Uptime.com vs UptimeRobot Pricing, SMS Alerts and Monitor Cost

UptimeRobot is cheaper than Uptime.com at most sizes from 50 monitors up, and the gap widens as you add monitors. For 100 monitors UptimeRobot Team costs 41 euros a month, against $75 on Uptime.com. Uptime.com earns the difference in other places: every tier checks every minute, includes unlimited users and keeps 24 months of history, while UptimeRobot charges for seats and limits retention on smaller plans.

The two also pay for texts and calls in opposite ways. Uptime.com gives each tier a monthly SMS and call allowance that resets on the 1st. UptimeRobot sells one time credit packs that never refill on their own. Which model costs you more depends on how many phones should ring during an outage. All figures below were read from uptime.com/pricing (including the tier data behind its calculator) and from UptimeRobot's pricing page and its published pricing file on October 14, 2026.

Uptime.com vs UptimeRobot at a glance

Which is cheaper, Uptime.com or UptimeRobot?

UptimeRobot, from about 50 monitors upward, and by roughly half. Below that the two are close. Here is the smallest plan that fits each estate, on monthly billing.

On annual billing Uptime.com drops by about 20 percent ($84 a year on the entry tier, $720 a year for 100 checks), and UptimeRobot by about 15 percent on Team and Scale and 10 to 14 percent on Solo.

Two things the sticker price hides. First, UptimeRobot prices its plans in euros. A US card is charged a foreign currency amount that moves with the exchange rate, so the dollar figure on your statement changes slightly every month. Finance teams that want a heads-up when a vendor charge drifts can put budget alerts on SaaS spend before the first invoice lands. Second, at 25 monitors Uptime.com is actually the cheaper of the two, because UptimeRobot's next Solo tier jumps from 10 to 50 monitors.

Past 500 monitors the comparison stops. Uptime.com keeps publishing tiers, with the price per check staying close to $0.75 a month. UptimeRobot moves you to a sales call. Our UptimeRobot pricing breakdown and Uptime.com pricing and SMS limits articles list every tier on each side.

How SMS and phone call alerts are paid on each

This is the part that decides the real bill for teams that page people at night.

Uptime.com includes a monthly allowance of SMS and phone call alerts with each tier: 25 on the $9 tier, 50 on 25 checks, 100 on 100 checks, 750 on 500 checks, topping out at 2,000. It resets on the 1st. Its help center says every message counts, the DOWN alert and the UP notification, once per phone number. There is no SMS pack to buy. When the allowance runs short, the pricing FAQ points you to the next tier.

UptimeRobot includes a small one time batch of credits with paid plans (10 to 20 on Solo, 30 on Team, 50 to 200 on Scale) and sells packs on top: 10 credits for $3, 100 for $15, 200 for $25, 500 for $55 and 1,000 for $100. A text to a US number uses 1 credit and a voice call uses 2 in every country. Credits do not renew with the plan, and the free plan has none. We walked through the refill behavior in UptimeRobot SMS credits and voice call cost.

A worked example makes the difference concrete. Three people should get a call when the store goes down, and alerts repeat every 10 minutes during a two hour outage.

• On UptimeRobot that is 12 calls each, 36 calls, 72 credits. Bought in a 500 pack, about $8. Two such outages a month is roughly $16 of credits, as long as the balance does not hit zero mid-incident.
• On Uptime.com the 25 check tier has 50 alerts a month. Three phones receiving a down and an up message use 6 per outage before any repeat or escalation. Repeating calls to three people during one long outage can use the month, and the fix is moving up a tier.

For a single person who gets one text per outage, both are fine and cost almost nothing extra. The more phones and the more repeats, the faster both models get expensive or run dry.

Users, seats and who can see the dashboard

Uptime.com includes unlimited users on every tier, so seats never change the bill. UptimeRobot's Solo plan has no login seats at all, which means a second person who needs the dashboard pushes you to Team at 41 euros. Team includes 3 login and 3 notify seats, Scale 5 of each, and extra login seats cost $15 a month billed yearly or $19 monthly.

For a team of six engineers on 100 monitors, that is Uptime.com at $75 against UptimeRobot Team plus three extra seats, about 41 euros plus $57 a month. At that point Uptime.com is the cheaper of the two, and every further seat widens the gap.

Check interval, locations and history

Uptime.com checks every minute on every tier from 3 of its 12 probe locations, with more locations sold as an add-on. UptimeRobot checks every 5 minutes on Free, 60 seconds on Solo, 30 seconds on Team and 15 seconds on Scale, and confirms outages from multiple locations on paid plans.

History is the bigger split for anyone who reports uptime to clients or against an SLA. Uptime.com keeps 24 months on every tier. UptimeRobot keeps 3 months on Free, 12 on Solo and 24 on Team and Scale. Both offer status pages: UptimeRobot includes them in the plan (1 on Free, 3 on Solo, 100 on Team), while Uptime.com sells them as an add-on from $13 a month.

Should you choose Uptime.com or UptimeRobot?

Choose UptimeRobot if price per monitor is the main criterion, you run 50 to 500 monitors, one or two people need the dashboard, and you are comfortable topping up SMS credits. It is the cheaper tool in most of this range, and Team's 30 second checks and included status pages are strong value.

Choose Uptime.com if several people need access, you want 24 months of history from the first tier, you are billed in dollars, or you need more than 500 checks at a published price. It also sells transaction, API and heartbeat checks that UptimeRobot covers only partly.

Choose neither if the job is making sure several people actually hear about an outage, every time, without counting messages. That is the narrow case where we fit.

When TrackDowntime is the better buy than both

We are more expensive than both tools for a small estate, so the case is not price per URL. TrackDowntime Professional is $99 a month ($49 billed yearly) for 25 endpoints at 60 second checks, and Enterprise is $299 ($149 yearly) for unlimited endpoints. On both, every phone number on an endpoint gets the call and the SMS, alerts repeat at 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes and onward until the site recovers, and nothing is counted, capped or sold as credits. Our downtime alerts by phone call page shows the full sequence.

Where that wins on money is above about 400 endpoints, where Uptime.com's tiers pass $300 a month and UptimeRobot needs a quote. Where it wins on outcome is the night when three people should wake up and keep being woken until the checkout works again. What you give up is also real: we check from a single location, have no status pages, no transaction or heartbeat checks and no keyword matching.

If you are already leaving one of them, the side by side pages go deeper: Uptime.com alternative for teams that run out of their monthly texts, and UptimeRobot alternative for teams tired of watching a credit balance. Prices for every plan are on our uptime monitor pricing page.

Is UptimeRobot better than Uptime.com?

UptimeRobot is better value per monitor between 50 and 500 monitors and has a free plan, faster checks on Team and Scale and status pages included. Uptime.com is better for teams that need unlimited users, 24 months of history on every tier, dollar billing and published pricing past 500 checks. Neither repeats phone calls to several people without metering them.

Does Uptime.com have a free plan?

No. Uptime.com's pricing page has no permanent free plan. The cheapest tier is $9 a month, or $84 a year, for 10 basic checks, 1 advanced check and 25 SMS alerts a month, all at 1 minute intervals with unlimited users. UptimeRobot does have a free plan, with 50 monitors at 5 minute checks, intended for personal and hobby projects.

Does UptimeRobot charge for SMS alerts?

Yes. UptimeRobot SMS and voice alerts use prepaid credits: 1 credit per SMS to a US number and 2 per voice call. Paid plans include a small one time batch, and packs cost $3 for 10 up to $100 for 1,000. Credits do not renew with the plan, so a long outage with several phones can empty the balance.