Gatus vs Healthchecks.io
Both are alternatives to Pingdom. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Healthchecks.io vs Gatus — same comparison, one verdict.
Gatus and Healthchecks.io are closely matched on ownership (94 vs 93) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
Gatus
Monitoring as a YAML file, for people who already run everything from Git.
Gatus is a developer-first health-check service configured entirely in YAML, which means your monitoring lives in the repository, gets reviewed in pull requests, and is deployed like any other code. It handles HTTP, TCP, ICMP, DNS and TLS-expiry checks, evaluates rich conditions on responses — status code, body content, response time, certificate age — and ships a clean dashboard and status page. Apache-2.0, around 11.7k stars, actively developed. It is the natural pick for a team already doing GitOps, and the wrong one if a non-engineer needs to add a monitor.
Healthchecks.io
Monitors the jobs that fail silently — the cron nobody noticed stopped.
Healthchecks solves the opposite problem from the rest of this page. Instead of pinging your site, it waits for your scheduled jobs to ping it, and alerts you when one does not — the nightly backup that quietly stopped running three weeks ago, the certificate renewal that failed, the data export nobody checked. That class of failure is invisible to every uptime monitor here, and it is usually the more expensive one. BSD-3-Clause, around 10.2k stars, self-hostable in Python with a hosted tier that has a free plan. It complements an uptime monitor rather than replacing one.
Side by side
6 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Gatus | Healthchecks.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 94 | 93 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Pricing | Free and open source. A single binary or container. | Free and open source to self-host. Hosted plans have a free tier for a small number of checks. |
Gatus edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Gatus
Strengths
- +Configuration is YAML in Git — reviewed, versioned and diffable
- +Rich condition evaluation, including response body and TLS expiry
- +Apache-2.0 with no enterprise carve-out
- +Very light: one small binary, minimal memory
Trade-offs
- −No UI for adding monitors — everything is a config change
- −Same blind spot as any self-hosted monitor: it can go down with you
- −Fewer notification integrations than Uptime Kuma
- −Not usable by non-technical team members
Healthchecks.io
Strengths
- +Catches silent cron and backup failures nothing else on this page sees
- +Dead simple integration — one curl at the end of your job
- +BSD-3-Clause, self-hostable, with an honest hosted free tier
- +Notifications to email, Slack, PagerDuty, webhooks and more
Trade-offs
- −Not an uptime monitor — it does not check whether your site responds
- −Only sees jobs you have instrumented to report in
- −Self-hosting means running a Django application and a database
- −Complements rather than replaces the rest of this comparison
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Gatus
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and configuration is YAML in Git — reviewed, versioned and diffable.
Choose Healthchecks.io
if catches silent cron and backup failures nothing else on this page sees.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — no UI for adding monitors — everything is a config change, and not an uptime monitor — it does not check whether your site responds. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
Gatus vs Healthchecks.io — common questions
Is Gatus a better fit than Healthchecks.io for uptime & status monitoring?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Gatus scores 94 to Healthchecks.io's 93 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Healthchecks.io earns its place on a different axis — catches silent cron and backup failures nothing else on this page sees. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Gatus keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Healthchecks.io is still self-hostable, so the files stay on your server either way — but it is not local-first by design, so check what its export produces before you rely on it.
Can I self-host Gatus or Healthchecks.io?
Both can be self-hosted. The difference is what it costs you in time rather than whether it is possible — see the setup and maintenance rows above.
Are Gatus and Healthchecks.io both alternatives to Pingdom?
Yes — both appear in our Pingdom comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off Pingdom and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
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Facts verified 2026-08-01. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.