Free status page tools in 2026: what each free tier really includes
Updated · written by Ritom Puzari at PuzariCloud, which makes Vigil, one of the tools below
Most free status pages leave out one of three things: your own domain, email subscribers, or monitoring that turns the page red by itself. On 18 October 2026, Better Stack, HetrixTools and Vigil by PuzariCloud put a custom domain on their free tiers; Instatus (200) and Atlassian Statuspage (100) gave the most free subscribers; Uptime Kuma, Gatus and Upptime cost nothing if you host them.
Every competitor fact on this page was read from that vendor's own pricing page, documentation or source repository on 18 October 2026 (checked 2026-10-18), and each row links its source. Where the vendor's page does not say something, we write "not stated" instead of guessing. Vigil's rows come from our own plan table and code. Prices change: the vendor's site is the final word.
A status page has one job: tell customers what is broken before they open a support ticket. Almost every monitoring vendor now gives one away, but "free status page" means very different things from one tool to the next. Some free tiers live only on the vendor's sub-domain, some have no email subscribers, and some are a page you must update by hand. This guide compares what you actually get for $0, and what the first paid step costs when you outgrow it.
We make Vigil, which is one of the tools below, so read our row with that in mind. We list where it loses as well as where it wins.
What to look for in a free status page
1. Your own domain
A page at status.yourcompany.com looks like part of your product, survives a change of vendor (you just repoint DNS), and is where customers will guess to look. A page on the vendor's sub-domain works, but every link you share advertises the vendor and breaks if you move. This is the feature most often held back for a paid plan.
2. Subscribers
Customers rarely sit on a status page refreshing it. They subscribe once and get an email when an incident opens and when it is resolved. Free tiers differ by an order of magnitude here, from none at all to a few hundred addresses. If you have a mailing list of customers who care about uptime, this number decides the tool.
3. Monitoring that drives the page
A status page connected to checks turns red by itself, which matters most at 3 am when nobody is awake to post an update. A page without monitoring is a communication tool: you, an API call or an integration change each component's state. Both are legitimate, but they are different products.
4. The catch
Every free tier has one: branding you cannot remove, a short history window, no password protection for internal pages, a rule that you must log in every few months, or a description that limits it to hobby projects. The last column of the table names it.
Hosted free tiers, side by side
Read on 18 October 2026 from each vendor's page (linked). "Not stated" means the page we read does not say; it does not mean the feature is missing.
| Tool | Free status pages | Own domain on Free | Subscribers on Free | Monitoring on Free | The catch | First paid step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vigil by PuzariCloud | 1 | Yes (CNAME to puzaricloud.in) | 25 by email, plus Slack, Discord and webhook subscribers | 20 monitors, 5-min checks | Password protection included; "Powered by" footer stays; 7 days of history | Starter $19/mo: 3 pages, no branding, 100 email subscribers |
| Better Stack | 1 | Custom sub-domain (stated in Better Stack's own free status page guide) | Not stated for the free plan | 10 monitors and heartbeats; Slack and email alerts | Password protection $50 per page a month; white-label $250 per page a month | Extra status page $15/mo ($12 billed yearly) |
| UptimeRobot | 1 basic page, no customization | No (from Solo) | No (from Team) | 50 monitors, 5-min checks | Pricing page calls Free "good for hobby and non-profit projects", though its terms allow commercial use (since 26 May 2026); no password | Solo $10/mo ($9 yearly): 3 pages on your own domain |
| Instatus | Public page | No (from Pro) | 200 | 15 monitors, 2-min checks, email alerts | 5 team members, 2 on-call members | Pro from $20/mo: 5,000 subscribers, custom domain |
| Atlassian Statuspage | 1 public page, 25 components | No (from Hobby) | 100 (email; Slack and Teams notifications) | No uptime checks listed: you, the API or integrations set component status | 2 team members, 2 metrics | Hobby $29/mo: 250 subscribers, custom domain |
| OpenStatus | 1 page with 3 components | No (from Starter) | Not stated for Hobby (listed from Starter) | 1 monitor, 10-min checks | Open source (AGPL-3.0) | Starter $30/mo: custom domain, subscribers, 20 monitors at 1 min |
| Cronitor | 1 basic page | Not stated (branded page from Business) | 50 | 5 monitors (jobs, checks or heartbeats), 5-min checks | 1 dashboard user; no SMS | Business: $2 per monitor + $5 per user a month; branded page $25/page |
| HetrixTools | Public status pages on every plan | Yes: 3 white-label domains (partial white label) | Not stated | 15 uptime monitors, 1-min checks, 4 of 12 locations | Log in at least once every 90 days to keep Free | Professional $9.95/mo: 30 monitors, 5 domains |
| PingSLA | 1 basic public page | No (custom domain from Pro) | Not stated | 20 monitors, 5-min checks, email alerts | 1 region on Free | Starter $39/mo: public page, 50 monitors at 1 min |
| Webalert | 1 | No (from Business) | Not stated | 3 monitors, 10-min checks, email and Slack | 30-day data retention | Starter €9/mo: 2 pages, 10 monitors at 1 min |
| TidyMonitor | 1 basic page | Not stated | Not stated | 10 websites, 3-min checks, email alerts | History kept 1 month | Solo ₹199/mo incl. GST: 1 branded page, WhatsApp |
Self-hosted and free
If you already run a server, open-source tools give you a status page with no plan limits at all. You trade the subscription for maintenance: updates, backups, TLS certificates and, above all, putting the page somewhere other than the infrastructure it reports on.
| Tool | Licence | Status page | Checks | Subscribers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime Kuma | MIT | Multiple status pages, each mappable to your own domain | Built in: HTTP(s), TCP, ping, DNS, push and more; 20-second intervals | Not listed in its feature list | Version 2.5.6 released 9 October 2026; runs in Docker on your server |
| Gatus | Apache-2.0 | Its dashboard is the status page | Built in, configured in YAML; push-based "external endpoints" too | Not listed | Hosted version (gatus.io) from $10/mo with a custom hostname, 7-day trial, no free plan |
| Upptime | MIT (code), ODbL (history data) | Static site on GitHub Pages; custom domain via the cname key | GitHub Actions, every 5 minutes; GitHub Issues hold incidents | No subscriber list; notifications to Slack, Telegram, Discord, Teams, email, SMS and webhooks | Free if you already use GitHub; data lives in the repository |
What the numbers say
- Own domain at $0 is rare. Of the eleven hosted free tiers above, three put the page on your domain: Better Stack (a custom sub-domain), HetrixTools (three white-label domains) and Vigil (a CNAME). Elsewhere it starts at $10 a month (UptimeRobot Solo), reaches $29 to $30 (Atlassian Statuspage Hobby, OpenStatus Starter), and sits on the $199 Pro plan at PingSLA.
- Subscribers are where free tiers differ most. Instatus allows 200, Atlassian Statuspage 100, Cronitor 50 and Vigil 25 by email. UptimeRobot has none until Team.
- Monitoring is usually included, but small. UptimeRobot's free 50 monitors at 5-minute checks and HetrixTools' 15 monitors at 1-minute checks are the most generous; OpenStatus gives one monitor at 10 minutes. Atlassian Statuspage lists no uptime checks at all.
- Self-hosted has no limits, but one big risk. A status page on the same machine or provider as your app goes down with it. Upptime avoids that by running on GitHub; Uptime Kuma and Gatus need a second server.
Vigil's free status page, including what it does not do
What the clip shows
- Status pages → title "Example Shop status", slug example-shop, tick three monitors, create.
- Open the public page: "All systems operational", three components with 90-day bars, no incidents.
Vigil by PuzariCloud's Free plan includes 1 status page with your own domain (add a CNAME record), password protection for internal pages, incidents and maintenance notices, an Atom feed and badges, and subscriptions by email (25 addresses), Slack, Discord or webhook. The page is driven by the same 20 monitors you use for alerting, checked every 5 minutes, so a failed check changes the page without anyone posting.
Being honest about the limits on Free:
- History is short. Free keeps 7 days of checks, so the 90-day uptime bars only fill on paid plans (30 days on Starter, 90 on Pro). UptimeRobot keeps 3 months on its free plan.
- The footer stays. "Powered by Vigil by PuzariCloud" is shown on Free. Starter ($19 a month, ₹1,499 in India) removes it and allows 3 pages and 100 email subscribers per page.
- One check location. Hosted checks run from one location in Germany. You can add a private location (an agent on your own machine) to check from anywhere else, but there is no multi-region confirmation.
- Fewer free subscribers than Instatus or Statuspage. If a large email list is the point, those two give you more for $0.
Who should pick what
- You want your own domain and built-in checks for $0: Better Stack, HetrixTools or Vigil. HetrixTools has the fastest free checks (every minute, from four locations); Better Stack sits inside a larger incident and logging platform; Vigil includes password protection, subscribers and cron heartbeats on its free plan.
- You mainly need to email a few hundred customers during incidents: Instatus (200 free subscribers) or Atlassian Statuspage (100), and connect your monitoring to them.
- You already use Atlassian and want components, metrics and templates: Statuspage. Expect to pay from $29 a month for your domain.
- An open-source project on GitHub: Upptime. It costs nothing, needs no server and keeps history in the repository; checks run at most every 5 minutes.
- A homelab or your own server: Uptime Kuma for a friendly UI, Gatus if you prefer configuration in YAML. Host the page away from what it monitors.
- Lots of monitors with basic needs: UptimeRobot's free 50 monitors, with the caveat that its pricing page describes Free as for hobby and non-profit projects and keeps the page on its own domain.
If you are comparing Vigil with one of these in detail, the one-to-one pages have prices and feature tables: Vigil vs Instatus, Vigil vs OpenStatus, Vigil vs Better Stack and Vigil vs Uptime Kuma.
Frequently asked questions
Which free status page lets me use my own domain?
On 18 October 2026: Better Stack (a custom sub-domain, per its own guide), HetrixTools (3 white-label domains on Free) and Vigil by PuzariCloud (a CNAME on Free). UptimeRobot needs Solo ($10 a month), Instatus needs Pro (from $20), OpenStatus needs Starter ($30) and Atlassian Statuspage needs Hobby ($29). Self-hosted Uptime Kuma, Gatus and Upptime can all sit on your own domain.
Which free status page has the most email subscribers?
Instatus allows 200 subscribers on its free plan, Atlassian Statuspage 100, Cronitor 50 and Vigil 25 by email (Slack, Discord and webhook subscribers are counted separately). UptimeRobot has no subscribers below Team. Better Stack's pricing page lists 1,000 included subscribers but does not say whether that applies to the free plan.
Is a self-hosted status page really free?
The software is: Uptime Kuma and Upptime are MIT-licensed and Gatus is Apache-2.0. You still pay for a server (Upptime uses GitHub's), you apply updates yourself, and a status page on the same machine as your app goes down with it. Put it on a different host or provider.
Do I need monitoring behind a status page?
Not strictly. Atlassian Statuspage's free plan is a communication page that you, its API or an integration update. A page connected to its own checks turns red by itself, which matters at 3 am. Every other hosted tool in the table includes some monitors on its free tier.
What does Vigil's free status page leave out?
The "Powered by Vigil by PuzariCloud" footer stays on Free, history is kept for 7 days (so the 90-day bars fill only on paid plans), email subscribers stop at 25, and all checks run from one location in Germany. Starter ($19 a month) removes the branding and keeps 30 days.
More buyer's guides
- Best uptime monitoring tools in India (2026): INR pricing, UPI, GST invoices, WhatsApp and checks from India
- Healthchecks.io alternatives: Healthchecks.io alternatives compared on ping-URL compatibility (/start, /fail, exit codes, /log, ?rid=), free tiers and price, plus who should stay on Healthchecks
- WhatsApp uptime alerts: Which uptime monitors send WhatsApp alerts natively, which need a gateway or webhook, how to set it up in Vigil by PuzariCloud, and what a message costs on Meta's India rate card
- All comparisons: Vigil by PuzariCloud against one tool at a time, with prices
Try Vigil by PuzariCloud
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