If you're an IsDown user who just received the February 16 price increase email, you're not alone. IsDown is raising prices 22-33% across all plans:
- Starter: $18 → $22/month (+22%)
- Essential: $37 → $49/month (+32%)
- Professional: $74 → $99/month (+34%)
- Business: $150 → $199/month (+33%)
While IsDown remains a solid service with over 5,450 monitored services, a 30%+ price jump is a good reason to explore alternatives. Whether you need something cheaper, more developer-focused, or with different features, here are the seven best IsDown alternatives in 2026.
1. API Status Check — Best for Developers and API-Centric Teams
Pricing: $9-$49/month
Best for: Developers monitoring APIs, SaaS dependencies, and third-party services
API Status Check focuses on what developers actually care about: real endpoint testing, not just status page scraping. While IsDown monitors status pages (which, as we've covered, often lag reality), API Status Check runs actual HTTP checks every 60 seconds.
What You Get
- Real-time monitoring of 100+ critical APIs (Stripe, Cloudflare, AWS, Vercel, etc.)
- Instant alerts via Discord, Slack, email, and RSS
- Independent testing — not reliant on vendor status pages
- Developer-friendly interface and API
- Transparent incident history
Pricing Comparison
- IsDown Essential: $49/month (after Feb 16)
- API Status Check Pro: $19/month
That's 60% cheaper for a service built specifically for developers.
What IsDown Does Better
- Broader coverage (5,450+ services vs 100+)
- Crowdsourced outage detection
- Longer track record (established 2017)
Bottom line: If you're monitoring mainstream SaaS and APIs (not obscure regional services), API Status Check gives you better signal at a fraction of the cost.
2. StatusGator — Best for Enterprise Teams
Pricing: $89-$399/month
Best for: Large teams needing comprehensive monitoring and reporting
StatusGator monitors 1,500+ services and offers enterprise features like custom dashboards, white-labeling, and advanced reporting.
Standout Features
- Slack/Teams integrations with rich notifications
- Customizable status pages for your own services
- Historical uptime data and SLA tracking
- API access for automation
Trade-offs
- More expensive than IsDown at every tier
- Primarily status page aggregation (not endpoint testing)
- Can feel over-engineered for small teams
Who should choose StatusGator: Enterprise teams that need white-labeling, compliance reporting, or managing hundreds of dependencies.
3. Downdetector — Best Free Alternative
Pricing: Free
Best for: Quick checks and community-powered outage detection
Downdetector is the Wikipedia of service outages — crowdsourced, free, and surprisingly accurate for major incidents.
What Works
- Completely free
- Covers thousands of services
- Real-time outage maps showing geographic impact
- User comments provide context
Limitations
- No alerts or automation
- Reactive (only shows issues after users report them)
- Ad-supported
- Not suitable for business-critical monitoring
Who should choose Downdetector: Teams that want a free supplement to their primary monitoring.
4. UptimeRobot — Best for Uptime Monitoring
Pricing: Free (50 monitors), $7/month (Pro)
Best for: Website and endpoint uptime monitoring
UptimeRobot is a classic uptime monitor — it pings your URLs and alerts you when they go down.
Strengths
- Very generous free tier (50 monitors, 5-minute checks)
- Keyword monitoring
- Public status pages
- Simple, focused feature set
What It's Not
- Not a third-party service aggregator
- No crowdsourced detection
- Requires you to configure endpoints manually
Who should choose UptimeRobot: Teams that want to monitor specific URLs/APIs they control.
5. Better Stack — Best Modern UI
Pricing: $29-$149/month
Best for: Teams that value great UX and incident management
Better Stack combines uptime monitoring with on-call scheduling, incident management, and beautiful status pages.
Why Developers Love It
- Gorgeous, intuitive interface
- Built-in incident timeline and post-mortems
- On-call rotations and escalation policies
- Integrates with everything (Slack, PagerDuty, webhooks)
Considerations
- More expensive than IsDown's new pricing
- Focused on your own infrastructure, not third-party service aggregation
Who should choose Better Stack: Engineering teams that want monitoring + incident management in one tool.
6. Instatus — Best for Beautiful Status Pages
Pricing: $0-$79/month
Best for: Companies that want public status pages for their own services
Instatus is all about creating beautiful, fast-loading status pages for your customers.
What Stands Out
- Stunning pre-built status page templates
- Blazing fast (edge-hosted)
- Subscriber notifications via email/SMS/Slack
- Custom domains and branding
Not Ideal For
- Monitoring third-party services (that's not the focus)
- Teams that don't need public status pages
Who should choose Instatus: SaaS companies that need to communicate uptime to customers.
7. Freshstatus (Freshping) — Note: Shutting Down March 6
Pricing: Free
Best for: Temporary solution only
⚠️ Important: Freshping is shutting down on March 6, 2026. Use only as a stopgap while evaluating alternatives.
Quick Comparison
| Service | Starting Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| API Status Check | $9/mo | Developers, API monitoring |
| IsDown | $22/mo | General status aggregation |
| StatusGator | $89/mo | Enterprise teams |
| Downdetector | Free | Quick checks |
| UptimeRobot | Free/$7 | Uptime monitoring |
| Better Stack | $29/mo | Modern incident mgmt |
| Instatus | Free/$29 | Public status pages |
How to Choose
Migrating because of price?
→ API Status Check — 60% less cost
Need enterprise features?
→ StatusGator — white-labeling, compliance
Only monitoring your own infrastructure?
→ UptimeRobot or Better Stack
Want something free?
→ Downdetector (casual) or UptimeRobot (serious)
Value beautiful UX?
→ Better Stack or Instatus
Why API Status Check?
- Real endpoint testing — We actually hit APIs every 60 seconds
- Developer-first — RSS, webhooks, clean API
- Transparent pricing — No surprise increases
- Fast, focused — 100+ services that matter to dev teams
- Community-powered — Real user reports
FAQ
Is IsDown still worth it after the price increase?
If you need 5,450+ services including niche providers, yes. For mainstream SaaS/API monitoring, you're likely overpaying.
Can I use multiple services together?
Absolutely. Many teams use API Status Check + Downdetector + UptimeRobot for redundancy.
What about self-hosted?
Check out Uptime Kuma (open source, free) or Cachet for maximum control.
Does API Status Check offer a trial?
Yes — sign up free, no credit card required.
The Bottom Line
IsDown's 22-33% price increase is steep. For most dev teams, API Status Check offers better signal, faster detection, and 60% lower cost.
You have until February 16 to decide. Test alternatives now while you still can.
👉 Start monitoring for free: apistatuscheck.com
Detailed comparison: API Status Check vs IsDown
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