General uptime monitoring + catching intermittent TLS failures on specific AWS API Gateway nodes.
- General monitoring: Start with Checkly Free (6 locations, 1-2 min checks) + Sentry uptime ($1/monitor/month) if you're already on Sentry. Or self-host Uptime Kuma for free on a $5/mo VPS. UptimeRobot Free (50 monitors, 5-min checks) is another solid zero-cost option if you just need simple HTTP pings.
- Catching today's issue: Checkly Team ($64/mo) — 30s checks across 24 locations with TLS error detail. Better Stack, Sentry, Uptime Kuma, and UptimeRobot all fall short here — single-location or multi-failure requirements mean a bad node in a round-robin pool likely goes undetected.
| Checkly Free | Checkly Team | Better Stack Free | Better Stack Responder | Sentry | Uptime Kuma | UptimeRobot Free | UptimeRobot Solo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $64/mo | $0 | $29/mo | $1/monitor/mo (1 free) | $0 + ~$5/mo hosting | $0 | $8/mo |
| Check interval | 1–2 min | 30s | 3 min | 30s | 1 min | 1 second (min) | 5 min | 60s |
| Min. detection time | 1–2 min | 30s | 3 min | 30s | ~3 min (3 failures req.) | Instant | 5 min | 60s |
| Locations | 6 | 24 | ~4 | Undisclosed | Undisclosed | 1 (+ Globalping integration) | 1 | 1 |
| Email / Slack | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| SMS | ❌ | Capped | ❌ | ✅ Unlimited | ❌ | ✅ (via Twilio etc.) | ❌ | ✅ |
| TLS error detail | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |
| SSL cert monitoring | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Single-node failure detection | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ Single location | ❌ Single location | ❌ Single location | |
| Links to error traces | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Self-hosted | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Setup | Medium | Medium | Easy | Easy | Easy (if on Sentry) | Easy (Docker) | Easy | Easy |
Uptime Kuma: Best value if you're comfortable self-hosting. 30+ monitor types, 100+ alert integrations, built-in status page. Main caveats: single location and no escalation scheduling. The monitor itself is also a single point of failure — if your Uptime Kuma server goes down, alerts stop. The standard fix is to host it on a separate provider/region from your app, and use a free hosted plan (Sentry or Better Stack free tier) as a watchdog for Uptime Kuma itself. Effectively $0 extra.
Sentry: Worth adding $1-2/mo in monitors if you're already a customer — failed checks link directly to your error traces. Not a replacement for a dedicated uptime tool.
UptimeRobot: Generous free tier (50 monitors, 5-min checks) and easy setup make it a popular starting point. The Solo plan ($8/mo) gets you 60s intervals and SSL cert monitoring. Main limitation across all plans: single-location checks only, so it shares the same blind spot as Uptime Kuma for round-robin pool failures. No TLS error detail beyond cert expiry warnings. Good fit for basic "is it up" alerting on a budget; not suitable for the intermittent node issue.
Free (6): N. Virginia, N. California, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Sydney
Team (24 — adds): Ohio, Oregon, Canada, São Paulo, US East (Ashburn), US West (San Jose), Ireland, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, Spain, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Osaka, Jakarta