Better Stack vs UptimeRobot: Which Monitoring Tool is Better in 2026?

Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime) and UptimeRobot are two of the most popular uptime monitoring tools for developers and small teams. Both offer free tiers, both check if your sites are up, and both will ping you when something breaks.

But they're built for different audiences. This comparison helps you choose the right one.

TL;DR: Quick Comparison

Feature	Better Stack	UptimeRobot
Best For	Teams wanting monitoring + logging + status pages	Simple, affordable uptime checks
Free Tier	1 project, 10 monitors	50 monitors, 5-min intervals
Paid Starting Price	$29/mo	$29/mo (recently dropped from $34)
Status Pages	✅ Built-in, beautiful	✅ Basic, functional
Incident Management	✅ Full on-call scheduling	❌ Basic notifications only
Log Management	✅ Integrated (Better Stack Logs)	❌ Not available
Alerting Channels	Email, Slack, SMS, phone calls, webhooks	Email, Slack, SMS, webhooks
Check Intervals	30 seconds (paid)	1 minute (paid), 5 min (free)
Third-Party API Monitoring	❌ Limited	❌ Limited

Bottom line: Better Stack is the more complete platform — monitoring, logging, incident management, and status pages in one tool. UptimeRobot is simpler and cheaper if all you need is basic uptime checks. Neither effectively monitors third-party APIs you depend on — API Status Check covers that gap.

What is UptimeRobot?

Website: uptimerobot.com

UptimeRobot is one of the oldest and most popular uptime monitoring services, founded in 2010. It's known for its generous free tier (50 monitors) and dead-simple setup. Add a URL, set a check interval, and you're done.

UptimeRobot deliberately stays focused on one thing: checking if your stuff is up. It doesn't try to be a logging platform, incident management system, or observability suite. For many solo developers and small teams, that simplicity is the point.

Key features:

• 50 free monitors with 5-minute check intervals
• HTTP(S), keyword, ping, port, and cron job monitoring
• Basic status pages
• Maintenance windows
• Multi-channel alerts (email, SMS, Slack, webhooks)

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Feature-by-Feature Comparison

1. Uptime Monitoring

Better Stack:

• Check intervals as low as 30 seconds (paid plans)
• HTTP, keyword, API, and heartbeat monitoring
• Multi-region checks from 6+ locations
• Screenshot capture on downtime detection
• SSL certificate monitoring

UptimeRobot:

• Check intervals as low as 1 minute (paid) or 5 minutes (free)
• HTTP(S), keyword, ping, port, heartbeat, and cron job monitoring
• Multi-region checks
• SSL monitoring
• Maintenance windows to suppress false alerts

Verdict: Better Stack wins on check frequency (30s vs 60s) and screenshots. UptimeRobot wins on monitor variety (ping, port, cron job) and has a much more generous free tier (50 monitors vs ~10).

2. Alerting & Notifications

Better Stack:

• Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, SMS, and phone call alerts
• On-call scheduling with rotations
• Escalation policies (if person A doesn't acknowledge, alert person B)
• Alert grouping to reduce noise
• Integration with PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Splunk On-Call

UptimeRobot:

• Email, SMS, Slack, Telegram, webhooks, and push notifications
• Basic contact groups
• No on-call scheduling
• No escalation policies
• Alert thresholds (wait X failed checks before alerting)

Verdict: Better Stack wins decisively. On-call scheduling and escalation policies are essential for teams. UptimeRobot's alerting is functional but basic — fine for solo developers, inadequate for teams.

3. Status Pages

Better Stack:

• Beautiful, customizable status pages
• Custom domain support
• Automatic incident creation from monitors
• Manual incident updates
• Subscriber notifications (email)
• Password protection for internal status pages

UptimeRobot:

• Basic but functional status pages
• Custom domain support (paid)
• Shows monitor status automatically
• Limited customization options
• Subscriber notifications

Verdict: Better Stack's status pages look significantly better and offer more customization. If your status page is customer-facing, Better Stack is the clear winner.

4. Incident Management

Better Stack:

• Full incident management workflow
• On-call rotations and schedules
• Escalation policies
• Incident timelines and postmortems
• Integration with Slack, PagerDuty, Jira, Linear
• Phone call alerts for critical incidents

UptimeRobot:

• Basic notifications only
• No incident management workflow
• No on-call scheduling
• No postmortem features

Verdict: Better Stack wins by a mile. UptimeRobot doesn't even try to compete here — it's monitoring-only, not incident management.

5. Log Management

Better Stack:

• Integrated log management (Better Stack Logs)
• SQL-compatible query language
• Live tail for real-time log streaming
• Structured logging support
• Integrations with Vercel, Heroku, Docker, Fluentd, etc.
• Separate pricing from monitoring

UptimeRobot:

• No log management features

Verdict: Better Stack wins by default. If you need logs alongside monitoring, Better Stack eliminates a separate tool (Papertrail, Logtail, etc.).

6. Pricing

Better Stack:

• Free: 1 team member, 10 monitors, 5 status pages
• Starter: $29/mo — 20 monitors, 1-minute intervals, on-call
• Business: $79/mo — 80 monitors, 30-second intervals, advanced features
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

UptimeRobot:

• Free: 50 monitors, 5-minute intervals, basic features
• Solo: $7/mo — 50 monitors, 1-minute intervals
• Team: $29/mo — 100 monitors, 1-minute intervals, advanced alerts
• Enterprise: $54/mo — 200 monitors, advanced features

Verdict: UptimeRobot is significantly cheaper for basic monitoring. The free tier (50 monitors vs ~10) is much more generous. But Better Stack's paid plans include incident management and status pages that you'd otherwise pay for separately (PagerDuty alone costs $21/user/mo).

True cost comparison for a small team:

• UptimeRobot Team ($29) + PagerDuty ($21/user × 3 = $63) + Statuspage ($29) = $121/mo
• Better Stack Starter ($29) = $29/mo (monitoring + incident management + status pages)

Better Stack is actually cheaper when you factor in the tools it replaces.

Better Stack replaces 3 tools in one — Monitoring + incident management + status pages for $29/mo. Try free →

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Pros and Cons

Better Stack Pros

• ✅ All-in-one platform (monitoring, incidents, status pages, logs)
• ✅ Beautiful, modern UI
• ✅ On-call scheduling and escalation policies
• ✅ 30-second check intervals
• ✅ Phone call alerts for critical issues
• ✅ Replaces multiple paid tools (PagerDuty, Statuspage)

Better Stack Cons

• ❌ Smaller free tier than UptimeRobot (10 vs 50 monitors)
• ❌ More expensive for basic monitoring needs
• ❌ Younger platform (launched 2020 vs UptimeRobot's 2010)
• ❌ Log management priced separately
• ❌ Fewer monitor types (no ping/port monitors)

UptimeRobot Pros

• ✅ Generous free tier (50 monitors)
• ✅ Dead simple — zero learning curve
• ✅ Cheapest paid plans ($7/mo Solo)
• ✅ More monitor types (HTTP, ping, port, keyword, cron)
• ✅ Proven reliability (14+ years in operation)
• ✅ Telegram and push notification support

UptimeRobot Cons

• ❌ No incident management or on-call scheduling
• ❌ Basic status pages
• ❌ No log management
• ❌ Minimum 1-minute check intervals (vs 30s)
• ❌ Limited integrations compared to Better Stack
• ❌ UI feels dated

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When to Choose Better Stack

Choose Better Stack if:

• You're a team (2+ engineers) that needs on-call scheduling
• You want monitoring, incidents, and status pages in one tool
• Your status page is customer-facing and needs to look professional
• You want to consolidate tools and reduce overall costs
• You need log management alongside monitoring
• You value modern UI/UX

Best for: SaaS teams, startups with dedicated engineering, companies replacing PagerDuty + UptimeRobot + Statuspage.

Start with Better Stack free — 10 monitors, on-call, and status pages included. Get started →

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When to Choose UptimeRobot

Choose UptimeRobot if:

• You're a solo developer or freelancer monitoring client sites
• You need the most monitors for the least money
• Simple uptime checks are all you need (no incident management)
• You want a proven, battle-tested service (14+ years)
• You monitor many sites and need 50+ free monitors
• Simplicity matters more than features

Best for: Freelancers, agencies monitoring client sites, solo developers, hobbyists.

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The Gap Both Leave Open: Third-Party API Monitoring

Both Better Stack and UptimeRobot monitor infrastructure you control — your websites, your APIs, your servers. But what about the services your application depends on?

When Stripe's payment API goes down, your UptimeRobot monitors won't catch it (Stripe's status page is up even if the API is degraded). When AWS has a regional issue affecting your S3 buckets, Better Stack might show your app as healthy while users experience failures.

API Status Check monitors 120+ third-party APIs in real-time:

• Stripe, Twilio, OpenAI, AWS, GitHub, Vercel, and more
• Zero setup — all APIs pre-configured
• Instant alerts when providers experience issues
• Starting at $9/mo (cheaper than both Better Stack and UptimeRobot paid plans)

The ideal monitoring stack:

1. Better Stack or UptimeRobot — monitor your own infrastructure
2. API Status Check — monitor your third-party dependencies

Together, you have complete uptime visibility. Try API Status Check free →

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can I migrate from UptimeRobot to Better Stack?

Yes. Better Stack supports importing monitors from UptimeRobot. You can export your monitor list and import it into Better Stack, preserving URLs, check intervals, and alert settings. The migration typically takes under an hour.

Does UptimeRobot have on-call scheduling?

No. UptimeRobot is monitoring-only — it doesn't include on-call scheduling, escalation policies, or incident management. If you need those features, you'll need a separate tool like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or Better Stack.

Which has better uptime/reliability?

Both services have strong track records. UptimeRobot has been operating since 2010 with 99.9%+ uptime. Better Stack is newer (2020) but has maintained excellent reliability. Both check from multiple global regions to reduce false positives.

Is Better Stack really "better" than UptimeRobot?

It depends on your needs. Better Stack is more feature-rich — it's monitoring + incident management + status pages + logs in one platform. UptimeRobot is simpler and cheaper for basic uptime monitoring. "Better" depends on whether you need those additional features.

Can API Status Check replace either tool?

No. API Status Check monitors third-party APIs (Stripe, AWS, OpenAI, etc.) — services you depend on but don't control. Better Stack and UptimeRobot monitor your own infrastructure. They're complementary tools, not competitors.

Which free tier is better?

UptimeRobot's free tier is better for monitoring: 50 monitors with 5-minute check intervals vs Better Stack's ~10 monitors. Better Stack's free tier is better for teams: includes on-call scheduling and status pages that UptimeRobot doesn't offer at any price.

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Final Verdict

Better Stack is the better choice for teams that want a unified platform. Monitoring, incident management, status pages, and logs in one tool — at a lower total cost than buying each separately.

UptimeRobot is the better choice for individuals who want simple, affordable uptime monitoring with the most generous free tier in the market.

API Status Check fills the gap both miss — monitoring the third-party APIs your application depends on. At $9/mo, it's the cheapest way to know when Stripe, AWS, or OpenAI is having a bad day before your users tell you.

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