Uptime Kuma vs Gatus
Both are alternatives to Pingdom. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Gatus vs Uptime Kuma — same comparison, one verdict.
Uptime Kuma and Gatus are closely matched on ownership (96 vs 94) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
Uptime Kuma
TOP PICKThe self-hosted monitor that beat the paid ones on features.
Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted monitoring tool that does, for free and on your own server, most of what the paid services charge monthly for: HTTP, TCP, ping, DNS and keyword checks, 60-second intervals, a genuinely good dashboard, public status pages, and notifications to more than ninety services including Slack, Discord, Telegram, email and webhooks. It runs as one Docker container on hardware you already have. At roughly 89.7k GitHub stars it is one of the most-starred self-hosted projects in existence, and that popularity is deserved rather than fashionable — the free tiers of the commercial services are more limited than this is. MIT licensed, pushed to daily.
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.
Side by side
10 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.
| Uptime Kuma | Gatus | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 96 | 94 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Pricing | Free and open source. One Docker container on a server you already run. | Free and open source. A single binary or container. |
| RAM to run it wellThe figure that actually matters, not the vendor's minimum. | 1 GB | — |
| Realistic running costWhat the box costs each month if you run it yourself. | $6/mo — and it should live somewhere other than the infrastructure it monitors | — |
| Setup timeHonest first-install estimate, not the marketing quickstart. | 15 minutes | — |
| Ongoing maintenanceThe part nobody budgets for. | Very low. | — |
Uptime Kuma is Macrostack's recommended Pingdom alternative, so it's our pick here.
Uptime Kuma
Strengths
- +60-second checks and unlimited monitors with no plan to upgrade to
- +Public status pages included rather than sold separately
- +Notifications to 90+ services out of the box
- +MIT, one container, and the most-starred tool in the category
Trade-offs
- −It runs on your infrastructure — so it cannot tell you your infrastructure is down
- −Single-node by design; no multi-region checking
- −You own updates, backups and the uptime of the uptime monitor
- −No phone-call escalation or on-call rotation
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
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Uptime Kuma
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and 60-second checks and unlimited monitors with no plan to upgrade to.
Choose Gatus
if configuration is YAML in Git — reviewed, versioned and diffable.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — it runs on your infrastructure — so it cannot tell you your infrastructure is down, and no UI for adding monitors — everything is a config change. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
What it takes to run these yourself
Real requirements and honest running costs, not the vendor quickstart.
Uptime Kuma vs Gatus — common questions
Is Uptime Kuma a better fit than Gatus for uptime & status monitoring?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Uptime Kuma scores 96 to Gatus's 94 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Gatus earns its place on a different axis — configuration is YAML in Git — reviewed, versioned and diffable. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Uptime Kuma keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Gatus 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 Uptime Kuma or Gatus?
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 Uptime Kuma and Gatus 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.