UptimeRobot alternative for founders stuck on the 5-minute free tier
Logdash checks HTTP endpoints every 5 minutes on the free plan and every 15 seconds on Pro, and puts the logs and metrics from the same service on the same page, so upgrading buys you more than a shorter gap between pings.
UptimeRobot is the monitor almost everyone sets up first, and for one marketing site it is still a reasonable answer. The strain shows up on the second service. You add the API, then the worker, then the staging box, and the 5-minute interval starts to matter, because a deploy that breaks at 09:00:10 is a deploy you hear about at 09:05. Five minutes of a checkout endpoint returning 500 is a support thread, not a blip.
The fix on offer is a paid plan, and the paid plan buys exactly one thing: a shorter gap. The logs still live somewhere else. The error rate still lives somewhere else. When the alert lands at 3am you still open three tabs to work out whether the box is down, the database is down, or a migration ate the connection pool. That is the upsell wall - you pay more and the actual work of diagnosing an outage does not get one step shorter.
Logdash also checks every 5 minutes on the free plan. That part is a tie and pretending otherwise would be a lie. What changes is what sits next to the check: the uptime history, the response time chart, the log lines from the same second the check failed, and any metric registered from your own code. One service, one page. Pro drops the interval to 15 seconds, and the free plan covers five services rather than one.
A health endpoint worth checking
app.get('/health', async (req, res) => {
try {
await db.query('select 1');
res.status(200).json({ ok: true });
} catch (err) {
// 503 so the monitor sees the database, not just the process
res.status(503).json({ ok: false, error: 'db' });
}
});- 1 Add the service Point a monitor at https://yourapp.com/health. Logdash stores the status code and the response time on every check, so the latency chart builds itself.
- 2 Connect a channel Add a Telegram channel once at the cluster level and every monitor can use it. Webhooks work the same way if you want to route alerts through your own handler.
- 3 Break it before it breaks you Stop the process and wait one interval. The monitor flips to down and the Telegram alert arrives naming the endpoint and the status code, which is how you learn your alerting works before an outage teaches you it does not.
Logdash vs UptimeRobot
| Feature | Logdash | UptimeRobot |
|---|---|---|
| Free check interval | Every 5 minutes | Every 5 minutes |
| Monitor types | HTTP checks and push heartbeats | HTTP, keyword, port, ping, SSL and heartbeat |
| Alert channels | Telegram and webhook, and that is the list | Email, SMS, voice, Slack, Discord, webhook |
| Fastest interval on a paid plan | 15 seconds | Sub-minute on the higher tiers |
| App logs and custom metrics | Eight SDKs into the same service view | Not part of the product |
| Source code | MIT licensed, public repository | Closed source |
When UptimeRobot is the better pick
- You need SSL expiry, port, ping or keyword checks. Logdash has none of them and none of them are close.
- You want an SMS or a phone call when things break. Logdash sends Telegram messages and webhooks, and nothing else.
- You already have forty monitors and a team that knows the dashboard. Rebuilding that is a day you probably do not have to spare.
What moving actually costs
About an hour for five services, and there is no importer. Create a service per app, paste the URL, add the Telegram channel once. The slow part is not the monitors, it is dropping an SDK into each app so the logs land beside them, and that is an install and a token per service. Keep both running for a week. If they disagree about an outage, the one you should trust is whichever one is not hosted next to the thing it watches.
Is there a free UptimeRobot alternative?
Yes. The Logdash free plan covers five services with a 5-minute check on each, one public status page, and Telegram or webhook alerts. Same interval UptimeRobot gives away, with logs and metrics attached to the same service.
Is there a self hosted UptimeRobot alternative?
Uptime Kuma is the usual answer and it is a good one. Logdash is MIT licensed and runs locally for development, but a one-command production install is not ready yet and is tracked on GitHub, so use the hosted version if you want it working today.
Is there an open source alternative to UptimeRobot?
Logdash is MIT licensed and the repository is public. Uptime Kuma and Gatus are the other two names that come up most often, and both self-host today.
What does Reddit recommend instead of UptimeRobot?
The thread usually lands on Uptime Kuma if you are happy running a container, healthchecks.io for cron jobs, and a hosted tool if you have already been bitten by a monitor going down with its host.