/ alternatives / better-stack
The best Better Stack alternatives for uptime monitoring
Better Stack's uptime checks are careful: several locations must agree before an incident opens. What sends people looking is the bill. It is built from responder licences and add-on packs, and it grows in steps as monitors, heartbeats and status pages are added. Below are those reasons, the tools people move to, and one table with every figure sourced.
We make Fettle, so it is listed first; every other entry is sourced to the vendor's own pages.
Updated
Competitor figures checked on 2026-10-25 against each vendor's own pages.
Why people look for Better Stack alternatives
Monitors come in licences and packs
50 monitors cost $50 a month. The breakdown, billed annually: $29 per responder licence, which carries 10 monitors, plus $21 for a pack of 50 more; a second responder adds another $29, and the monthly-billed rates are $34 and $25.
Source: betterstack.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
Heartbeats are sold in packs
Heartbeat monitoring: 10 included, $17/mo per pack of 10. Past the included ones, every further pack adds to the bill.
Source: betterstack.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
Each extra status page is billed
Status pages: 1 included, $12/mo for each further one. A product with separate pages per client or service pays for each one.
Source: betterstack.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
The location pool is not published
Better Stack documents how many locations check a monitor, but no total location count is printed on their pricing page or in their uptime documentation.
Source: betterstack.com/docs/uptime/locations-and-regions, checked 2026-10-25.
What Better Stack does well
Better Stack's check model is among the most careful here: every monitor is checked from at least 4 locations, and an incident opens only after the check fails from at least 3 of them. It offers 30-second checks from the cheapest plan, $29 a month billed annually. If the per-licence bill fits your team, it is a good choice.
The full figure-by-figure write-up is Fettle vs Better Stack.
The alternatives
1. Fettle
Best for: One flat price per plan, with the API and MCP on every one
Fettle checks a monitor from every region you select, every interval, and opens an incident only when all of them fail. Regions per monitor: 2 on Plus, 3 on Pro and Max, and 1 on the free plan. Plus covers 50 monitors at 60 seconds for $7.50 a month billed yearly ($90 a year). The REST API and the MCP server are on every plan, including free, so Claude, Codex or any MCP client can create monitors and read incidents for you. The free plan covers 20 monitors every 3 minutes from 1 region, with 3 heartbeats. There are no packs to add: heartbeats and status pages come with each plan. Better Stack checks from more points, at least 4 locations per monitor. Fettle's 30-second checks start on Max, $32.50 a month billed yearly, for up to 50 of its 300 monitors.
Source: Fettle pricing.
2. UptimeRobot
Best for: The biggest free plan
UptimeRobot's Free plan covers 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval, and its Solo plan covers 50 at 60 seconds for $19 a month billed annually. Its REST API is on every plan, including Free, and it publishes an MCP server. The trade-offs: each check runs from one region with no quorum, heartbeats start on paid plans, and 30-second checks start on Team, $35 a month billed annually, for 100 monitors.
Source: uptimerobot.com/pricing, uptimerobot.com/pricing.md, help.uptimerobot.com/en/articles/11358522-understanding-uptimerobot-locations-and-multi-location-feature, checked 2026-10-25.
3. Uptime.com
Best for: A consensus model without per-responder pricing
Uptime.com's check model is fan-out with a Sensitivity threshold: at each interval the check runs from every location selected; a Sensitivity threshold sets how many of them must fail for the check to count as down, and they recommend monitoring from at least three locations. That is the closest model here to Better Stack's consensus. The 50-check tier is $30 a month billed yearly, and it keeps 24 months of history. The trade-offs: one minute is the floor on every tier, and status pages are a separate purchase, from $10/mo for 1 page and 250 subscribers.
Source: support.uptime.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000830260-Extended-Check-Options, uptime.com/pricing, support.uptime.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002533889-Overview-of-Checks, checked 2026-10-25.
4. Hyperping
Best for: 30-second checks at a flat price
Hyperping's Essentials plan covers 50 monitors, checked every 30 seconds, for $24 a month billed yearly, with heartbeats included. It runs 18 datacenter regions and double-checks a failure from your other selected regions. It publishes a first-party MCP server. The trade-off: each regular check runs from one region at a time, not from several at once.
Source: hyperping.com/pricing, hyperping.com/docs/monitoring/datacenter-regions, hyperping.com/docs/mcp, checked 2026-10-25.
5. Checkly
Best for: Monitoring as code
Checkly's Starter plan covers 50 monitors at 60 seconds for $24 a month billed annually, with cron and heartbeat checks, a REST API, a CLI and an MCP server. Its check model is rotation (round robin). The trade-off: status pages are an add-on at $9/mo on Starter. Starter's history retention is 7 days raw, 30 days aggregated.
Source: checklyhq.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
6. StatusCake
Best for: Many monitors on one plan
StatusCake's Superior plan covers 100 monitors at 60 seconds for $20.41 a month billed annually, plus 15 page-speed, 50 domain, 50 SSL and 3 server monitors. It lists 43 locations in 30 countries. The trade-offs: checks rotate, the confirmation test stays inside the region that ran the initial test, and 30-second checks start on Business, $66.66 a month billed annually.
Source: statuscake.com/pricing, statuscake.com/locations, statuscake.com/kb/knowledge-base/statuscake-uptime-monitoring-regions-and-confirmation-servers-a-complete-guide, checked 2026-10-25.
7. Uptime Kuma
Best for: Self-hosting, with no subscription
Uptime Kuma is open source under the MIT licence and runs on a server you operate, so the only bill is that server's. It checks as often as every 20 seconds, ships multiple status pages and a Push monitor type for jobs that report in, and alerts through 90+ notification services. The trade-off: every check runs from that one server, so when the server or its network fails, the monitoring goes down with it, and keeping it updated is your job.
Source: github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma, checked 2026-10-25.
8. Pulsetic
Best for: 30-second checks on a mid-priced plan
Pulsetic's Team plan covers 50 monitors at a 30-second interval with 15 region checks, for $19 a month or $190 a year. Solo is $9 a month for 10 monitors at 60-second checks, and the free plan covers 10 monitors every 5 minutes. Heartbeats count against the same monitor allowance. The trade-off: Free has no API access, since the REST API and the MCP server start on Solo, and each monitor past a plan's allowance is $0.20 a month.
Source: pulsetic.com/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
9. OpenStatus
Best for: Open source, status page first
OpenStatus is open source under AGPL-3.0, and its hosted plans check from a pool of 28 regions. Starter is $30 a month for 20 monitors at a 1-minute interval, from up to 6 regions per monitor. Pro is $100 a month for 50 monitors at a 30-second interval from every region. Billed yearly, Starter is $300 a year ($25/mo). The trade-off is price: more monitors cost $15 a month per 10 monitors, and the free Hobby plan covers 1 monitor.
Source: github.com/openstatusHQ/openstatus, openstatus.dev/pricing, checked 2026-10-25.
Side by side
Two Fettle plans, Better Stack, and every tool on the list that has a full column in our comparison data. Every competitor cell is from the vendor's own pricing page or documentation. Uptime Kuma, Pulsetic and OpenStatus have no column there, so their figures and sources sit in their entries above.
Scroll the table to see every tool and column.
| Tool | 50 monitors, $/mo billed yearly | Shortest interval on that plan | Cheapest plan with 30-second checks | Check model | Status pages | Heartbeat / cron monitoring | REST API |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fettle Plus | $7.50 Plus, $90 billed yearly — 50 monitors | 60 seconds | $32.50 on Max | Fan-out every selected region checks the monitor every interval | 1 | 20 | On every plan, including free 30 to 300 requests per minute by tier |
| Fettle Max | $32.50 $390 billed yearly — includes 300 monitors | 30 seconds on up to 50 monitors; 60 seconds on the rest | This plan | Fan-out every selected region checks the monitor every interval | 10 | 150 | On every plan, including free 30 to 300 requests per minute by tier |
| Better Stack | $50 billed annually: $29 per responder licence, which carries 10 monitors, plus $21 for a pack of 50 more; a second responder adds another $29, and the monthly-billed rates are $34 and $25 | 30 seconds published as the check-frequency ceiling; the page names no uptime tiers | $29 one responder licence, billed annually, which covers 10 monitors; $34 billed monthly | Fan-out with consensus every monitor is checked from at least 4 locations, and an incident opens only after the check fails from at least 3 of them | 1 included, $12/mo for each further one | 10 included, $17/mo per pack of 10 | Yes |
| UptimeRobot | $0 on Free, $19 on Solo the Free plan covers 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval; Solo's 50-monitor step, reached with the Monitor tier toggle, is $19/mo billed annually and $22 billed monthly, and checks every 60 seconds | 60 seconds on Solo; the Free plan checks every 5 minutes, and Scale reaches a 15-second floor at $65/mo billed annually ($77 monthly) for 200 monitors | Team, $35 100 monitors, billed annually; $41 billed monthly | Rotation each check runs from one region, and checks cycle through the selected regions in order; a confirmation re-check stays in that same region | 1 / 3 / 100 / unlimited Free / Solo / Team / Scale | On paid plans Free excludes heartbeat monitoring; it starts on Solo, and no per-plan cap is printed | On every plan, including Free the platform API that manages monitors and incidents; API monitoring, a monitor type, is a separate feature that starts on Solo. They also publish an MCP server, in their top navigation, whose write actions create, update, pause and resume monitors; which plans carry it is not stated |
| Uptime.com | $30 the 50-check tier, billed yearly at $360, or $38/mo billed monthly. Their pricing page shows a calculator rather than a table, so the figure is read from the tier table the calculator itself uses, which ships inline in the page source | 60 seconds one minute is the floor on every tier; HTTP(S) checks run from 1 to 60 minutes | Not offered their documentation puts the minimum check frequency at one minute | Fan-out with a Sensitivity threshold at each interval the check runs from every location selected; a Sensitivity threshold sets how many of them must fail for the check to count as down, and they recommend monitoring from at least three locations | From $10/mo for 1 page and 250 subscribers $120/yr billed annually, the same basis as the price column; $13/mo billed monthly. A separate purchase from monitoring, on a ladder running to 100 pages and 150,000 subscribers. Like the monitoring prices, the figures come from the tier table in the pricing page source | Yes | Yes |
| Hyperping | $24 Essentials, billed yearly, which covers 50 monitors; $29 billed monthly | 30 seconds on Essentials; Business goes to 20 seconds | Essentials, $24 50 monitors, billed yearly | Rotation with confirmation checks rotate through the selected regions one region at a time per minute, and a failure is immediately double-checked from the other selected regions | 1 on Essentials; the grid is 1 / 1 / 3 / 10 across Free, Essentials, Pro and Business | Yes | On every paid plan plus a first-party MCP server, listed on Essentials, Pro and Business but not Free, and documented as 49 tools: 28 read and 21 write. The write tools create, update, pause and resume monitors and manage outages, status pages and maintenance; delete_monitor is deliberately not exposed |
| Checkly | $24 Starter, billed annually, which covers 50 monitors; a further 25 cost $8 | 60 seconds on Starter; Hobby is 2 minutes, Team 30 seconds and Enterprise 1 second | Team, $64 75 monitors, billed annually | Rotation (round robin) uptime monitors run round robin, one selected location per scheduled run, on Hobby, Starter and Team; parallel scheduling for uptime monitors is listed for Enterprise only | Add-on at $9/mo: 25 services, 500 subscribers on Starter, billed annually; the add-on is $30/mo on Team | Yes cron and heartbeat checks | Yes plus a CLI and an MCP server |
| StatusCake | $20.41 Superior, billed annually, which covers 100 monitors; $24.49 billed monthly | 60 seconds on Superior | Business, $66.66 300 monitors, billed annually; $79.99 billed monthly | Rotation when no region is pinned, a server is picked at random from any monitoring region for the initial test; confirmation tests come from other servers in that same region | Not published the pricing grid prints no count; the product does have status pages | Not published their pricing grid says nothing about heartbeat or cron monitoring either way | Yes documented; which plans include it is not printed |
Questions
- What is a cheaper alternative to Better Stack for 50 monitors?
- Better Stack's 50 monitors cost $50 a month billed annually. Fettle Plus covers 50 monitors for $7.50 a month billed yearly. Hyperping Essentials covers 50 monitors for $24 a month billed yearly. Checkly Starter covers 50 monitors for $24 a month billed annually, and UptimeRobot Solo covers 50 for $19 a month billed annually.
- Which alternatives confirm an outage from several locations?
- Fettle checks from every selected region each interval and opens an incident only when all of them fail. Regions per monitor: 2 on Plus, 3 on Pro and Max, and 1 on the free plan. Uptime.com checks from every selected location and lets you set how many must fail. Hyperping double-checks a failure from your other selected regions. UptimeRobot and StatusCake confirm inside a single region.
- Which Better Stack alternatives include heartbeat monitoring?
- Fettle includes heartbeats on every plan: 3 on the free plan, and 20 / 50 / 150 across Plus, Pro and Max. Hyperping, Checkly and Uptime.com include them, and UptimeRobot includes them from its Solo plan.
Sources
Prices change without notice. Check each vendor's pricing page before deciding.
- Better Stack pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- UptimeRobot pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- Uptime.com pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- Hyperping pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- Checkly pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- StatusCake pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- Uptime Kuma README, checked 2026-10-25
- Pulsetic pricing, checked 2026-10-25
- OpenStatus pricing, checked 2026-10-25
Try Fettle free
The free plan monitors 20 endpoints every 3 minutes from 1 region and emails you when one breaks. No card needed. See pricing for the paid intervals, the MCP server for agents, or compare every tool side by side.