Better Stack
A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.
Uptime monitoring, incident alerting and log management in one product. It checks your endpoints from several regions, pages whoever is on call through a rota, and publishes a status page when something is down.
Build me an uptime monitor, and host it somewhere other than the thing it watches. STACK - Node with a small cron worker, SQLite via better-sqlite3 - Server-rendered dashboard, no frontend framework MONITORS - Defined in a config file: URL, method, expected status, optional body match, interval, timeout - A consecutive-failure threshold per monitor before anything is sent CHECKS - Every attempt appended with status code, response time and error — never a row that overwrites the last state - An incident months old must be reconstructable from this table alone CONFIRMATION BEFORE ALERTING - Re-check a failure after a short delay from the same worker - Alert only once the threshold is met, because a single timeout is noise - A cooldown per monitor, so one flapping check cannot send forty messages ALERTS - Webhook, email through a relay, and an optional SMS gateway behind the same interface - Recovery notifications as well as failures DASHBOARD - Uptime over 24 hours, 7 days and 90 days, computed at query time from the attempts table - Response time as inline SVG THE STATUS PAGE - Rendered as static files and pushed to a different host, so it survives the outage it reports Include a README saying plainly that a monitor sharing a machine with the service is not a monitor.
What you lose
- Checks running from several regions, so you can tell a real outage from your own network having a bad minute
- A monitor that is not hosted on the machine it monitors — the failure mode that makes self-hosted uptime checks worthless
- On-call schedules, escalation policies and phone calls that wake the right person
- Incident timelines and a status page fed automatically from the checks
- Log ingestion and retention bundled alongside, which is a real cost if you need it
If you would rather not build
- Upptime — checks driven entirely by GitHub Actions
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Uptime Kuma
$0Uptime monitoring with a status page and alerts to most chat services.
louislam/uptime-kumafree · open source
Gatus
$0Health checks declared in a YAML file, with a status page generated from them.
TwiN/gatusfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
58/100
Verdict kinda at 58: an HTTP check on a timer is genuinely simple, and the append-only attempts table gives better history than most paid tiers. Multi-region checking and a real on-call rotation are what keep this from being a yes.
History
tracked since 6 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Better Stack
answered from the record above
Is Better Stack free?
No — the plan we track is $25 a month. Uptime monitoring includes 10 monitors at no cost; the first paid step is $25/mo for an additional 50 monitors ($21 billed yearly). Logs and incident management are priced separately.
Can you replace Better Stack by building your own?
ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 58 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Better Stack cost?
$25 a month on Additional 50 monitors — $300 a year. Recorded 6 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Better Stack?
Checks running from several regions, so you can tell a real outage from your own network having a bad minute; A monitor that is not hosted on the machine it monitors — the failure mode that makes self-hosted uptime checks worthless; On-call schedules, escalation policies and phone calls that wake the right person; Incident timelines and a status page fed automatically from the checks; Log ingestion and retention bundled alongside, which is a real cost if you need it. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Better Stack?
Yes: Uptime Kuma, Gatus. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
Related entries
same category first, most replaced first
Visualping
UptimeRobotEvery week, something stops being worth paying for.
New verdicts, prices that moved, entries added. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
free forever · no tracking pixel · every prompt stays free on the site