decide. If you run a small site or API, a free uptime monitor is usually enough to start. The plans differ a
Figures are taken from each vendor's own page on 3 Nov 2026 and can change. Check the linked pages before you decide.
If you run a small site or API, a free uptime monitor is usually enough to start. The plans differ a lot in how many things you can watch, how often they are checked and who gets told. This is what each free plan includes today.
The free plans side by side
| Tool | Monitors | Check interval | Alerts on the free plan | Status page | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UptimeRobot | 50 | 5 minutes | Limited integrations; SMS and voice not included | 1 basic | Page says free is fine for personal and commercial projects |
| Hyperping | 20 | 5 minutes | Email only | 1, custom subdomain | No credit card, no trial expiry |
| Better Stack | 10 (monitors and heartbeats combined) | Not stated for free | Slack and email | 1 | Described as free for personal projects |
| Halvyn | 2 (HTTP) | 5 minutes | Email on down and recovery | 1 | No credit card; 3 days of history |
How to choose
You have many small things to watch. UptimeRobot's 50 monitors on the free plan is the most generous number here. It is the obvious first look.
You want email alerts and a branded status page. Hyperping's free plan covers both for up to 20 endpoints.
Your team lives in Slack. Better Stack includes Slack on its free tier, with fewer monitors.
You have one or two critical endpoints and care how the alert behaves. Halvyn's free plan is small on purpose: 2 HTTP monitors. Its difference is not volume. A failing check is rechecked, one incident opens instead of a stream of repeated alerts, and on paid plans alerts escalate until someone acknowledges the incident. The incident keeps a timeline you can use for a post-mortem.
What the free plans do not give you
Across all of these, the free plan is the start, not the finish. Faster checks, SMS and voice alerts, on-call escalation, longer history and other check types (cron jobs, databases, DNS, domains) are on paid plans. Check what you will need in six months, not only today.
A quick way to pick
- Count what you must watch today. More than 10 endpoints points to UptimeRobot or Hyperping.
- Decide who must be woken up. If the answer is "one named person, and someone else if they miss it", look at escalation.
- Try one for a week. Hyperping and Halvyn both state that the free plan needs no credit card; check the sign-up page of the others.
You can try Halvyn's free plan at halvyn.win/free-uptime-monitoring.
Disclosure: the author builds Halvyn.
Originally published by Dev.to WebDev. Aggregated on AIWithGhost for educational purposes — full credit and traffic to the original publisher.