Who each tool is for
Uptime Kuma
Technical users who are happy to run their own server and want a free, flexible tool with many monitor types, status pages and over 90 notification services.
Beamfar
Web agencies and freelancers who want monitoring, reports and status pages as a service, with checks from two regions that they do not have to host. Individuals in the EU can buy it for their own sites too; individual plans are available in the EU for now.
Side by side
The Beamfar column describes what is built today. The Uptime Kuma column is what its own pages say, read on 2026-10-28; where a page did not say, the cell says so.
| Topic | Beamfar | Uptime Kuma | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Prices, from €19 to €249 a month, excluding VAT. Nothing can be bought yet. Plan limits: 10, 40, 100 or 200 client sites, and a Free plan for one site after the trial. | Software licence cost is $0 (MIT licence). You pay for the server it runs on and for your time. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| Trial | 14 days, no card, one per organisation. | Not applicable: you install it yourself. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| Check interval | Every minute on Solo; every 30 seconds possible on Team and up (a choice per check); every 5 minutes on the Free plan; always from every enabled region. | The README says “20-second intervals”; it does not say whether that is a default or a minimum. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| How a site is called down | Two regions must agree. One region failing is a regional issue with no alert. Each alert lists what each region saw. | Not stated on the page. It checks from wherever you host it; multi-location checking is not covered on the page. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| What changed before an incident | DNS records, the certificate, the final redirect URL and SEO signals are recorded on a timeline and marked when an incident follows within the next hour. | Certificate information is shown. A timeline that attaches DNS, certificate or redirect changes to an incident is not described. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| SEO-risk alerts | Alert when a page becomes noindex, robots.txt starts blocking it, or its canonical moves to another host. | Not listed. Keyword and JSON query monitors can check page content. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| Other checks | Page, certificate, DNS, API and slowdown checks; TCP port, ping (TCP reachability, not ICMP), DNS blocklist and heartbeat (cron) monitors; and a plan-limited daily or weekly crawl for broken pages and links, mixed content and the sitemap. No Lighthouse or browser performance audits. | HTTP(s), TCP, keyword, JSON query, WebSocket, ping, DNS record, push (heartbeat), Steam game server and Docker container monitors. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| Client reports | One monthly report per client, printable to PDF; your brand on it on the Agency and Agency Plus plans. | A monthly per-client report is not listed. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| Status pages | 1, 10, 30 or 60 per plan (Solo, Team, Agency, Agency Plus; 1 on Free). Only confirmed incidents show (two regions for page checks, the ping receiver for scheduled tasks). The client’s own domain is built (a host name you verify with a DNS record, with a certificate) but not yet tested against real DNS and TLS. | Multiple status pages, and they can be mapped to specific domains. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
| People | 1, 2, 10, 25 or 50 per plan (Free, Solo, Team, Agency, Agency Plus). | Not described as a multi-user or multi-client product; 2FA is listed. | Uptime Kuma on GitHub |
Where Uptime Kuma is better
- No licence fee, open source and fully under your control, with your data on your server.
- More monitor types, including WebSocket, Steam game server and Docker container monitors (Beamfar has TCP port, ping, DNS and push-style heartbeat monitors).
- Status pages on your own domains, and more than 90 notification services.
- You can run it today, and nothing about it depends on a vendor staying in business.
Where Beamfar is better
- It is run for you: nothing to host, update, secure, back up or keep alive.
- Checks from more than one region by design, so the monitor does not share the fate of your own server.
- A what-changed timeline attached to each incident, SEO-risk alerts and a monthly report per client.
- No price advantage can be claimed: Beamfar’s paid plans are not on sale yet.
When to choose which
Choose Uptime Kuma when
You are comfortable running your own server, want a free tool, need monitor types Beamfar lacks or want everything on infrastructure you control. Plan where it runs: a monitor on the same server as the site goes down with it.
Choose Beamfar when
You want monitoring that someone else keeps running, from regions outside your own network, with reports and status pages per client, and you can wait: Beamfar’s paid plans open soon.
Questions
Is Uptime Kuma really free?
The software has no licence cost under the MIT licence. You pay for the server and your own time to install, update, secure and back it up.
Where should I host Uptime Kuma?
Not on the same server as the sites it watches, because it would go down with them. The project page lists Node.js 20.4 or later, or a Docker image, and warns that network file systems are not supported for its data.
Can I buy Beamfar today?
No. The 14-day trial is free and needs no card; paid plans open soon, and their prices may change before then.
Sources
Read on . Standards and vendor pages change; confirm the current text before you rely on it.
- Uptime Kuma on GitHub (README) (github.com)