Pingdom vs UptimeRobot

From $18 per month (10 uptime checks, 1 advanced check, 50 SMS; $16.50 annual)

From €9 per month (Solo, billed annually; €10 monthly)

Priced by a calculator rather than named tiers: 50 uptime checks run about $78/month and 100 about $149, so the per-check rate falls slowly with volume. Transaction checks and Real User Monitoring are priced separately from basic uptime checks and add up.

One of the best free tiers in infrastructure tooling, and paid plans are still inexpensive: Solo €9, Team €35 and Scale €65 a month on annual billing. Solo buys the 60-second interval.

30-day trial.

50 monitors at 5-minute intervals, free forever, with SSL and domain-expiry checks and one status page.

Widely used

SolarWinds · since 2007

Widely used

UptimeRobot · since 2010

• Very large global probe network with a long operating history.
• Simple to set up for basic availability monitoring.
• Combines synthetic checks with real-user monitoring.

• Free tier covers what most small projects actually need.
• Five-minute setup with no configuration to learn.
• Status pages included even on lower tiers.

• Feature development has been slow under SolarWinds ownership.
• Transaction-check authoring is dated compared to code-first alternatives.
• Pricing is no longer competitive against newer entrants.

• No browser-based transaction monitoring — availability only.
• Basic alerting logic; expect some noise from transient failures.
• Limited reporting and no observability integration.

Organisations wanting an established name for straightforward uptime monitoring.

Side projects, small businesses and anyone who currently has no monitoring at all.