Build an uptime monitoring setup with Globalping and open source tools

Usually, your uptime monitor checks your services from wherever they’re running. So, if your tool runs on a server in Frankfurt, that’s usually also where the uptime checks originate. This works mostly fine, but what if you get user reports that your service is slow in Asia or South America, where your monitor doesn’t run?

The challenge: a single test location can’t tell you whether your service is reachable everywhere. However, pairing your setup with Globalping gives you access to a distributed probe network that lets you test from anywhere.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to combine Globalping with four open source monitoring tools – Checkmate, Upptime, Uptime Flare, and Uptime Kuma – to build a free global uptime monitoring setup.

Global open source uptime monitoring with Globalping

Globalping is an open source network measurement platform with a community-hosted probe network that also includes residential ISP networks (also called eyeball networks) worldwide. Anyone can use it to run ping, HTTP, DNS lookup, MTR, and traceroute tests from virtually any location.

The Globalping integrations we’re covering in this blog post all follow the same basic pattern: your monitoring tool triggers a check, sends a measurement request to the Globalping API, a probe runs the tests from the location you’ve defined, and the result is returned to your tool via the API.

Why this setup can be a great fit for you:

• Gain access to a global probe network and monitor from different countries, cities, ISPs, ASNs, or cloud regions without having to manage your own infrastructure.
• Get a realistic view of how real users experience your website or service by running checks from residential probes, not just from data centers.
• Own your setup and use self-hosted, open-source tools to keep your data in your control.

Commercial monitoring vs open source global monitoring

If you're unsure whether a commercial or open source solution is a better fit for you, both are valid options, just different approaches with their own trade-offs. Here's a rough comparison:

	Commercial tools	Open source monitoring with Globalping
Probe network	Varies	Community-driven, transparent
Data ownership	Vendor-hosted	Self-hosted
Cost	Subscription-based	Free hourly tests (options to increase for free)
Transparency	Often closed source	Fully open source
Setup effort	Minimal	Low to moderate

Available integrations

Let's look at each tool and how it integrates with Globalping. Jump to the one you're interested in:

Uptime Flare and Globalping
Upptime and Globalping
Uptime Kuma and Globalping
Checkmate and Globalping

Uptime Flare and Globalping

Uptime Flare is a serverless, open source uptime monitor and status page built on Cloudflare Workers. Since all checks run on Cloudflare's infrastructure by default, some services may limit or block traffic from it. The Globalping integration gives you a way around that by routing checks through Globalping's probe network instead. This integration was built by the Uptime Flare team.

Supported test types: HTTP

Setup: Add the globalping:// scheme to the checkProxy field in your uptime.config.ts, using your free Globalping API token and a magic parameter to define the location.

For example, this could look something like this:

{
  id: 'globalping',
  name: 'Globalping',
  method: 'GET',
  target: 'https://globalping.io/',
  checkProxy: 'globalping://YOUR_TOKEN/?magic=US'
}

Example use case: Monitor from a specific network type

If you want to make sure that your service is reachable from residential networks, use the eyeball-network tag:

checkProxy: 'globalping://YOUR_TOKEN/?magic=FR+eyeball'

This runs HTTP checks from a residential probe in France rather than a data center, which gives you a more realistic view of what French home users experience.

Full setup guide and more configuration examples

Upptime and Globalping

Upptime uses GitHub Actions to run checks, GitHub Issues for incident tracking, and GitHub Pages for hosting status pages, which means you don’t need a server to run it.

Supported test types: HTTP GET, ping

Setup: Add type: globalping and a location to any site entry in your .upptimerc.yml. We also recommend adding your Globalping API token as a GitHub repository secret (GLOBALPING_TOKEN) to avoid running out of free tests (which are counted against your IP address if you’re not using an API token) since users share IPs with GitHub Actions runners.

Here's an example:

sites:
  - name: Europe check
    url: https://api.myservice.com
    type: globalping
    location: europe

Example use case: Monitor from a specific cloud provider

Let’s say you host on AWS and want to check for routing issues from that network in Germany:

sites:
  - name: AWS Germany performance
    url: https://www.yourwebsite.com
    type: globalping
    location: amazon+germany

Full setup guide and more configuration examples

Uptime Kuma and Globalping

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted monitoring tool with a modern UI, notification support, and status pages. Globalping is available as a dedicated monitor type, making it straightforward to add global checks alongside your existing monitors.

Supported test types: HTTP, ping (ICMP or TCP), DNS

Setup: When you create a monitor (or edit an existing one), select "Globalping - Access global monitoring probes" from the monitor type dropdown. You'll see some Globalping-specific fields for subtype, hostname, and location to configure the tests.

To increase your free test allowance, add your Globalping API token under Settings > About.

Example use case: Verify DNS propagation from a specific region

After updating a DNS record, you want to set up a DNS monitor to verify that the new IP is returned correctly from a specific region. In this example, we define:

• Subtype: DNS
• Hostname: yourdomain.com
• Record type: A
• Record value match: your new IP
• Location: europe

This will return failed tests until the probe starts returning the updated, correct record (at which point the monitor turns green).

Note: If you want to run tests from multiple locations, you need to create a monitor for each location.

Full setup guide and more configuration examples

Checkmate and Globalping

Checkmate is a self-hosted monitoring tool that covers uptime, response times, server hardware, and incident management. The Globalping integration was built by the Checkmate team and is available as an optional toggle.

Supported test types: HTTP, ping

Setup: Enable the "Geo-Distributed Checks" toggle when creating or editing an HTTP or ping monitor. This shows new options to select one or more of Globalping's six supported major regions (Africa, North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Oceania) and set a check interval.

Your regular Checkmate checks continue to run independently at their own frequency. For example, you can set your monitor so that your Checkmate check runs every minute, and the Globalping tests run every 5 minutes.

Example use case: Monitor from all regions

You can enable all six regions on a monitor to get a broad picture of global availability at once.

With a 5-minute interval, that's 72 Globalping tests per hour, which comfortably falls within the free test limit.

Note: It's not yet possible to provide a Globalping API key in Checkmate to increase the free hourly test limit, but it will be possible in the future.

Full setup guide and more configuration examples

Conclusion

While all of these tools work a little differently, they share the same core benefit from Globalping: the ability to run checks from anywhere, free and without maintaining additional infrastructure yourself.

If you're already using one of these tools, you can try out Globalping straight away and get a much more complete picture of your service's availability. If you're just starting out, we encourage you to test these monitoring tools and choose the one that best fits your needs.

You can find all available Globalping integrations at globalping.io.