MonitorGiant vs Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a brilliant self-hosted monitoring tool — but self-hosted means you're on the hook for the server, the updates, and the reliability. MonitorGiant is fully managed SaaS: no server, no maintenance, no irony of your monitoring tool going offline.
The self-hosted irony
Uptime Kuma runs on the same server it's meant to monitor. When that server goes down, so does your monitoring — and your alerts. MonitorGiant runs independently of your infrastructure, so a total outage still reaches you.
Feature by feature.
| Feature | MonitorGiant | Uptime Kuma | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosted / managed SaaS | ✓ Yes — no server needed | ✗ Self-hosted only | MonitorGiant |
| Free to start | Free (25 monitors) | Free (own server required) | Tie |
| HTTP monitoring | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| Keyword monitoring | ✓ All plans | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| Port / TCP monitoring | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| Ping monitoring | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| SSL expiry monitoring | Paid plan | ✓ Yes (free) | Uptime Kuma |
| Push / heartbeat monitors | ✗ Not included | ✓ Yes | Uptime Kuma |
| Status pages | ✗ Not included | ✓ Yes (built-in) | Uptime Kuma |
| Multi-region checks | ✓ Yes | ✗ Single region only | MonitorGiant |
| 30-second intervals | Paid plan | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| Multi-organisation | ✓ Yes — built-in | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
| Google OAuth | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
| Server maintenance | ✗ None — fully managed | ✓ You manage it | MonitorGiant |
| Response time charts | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| Incident history | Full history retained | ✓ Yes | Tie |
| AI token monitoring | ✓ Yes (paid add-on) | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
| Cloud cost monitoring | ✓ Yes (paid add-on) | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
| MCP health monitoring | ✓ Yes (paid add-on) | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
| Platform health monitoring | ✓ Yes (paid add-on) | ✗ No | MonitorGiant |
When Uptime Kuma might be the right choice
- You need full data sovereignty — nothing leaves your own infrastructure
- You already run a reliable, always-on server and want zero ongoing SaaS costs
- You need status pages or push / heartbeat monitors out of the box
- You prefer open-source tools you can customise and self-manage
- You're monitoring a local or air-gapped network that isn't reachable from the internet
When MonitorGiant is the clear choice
- You don't want your monitoring to go down when your server goes down
- You need multi-region verification — Uptime Kuma only checks from one location
- You want monitoring that's set up in minutes with no server to provision or maintain
- You manage multiple client organisations from a single account
- You want Google OAuth for fast, secure team login
- You need AI token monitoring, cloud cost tracking, or MCP health checks — Uptime Kuma has none of these
- You run WordPress, WooCommerce, Ghost, Nextcloud, or other self-hosted platforms and need internal health checks beyond basic uptime
Migrating from Uptime Kuma?
Most teams move to MonitorGiant because they've hit one of three walls: their monitoring server became a single point of failure, they outgrew a single-region setup, or they need monitoring that extends to AI APIs, cloud costs, and platform health — things Uptime Kuma was never designed to cover. Setup takes minutes. No migration scripts needed.
Managed monitoring.
Zero server headaches.
25 monitors free. Multi-region checks. Instant email alerts. AI & Cloud monitoring and platform health checks for WordPress, WooCommerce, Ghost, Nextcloud & more — as paid add-ons.
Get started free →