What these tools give you for free
Every vendor here has a free plan, and each one is missing a different piece. This is the honest version, including the cases where they beat us. Published limits as of August 2026.
| Tool | Free plan | First thing you pay for | Where it wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| IncidentFlare | 1 page on your own domain, 5 components, 10 monitors at 5 min, escalation with acknowledge, inbound webhooks, badge, 90-day chart | $19/mo per product up to 5 people, $79 up to 50; SMS, phone calls, 1-min checks | The only free tier where checks, escalation and a page on your domain are the same tool |
| Atlassian Statuspage | 100 subscribers, 25 components, 2 team members, email and Slack notifications | $29/mo for a custom domain; per page | Audience-specific pages, big subscriber lists, Atlassian ecosystem |
| PagerDuty | 5 users, 1 escalation policy, 1 schedule, 100 phone/SMS notifications a month | $25/user/mo ($21 annual); status page starts there | Phone calls, mobile app, layered schedules, hundreds of integrations |
| Better Stack | 10 monitors, 1 status page with custom domain, Slack, Telegram and email alerts, on-call rotations, 3-min checks | $29/responder/mo for on-call and escalation | Most monitors on a free plan that also includes a proper status page |
| UptimeRobot | 50 monitors at 5 min, basic page on their URL, 5 integrations | Paid for Slack, custom domain and 1-min checks | Sheer monitor count |
Read the long versions
- IncidentFlare vs Atlassian Statuspage
Why the free Statuspage plan cannot use your domain, and what the $29 tier is really buying.
- IncidentFlare vs PagerDuty for 1–3 person teams
What PagerDuty’s free plan covers, what per-seat costs a three-person team, and when to buy it anyway.