Downtime costs money and credibility. For SaaS companies and online businesses, a few minutes offline can mean lost customers, broken trust, and missed revenue. That’s why choosing the right website uptime monitoring tools is more than a technical decision – it’s a business priority.
But with dozens of options on the market, how do you know which tool gives you the reliability, features, and pricing your team needs?
We’ve tested and compared the best website uptime monitoring tools in 2026, breaking down their core features, pricing, and use cases so you can make a confident, informed choice.
You’ll leave with a short list that fits your budget and growth plan – and keeps your site online.
What is Website Uptime Monitoring?
Website uptime monitoring means checking (from multiple locations) that your site loads and works, and alerting you the moment it doesn’t.
A monitoring service is an automated system that continuously checks your website from multiple global locations. If this service detects that your site is down, slow, or displaying an error, it quickly alerts you via email, SMS, Slack, or similar channels.
Why Uptime Monitoring is Essential for Websites
Launching a website isn’t enough – what matters is keeping it online, fast, and reliable every hour of the day. For SaaS businesses, uptime isn’t just about user experience – it directly affects customer retention, revenue, and SLA commitments. Here’s why uptime monitoring matters:
Improved Website Reliability and User Trust
When users try to visit your site and find it unavailable, their trust in your brand diminishes. A website that is frequently down appears unprofessional and unreliable. Consistent uptime builds confidence and shows users that you are a dependable business, which is important for retaining visitors and customers.
Faster Incident Response and Reduced Downtime
Without monitoring, the first sign of downtime often comes from frustrated customers or public complaints. By that point, you’ve already lost revenue and credibility. Uptime data helps you prove SLA compliance, report to stakeholders, and keep customer trust.
Better SLA Compliance and Performance Tracking
Most SaaS businesses commit to strict uptime SLAs – often 99.9% or higher. Uptime monitoring provides the data to demonstrate compliance, generate reports for stakeholders, and build trust with customers and investors. It also provides long-term performance history, helping you spot recurring issues before they escalate.
Data-Driven Insights for Optimization
Modern tools track more than availability – latency, page speed, and regional performance are included. For instance, if you consistently see high latency in Asia, you can add a CDN to reduce slow-region drop-offs.
Suggested Read: Uptime Monitoring Tools: Why You Need Them, and What to Look for
Key Metrics Tracked by Uptime Monitoring Tools
Uptime monitoring isn’t just a simple “yes” or “no” check. These tools track several key metrics to give you a complete picture of your website’s health.
- Uptime Percentage: This is the percentage of time your website was online and available over a specific period (e.g., 99.95% in the last 30 days). This is the headline reliability number you’ll report to leadership and clients.
- Response Time (Latency): This measures how quickly your server responds to a request. A sudden spike in response time can be an early warning that your server is overloaded, even before it goes down. Consistently slow response times in a specific geographic area can indicate that you need to optimize your infrastructure for that region.
- Page Load Time is the total time it takes for a webpage to fully load in a user’s browser. This metric is one of the most important factors for user experience, as slow-loading pages lead to high bounce rates. Tracking this helps you identify if a recent code change or a large image negatively impacts performance.
- HTTP Status Code Errors (e.g., 404, 500): This tracks the error codes your server sends back. A surge in “404 Not Found” errors could indicate broken links on your site after a redesign. A “500 Internal Server Error” means your application has a serious problem that needs immediate attention.
- SSL Certificate Status: This check ensures your website’s SSL certificate is valid and not expired. This prevents the ‘Your connection is not private’ browser warning. However, if you are using RunCloud, then RunCloud renews SSL certificates one month before expiry.
Suggested Read: Using Dynatrace to Monitor RunCloud Servers
Top 11 Website Uptime Monitoring Tools Compared
| Tool | Free Plan | Check Frequency | Key Features | Best For | Starting Price (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Better Stack | Yes – 10 monitors, 3-min checks | 30 sec (paid), 3 min (free) | Monitoring + incident management, status pages, integrations | Teams needing integrated monitoring + incident response | $24/ |
| UptimeRobot | Yes – 50 monitors, 5-min checks | 5 min (free), 1 min (paid) | Simple setup, generous free plan, status pages | Startups, small businesses, personal projects | $7–8/mo |
| Pingdom | No (Paid from $10/mo) | 1 min+ | Synthetic checks, RUM, transaction monitoring, diagnostics | Growing SaaS teams needing end-to-end visibility | $10/mo |
| Site24x7 | 30-day trial only | 1 min+ | All-in-one: uptime, RUM, server, API monitoring | Teams needing one platform for uptime, RUM, servers, and APIs | $35/mo |
| Oh Dear | No (10-day free trial only, no credit card required) | Every 1 minute | Broken link crawler, scheduled task/cron monitoring, application status pages | Web agencies, PHP/Laravel developers, sysadmins, and SaaS founders | €15/month (up to 2 sites) |
| StatusCake | Yes – 10 monitors, 5-min checks | 30 sec–5 min | Uptime, page speed, domain & SSL checks, status pages | Agencies or small teams needing broad coverage | $15/mo |
| Datadog | No (Paid per test) | 1 min+ | Synthetic monitoring, APM/logs integration, self-healing tests | Medium/large SaaS with complex systems | $5 per 10k API tests |
| New Relic | Yes – 100 checks/mo | Varies by usage | Synthetic checks linked with APM, full-stack correlation | Teams already using New Relic APM | Consumption-based – free tier available |
| Uptrends | No (Pay-as-you-go credits) | 30 sec–5 min | Concurrent global monitoring, transaction flows, error snapshots | Teams needing accuracy & minimal false positives | $5/mo (credits) |
| Sematext | Pay-as-you-go available | 1 min+ | Uptime + API monitoring, Core Web Vitals, public/private locations | Teams needing both public & internal monitoring | $29/mo |
| Pulsetic | Yes – Basic uptime + status page | 1–5 min | Uptime + branded status pages, simple incident comms | Teams that prioritize clear incident comms with branded status pages, startups, and agencies | From $9/month (Solo) |
Better Stack
Better Stack is more than an uptime checker – it’s a full incident management and monitoring platform. For teams running SaaS products or high-traffic websites, it helps ensure issues are caught quickly, alerts reach the right person, and communication with users stays clear. With checks running as often as every 30 seconds from multiple global locations, you avoid false positives and get accurate visibility. Its incident timelines, screenshots, and integrations with tools such as Slack, Datadog, and AWS make it suitable for teams that route alerts into Slack/PagerDuty and need on-call scheduling.
Key Features
- 30-second multi-location checks with screenshots and detailed logs
- Incident management tools with on-call scheduling and smart alert merging
- Integrations with major platforms (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, AWS, GCP, etc.)
- Customizable public status pages for transparent communication
Pricing
- Free plan includes basic checks, alerts, and status page functionality.
- Paid tiers (from $29/month) add faster monitoring, richer alerting, and team workflows.
When to Choose This Tool
Better Stack is ideal if you need more than just basic monitoring. It’s a strong fit for SaaS companies, agencies managing multiple clients, and larger projects with dedicated support teams. Its greatest strength is combining monitoring with incident response, saving time and reducing missed alerts. If you’re solo or on a tiny project, it’s more than you need.
Suggested Read: How UptimeRobot Can Save Your Website from Downtime Disasters
UptimeRobot
UptimeRobot is one of the most popular website uptime monitoring tools thanks to its simplicity and generous free plan. Setup takes minutes – add a URL, and you’re done. It covers the essentials without adding complexity, and supports HTTP(s), ping, port, keyword, SSL, and heartbeat monitoring. For small businesses, personal projects, or startups, it’s a cost-effective way to stay ahead of downtime before customers notice.
Key Features
- Free plan with up to 50 monitors checked every 5 minutes
- Paid plans (from $7/month) offer 60-second checks, SSL/domain expiry alerts, and longer log retention
- Status pages (public or private) for sharing uptime performance with customers or teams
- Alerts delivered via email, SMS, Slack, MS Teams, Telegram, and more
Pricing
- Free: 50 monitors, 5-minute intervals
- Pro plans: from $7/month for 60-second checks and advanced features
- Higher tiers include more monitors, faster checks, and enterprise-ready features
When to Choose This Tool
UptimeRobot is best suited to small businesses, personal sites, and early-stage startups that need dependable monitoring without high costs. The free plan is among the most generous available, making it a great entry point. Free checks run every 5 minutes – fine for basics, but not for mission-critical apps, so larger SaaS companies will likely need to upgrade to faster paid plans or consider a more advanced solution.
Suggested Read: How to Reduce Cache Misses & Avoid Them: Proven Tips [FIXED]
Pingdom
Pingdom is a robust website and digital experience monitoring platform. It covers uptime checks, synthetic user flows, real-user monitoring (RUM), and page speed analysis – all from one dashboard. Plans start at $10/month and scale to high-volume enterprise use with thousands of checks, making it a strong fit for growing digital businesses.
Key Features
- Synthetic monitoring from 100+ global locations; instantly detect outages.
- Transaction and page speed monitoring; includes root-cause tools like traceroutes and server response insights.
- Real User Monitoring provides insights into how users experience performance, segmented by browser, geography, and device.
- Public status pages and rich alerting (SMS, email, Slack, PagerDuty, etc.).
Pricing
- Synthetic Monitoring plans begin at $10/month for 10 uptime monitors, one advanced check, and 50 SMS alerts. Scale up to tens of thousands of monitors at higher tiers.
- RUM plans also start at $10/month for 100,000 pageviews and scale up to 1 billion pageviews.
When to Choose This Tool
Choose Pingdom if you need deep, multi-layered insight into your website’s performance and availability. It fits well with growing SaaS companies, high-traffic sites, or agencies managing complex user journeys. You’ll get the most value when you monitor checkout, signup, and other revenue paths end-to-end, but the interface has a learning curve, and pricing can escalate quickly as you scale.
Site24x7
Site24x7 is an all-in-one monitoring service from Zoho that goes beyond simple uptime checks. In addition to website availability monitoring, it offers server health tracking, API monitoring, and Real User Monitoring (RUM). With over 120 global test locations, it provides a single convenient dashboard for UX metrics and backend health.
Key Features
- Synthetic transaction monitoring simulates user flows such as login, checkout, or search to ensure business-critical processes function correctly.
- Real User Monitoring (RUM) captures actual visitor performance by device, browser, and region.
- Server and application monitoring covers CPU, memory, disk, and API endpoints.
- Global network of 120+ monitoring locations provides detailed regional insights.
Pricing
- Pro Plan: starts around $35/month (billed annually) with website and server monitoring.
- Classic Plan: $89/month, offering expanded resources and checks.
- Enterprise Plan: from $225/month, supporting large-scale monitoring needs.
- All plans include a 30-day free trial.
When to Choose This Tool
Site24x7 is a strong choice for mid-sized to large teams who want a unified monitoring solution covering websites, servers, APIs, and user experience. It’s particularly useful for SaaS businesses with complex infrastructure or global audiences, since synthetic and RUM monitoring together provide a full performance picture. Pricing at higher tiers can stretch small budgets – its more advanced tiers can be costly for smaller projects compared to lighter tools like UptimeRobot.
Suggested Read: How do you check Linux CPU usage or utilization? (5 Ways)
Oh Dear
Oh Dear takes a broad approach to website monitoring, combining uptime, SSL certificate, broken link, performance, cron job, and other checks into a single service. All features, including team features such as SSO, are available across its plans, with pricing based primarily on the number of sites you monitor.
In addition to basic uptime monitoring, Oh Dear provides a comprehensive health check for your entire website ecosystem.
It can also monitor application health, API endpoints, scheduled tasks, and other processes that basic uptime checks may miss, alerting you to issues such as SSL certificate problems, broken links, failed cron jobs, and application health failures before they affect users.
Key Features
- Holistic Health Monitoring: Tracks uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, mixed content, DNS records, and domain expiration dates in one place.
- Deep Application Insights: Monitors scheduled tasks (cron jobs), API endpoints, and application health (queues, storage, cache) to ensure your backend processes are functioning correctly.
- Performance & SEO: Tracks Lighthouse scores and monitors sitemaps to identify performance and SEO-related issues.
- Client Reporting: Generates monthly reports and supports customizable status pages for sharing monitoring information with clients.
- Instant Multi-Channel Alerts: Sends notifications via Slack, email, SMS, PagerDuty, and webhooks the moment an incident is detected.
Pricing
Oh Dear offers a transparent pricing structure where every plan includes full access to all features, so you never have to worry about missing out on essential monitoring tools. Pricing is based simply on how many sites you need to monitor:
- Solo: €15/month for up to 2 sites.
- Freelance: €49/month for up to 10 sites.
- Studio: €99/month for up to 25 sites.
- Larger plans are available for agencies and businesses monitoring more sites.
When to Choose This Tool
Oh Dear is a good fit for web agencies, developers, and SaaS teams that want more than basic uptime monitoring without having to manage several separate services. Its combination of uptime, SSL, broken link, performance, DNS, cron job, API, and application health monitoring is particularly useful when you manage multiple websites or applications.
It may also suit teams that want predictable access to features, since all plans include the same monitoring and team features. The main pricing variable is the number of sites you need to monitor.
StatusCake
StatusCake delivers reliable uptime monitoring, page speed, domain, server, and SSL checks. With 43 testing locations, flexible alerting, and a free tier, it covers uptime, page speed, domain/SSL, and server checks in a simple UI.
Key Features
- Flexible uptime checks at intervals as low as 30 seconds (depending on plan).
- Page speed monitoring, domain expiration notifications, server resource checks, and SSL auditing.
- Alerting via email, SMS, Slack, Discord, Telegram, and more.
- Public status pages, sub-account management, tagging, and audit logs for team visibility and client reporting.
Pricing
- Basic (Free): 10 uptime monitors at 5-minute intervals.
- Superior: $15/month for 100 monitors, 1-minute tests, page speed, domain, server, and SSL monitoring.
- Business: $50/month for 300 monitors, 30-second checks, team account access, and detailed logging.
When to Choose This Tool
StatusCake works when you need a wide feature set out of the box – especially helpful if you must track performance, domains, security, and server health together. It’s well-suited for agencies, small businesses, or teams managing multiple client sites. Benefits include deep visibility and strong alerting flexibility, but there are no RUM or scripted transactions, and some alerts/support options are available only on higher plans.
Suggested Read: How To Install New Relic Monitoring on RunCloud
Datadog
Datadog is an observability platform that monitors more than just uptime. Its Synthetic Monitoring feature allows you to simulate user journeys and API calls from multiple global locations and correlate failures with backend traces, logs, and infrastructure metrics. This makes it especially valuable for teams running complex SaaS applications, where identifying the root cause of downtime is just as important as detecting it.
Key Features
- Codeless browser tests that simulate multi-step user interactions such as signup or checkout.
- API monitoring with chained requests to validate data flows across services.
- AI-powered “self-healing” tests that adapt automatically to minor UI changes.
- Deep integration with Datadog’s wider observability suite: logs, metrics, APM, security monitoring, and incident management.
Pricing
- Synthetic API tests: start at $5 per 10,000 monthly test runs.
- Browser tests: $12 per 1,000 test runs per month.
- Additional pricing applies for Datadog’s broader observability products (infrastructure monitoring, APM, logs)
When to Choose This Tool
Datadog is best suited for medium to large SaaS companies or enterprises that already use – or want to consolidate monitoring within – a full observability platform. Its strength lies in combining uptime checks with deep diagnostics; use it when you need to quickly jump from alert to trace/logs. The main drawback is cost: Datadog can become expensive at scale, and smaller teams that only need uptime monitoring may find it more than they need.
New Relic
New Relic is a comprehensive observability platform with built-in synthetic monitoring. Its Synthetics feature allows you to simulate traffic and scripted user journeys from global locations, ensuring that critical workflows such as login, search, and checkout function correctly. Because it integrates tightly with New Relic’s Application Performance Monitoring (APM), logs, and infrastructure tools, it connects synthetic failures to APM traces, errors, and infrastructure data.
Key Features
- Browser-based monitoring to simulate multi-step user flows.
- API monitoring to test endpoints, validate responses, and track performance.
- Global testing from a distributed fleet of locations.
- Full-stack correlation: connect synthetic failures directly to APM traces, error logs, and infrastructure data.
Pricing
- Consumption-based model: you pay for the number of synthetic checks run.
- Generous free tier includes 100 free synthetic checks per month.
- Additional usage is billed per check; pricing scales with volume and is bundled into New Relic’s overall observability platform.
When to Choose This Tool
New Relic suits SaaS teams and enterprises that want monitoring embedded in a full observability ecosystem. If your developers already use New Relic APM, adding synthetic checks is a seamless way to connect uptime events to performance diagnostics. It’s especially valuable for teams managing complex applications where pinpointing the “why” behind downtime is critical. If you only need basic uptime, it’s heavy, and pricing can be harder to forecast.
Suggested Read: How To Monitor Your Web App’s RAM & CPU Usage with Netdata
Uptrends
Uptrends is a dedicated website and infrastructure monitoring platform with a strong emphasis on accuracy and global coverage. With over 230 checkpoints worldwide, it verifies uptime and performance from multiple locations simultaneously, helping to eliminate false positives. Alongside uptime checks, it offers real browser, API, and transaction monitoring. Use it to script real flows – login, search, checkout – in real browsers.
Key Features
- Concurrent monitoring from multiple checkpoints to confirm true outages.
- Real browser monitoring that measures full page load performance with waterfall reports.
- Multi-step transaction monitoring for workflows such as logins, searches, and checkout processes.
- Detailed error snapshots and traces for faster debugging.
- Support for APIs, servers, and infrastructure components.
Pricing
- Flexible, credit-based pricing model: credits are purchased and applied to different monitors (uptime, transaction, browser, API).
- Entry-level uptime checks start from around $5 per month; more advanced monitors consume more credits.
- The plan’s scale depends on usage, making it modular but potentially complex to budget.
When to Choose This Tool
Uptrends is well-suited for teams that need highly accurate monitoring with minimal false alarms, especially for global audiences. Its transaction and browser monitoring are useful for SaaS companies where user workflows must always function correctly. Agencies may also find credit-based pricing flexible when managing different types of clients. Credit pricing is flexible, but it’s easy to overspend if your checks grow.
Suggested Read: How to Check Running Processes in Linux Using ps, top, htop, and atop Commands
Sematext
Sematext Synthetics is a flexible monitoring platform that combines uptime, API, and performance monitoring. It offers public test locations and private agents, so you can monitor both internal services behind your firewall and public-facing websites. Alongside uptime, it’s good for teams tracking reliability and Core Web Vitals in one place.
Key Features
- Uptime monitoring for websites, APIs, SSL certificates, and multi-step calls.
- Core Web Vitals tracking, including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
- Flexible deployment: run checks from Sematext’s global network or from private locations.
- Public and private status pages for transparent communication.
- Detailed performance reports with waterfall charts.
Pricing
- Pay-as-you-go: charges per monitor, with granular usage control.
- Standard plan: from $29/month for a bundle of HTTP and Browser monitors.
- Pro plan: from $99/month, with higher limits and advanced features.
When to Choose This Tool
Sematext is best for teams that want flexibility, especially those needing to monitor both public and private applications. It’s useful for SaaS products where internal APIs or dashboards need to be as reliable as external websites. Core Web Vitals monitoring adds value for businesses focused on UX and SEO. It is less integrated than full observability suites, and costs rise with more monitors.
Pulsetic
Pulsetic is a modern uptime monitoring service that emphasizes status pages and incident communication. In addition to standard uptime and API checks, it allows teams to create visually appealing, branded status pages that keep customers informed during outages or maintenance. Alerts can be delivered via Slack, Telegram, email, or webhooks, making it a simple option for clean status pages and clear incident updates.
Key Features
- Uptime monitoring from multiple global regions with instant alerts.
- Beautiful, customizable status pages hosted on your own domain.
- Built-in incident management for posting updates and scheduling maintenance.
- Flexible alerting via Slack, Telegram, email, and webhooks.
Pricing
- Free plan for basic uptime monitoring and simple status pages.
- Paid tiers:
- Solo: $9/month for individuals and freelancers.
- Team: $19/month for collaborative use.
- Organization: $49/month for larger businesses with more complex needs.
When to Choose This Tool
Pulsetic is best for teams that want uptime monitoring and professional, customer-facing status pages. It’s particularly useful for SaaS startups and agencies that need to communicate incidents clearly and maintain trust during downtime. The main limitation is that it lacks some advanced features (such as synthetic transactions or deep analytics) offered by larger platforms, so it is not designed for enterprise-scale synthetic or analytics needs.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the right uptime monitoring tool gives you visibility into outages, faster response times, and the data you need to keep customers confident in your service. But monitoring is only half the equation. If your hosting environment and server management aren’t reliable, even the best monitoring tool will spend more time alerting you to problems than helping you prevent them.
That’s where RunCloud comes in.
By pairing a powerful monitoring tool with RunCloud’s server management platform, you create a foundation that minimizes downtime from the start. With automated SSL renewals, server-level caching, and auto-healing services, RunCloud helps ensure your applications run smoothly – even during traffic spikes or unexpected errors.
If uptime is critical to your business (and it should be), combine proactive monitoring with a hosting setup designed for resilience.
Start building on RunCloud today and give your monitoring tools less to worry about.
FAQs on Website Uptime Monitoring Tools
What is the best free uptime tool?
Many services offer excellent free plans for basic checks. UptimeRobot is a popular choice for getting started, as it provides reliable monitoring at no cost. You might consider paid services for more frequent checks and advanced features as your needs grow.
How does uptime monitoring work?
It works by using a global network of servers to act like virtual visitors to your website. These servers “ping” or try to load your site every few minutes, and if they receive an error or no response, the system triggers an immediate alert to notify you.
Which tool sends instant alerts?
Virtually all modern uptime monitoring tools, such as Better Stack and Pingdom, are built to send instant alerts. They can notify you through various channels such as email, SMS, and push notifications, ensuring you know about a problem the moment it happens.
What is the easiest uptime checker?
Tools like UptimeRobot are often considered the easiest for beginners because their setup is straightforward. You just enter your website’s URL and tell it where to send alerts. Services with clean user interfaces and clear instructions simplify the process.
How often should uptime be checked?
For most websites, checking every one to five minutes is the industry standard. This frequency provides a good balance between detecting issues quickly and avoiding unnecessary load on your server.
Which tool is best for small sites?
A tool with a generous free plan, like UptimeRobot or Better Stack, is often the best choice for small websites. These services provide the essential monitoring features you need without extra costs, which is perfect when you’re just starting out.
What uptime tool works with Slack?
Modern monitoring services, such as Better Stack, Pingdom, and StatusCake, offer excellent Slack integrations. This allows you to receive downtime alerts directly in your team’s channels.
Is there an open-source uptime tool?
Several excellent open-source options exist, with Uptime Kuma being one of the most popular. These tools give you full control and have no subscription fees, but they do require you to host and maintain the monitoring software on your own server.
Which service tracks global uptime?
Nearly all major uptime monitoring services, including Pingdom and Uptime.com, track global uptime by default. They use a network of “check locations” or “probes” spread across different continents to ensure your website is accessible to your entire audience, not just users near your server.
What tool offers the most accurate reports?
Accuracy comes from using multiple global check locations to confirm an outage before sending an alert, a feature found in most reputable tools like Pingdom or Better Stack. For the most complete picture, you can combine these external reports with internal server health data to quickly diagnose if the issue is with the network or the server itself.
