Self-Hosted Status Pages & Uptime Monitoring in 2026: Uptime Kuma vs Gatus vs Statping-ng

If you run SaaS platforms, client infrastructure, or homelabs, public transparency during outages is non-negotiable. However, commercial status page and uptime services (Statuspage.io, Better Stack, Pingdom, StatusCake) charge steep recurring fees—often $29 to $250+ per month just for custom domains, SMS/webhook alerts, and sub-minute check intervals.

By self-hosting your status pages on an isolated $4-$5/month VPS (e.g., Hetzner Cloud CX22 or DigitalOcean Droplet), you gain complete data sovereignty, zero check limits, and customizable public dashboards without per-seat pricing.

In this guide, we benchmark the top three open-source monitoring and status page engines in 2026: Uptime Kuma, Gatus, and Statping-ng.

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Quick Comparison: The Open-Source Status Page Landscape

Feature / Metric	Uptime Kuma	Gatus	Statping-ng
Primary Focus	General Uptime & Status Pages	Code-based (GitOps) Automated Health Checks	Multi-service Public Dashboards
Backend / Runtime	Node.js / Vue.js + SQLite/MariaDB	Single Go Binary + SQLite/Postgres	Go + SQLite/PostgreSQL/MySQL
Configuration Model	Web UI / REST & Socket API	YAML / GitOps as Code	Web UI + Config Files
RAM Footprint (Idle)	~90 MB – 140 MB	~15 MB – 35 MB	~40 MB – 80 MB
Check Protocols	HTTP(s), TCP, Ping, DNS, Docker, gRPC, Push	HTTP(s), TCP, ICMP, DNS, SSL certs	HTTP(s), TCP, UDP, ICMP, gRPC
Status Page Flexibility	Multi-page, custom slugs, custom CSS/domain	Clean single-page dashboard + badges	Custom themes, plugins, announcements
Alerting Channels	90+ (Telegram, Discord, Slack, Webhooks, etc.)	20+ (Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, Email, Twilio)	15+ (Telegram, Slack, Email, Discord)
Best For	Visual management & non-dev teams	DevOps teams embracing GitOps pipelines	Classic service breakdown with custom UI

Explore complete breakdown metrics and comparative features on our directory: SelfHostStack Status Pages & Uptime Monitoring Directory.

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1. Uptime Kuma: The Gold Standard for Visual Simplicity

Uptime Kuma is currently the most popular self-hosted monitoring tool. It offers an intuitive UI, fast setup, rich status page customisation, and native support for 90+ notification providers.

Why Teams Choose Uptime Kuma

• Rich Monitor Types: Monitors HTTP(s) keywords, JSON queries, TCP ports, Ping, DNS records, Push heartbeats (cron monitoring), Steam Game Servers, and Docker container state.
• Multiple Status Pages: Host different status pages on different subdomains (e.g., status.example.com for public clients, internal-status.example.com for SREs).
• Incident Management: Publish manual incident notes (e.g., "Investigating database degradation") directly to the public page.
• 2FA & RBAC: Built-in two-factor authentication and user permission tiers.

Production Docker Compose: Uptime Kuma Behind Reverse Proxy

version: "3.8"

services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:1.23.16
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - uptime_kuma_data:/app/data
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3001:3001"
    environment:
      - UPTIME_KUMA_DISABLE_FRAME_SAMEORIGIN=1
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "node extra/healthcheck.js"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
    networks:
      - edge_network

volumes:
  uptime_kuma_data:
    driver: local

networks:
  edge_network:
    external: true

Tip: Mounting /var/run/docker.sock in read-only mode lets Uptime Kuma directly track container uptime on the host node without running additional exporters.

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2. Gatus: The GitOps-Native Automated Health Dashboard

If your infrastructure is configured via Terraform, Ansible, or Kubernetes, configuring monitoring through a Web UI can introduce drift. Gatus is a lightweight, developer-first health dashboard configured purely in YAML.

Why Teams Choose Gatus

• Declarative Health Checks: Define monitors in version-controlled YAML files with rich evaluation rules (response.status == 200, response.body == pat(*healthy*), response.time < 300ms).
• Ultra-Low Resource Consumption: Compiled in Go, Gatus routinely runs under 25MB of RAM even when querying dozens of endpoints every 10 seconds.
• Automated SVG Badges: Exposes dynamic endpoint status badges (/api/v1/endpoints/core-api/badge.svg) for README files and docs.
• Built-in Alerting Conditions: Trigger alerts only after $N$ consecutive failures to prevent flapping.

Production Configuration Example (config.yaml)

storage:
  type: sqlite
  path: /data/data.db

endpoints:
  - name: Core REST API
    group: Production Services
    url: "https://api.example.com/healthz"
    interval: 30s
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"
      - "[RESPONSE_TIME] < 500"
      - "[BODY].status == ok"
    alerts:
      - type: telegram
        send-on-resolved: true
        failure-threshold: 3

  - name: PostgreSQL Primary Node
    group: Databases
    url: "tcp://db-internal.example.com:5432"
    interval: 15s
    conditions:
      - "[CONNECTED] == true"

alerting:
  telegram:
    token: "${TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN}"
    chat-id: "${TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID}"

Running Gatus in Docker

version: "3.8"

services:
  gatus:
    image: twinproduction/gatus:v5.13.1
    container_name: gatus
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./config.yaml:/config/config.yaml:ro
      - gatus_data:/data
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"
    environment:
      - GATUS_CONFIG_PATH=/config/config.yaml
      - TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=your_bot_token_here
      - TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=-100123456789
    networks:
      - edge_network

volumes:
  gatus_data:

networks:
  edge_network:
    external: true

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3. Statping-ng: The Feature-Packed Classic Status Hub

Statping-ng is an updated community fork of the original Statping project, designed to render comprehensive historical uptime graphs, response time trends, and integrated incident reporting.

Key Capabilities

• Rich Dashboard UI: Displays daily incident heatmaps and latency percentiles.
• Public & Private Services: Hide internal microservices behind administrator login while exposing public endpoints.
• Mobile Friendly: Progressive Web App (PWA) support with native push notifications.

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Critical Architecture: Why Your Status Page Must Live Outside Your Main Cluster

A common operational failure is hosting your status dashboard on the exact same Kubernetes cluster or VPS as your production application. When your primary infrastructure crashes or DNS experiences propagation delays, your status page goes down with it.

Best Practice Architecture:

1. Dedicated Monitoring VPS: Spin up a lightweight $4/mo VPS at an alternative hosting provider (e.g., if your main apps are on AWS/Hetzner, host Uptime Kuma on Vultr or Scaleway).
2. Independent DNS Record: Point status.yourdomain.com to Cloudflare or Route53 configured directly to the isolated monitoring VPS.
3. Redundant Alerting: Send alerts simultaneously to both Telegram and Discord/Slack to safeguard against individual vendor webhook rate limits.

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Summary & Recommendation

• Pick Uptime Kuma if you want an all-in-one visual monitoring tool with rapid UI setup, multi-tenant public status pages, and instant incident announcements.
• Pick Gatus if you operate via Infrastructure-as-Code (GitOps), require sub-30MB memory footprints, and prefer declarative YAML health conditions.
• Pick Statping-ng if you require deep visual charting and historical service-level SLA reporting out of the box.

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Need Production-Ready Compose Files & Infrastructure Presets?

Building high-availability infrastructure? Check out our curated catalog of open-source alternatives and production templates:

• Explore SelfHostStack Alternatives Directory
• VPS Hosting Comparison Guide for 2026
• Self-Hosted Starter Stack Pack — Complete turnkey Docker Compose setups with reverse proxy, automatic SSL, Prometheus metrics, and daily S3 backups.