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Posted on Feb 3 • Originally published at apistatuscheck.com

The Best Free API Monitoring Stack for Startups in 2026

#devops #monitoring #api #webdev

Originally published on API Status Check

Most startups can't afford Datadog ($500+/month) or New Relic ($1,000+/month) in the early days. But you can't ship to production without monitoring—that's how you get midnight outages and angry users.

Good news: you can build a production-ready monitoring stack for zero dollars. Here's exactly how.

The Complete Free Monitoring Stack

Tool	What It Does	Free Tier	Best For
API Status Check	Tracks third-party API status	Unlimited	Monitoring dependencies (Stripe, AWS, etc.)
UptimeRobot	Monitors your uptime	50 monitors, 5-min checks	Uptime tracking + basic status page
Sentry	Error & crash tracking	5,000 events/month	Frontend/backend error monitoring
Grafana Cloud	Metrics & dashboards	10,000 series, 14-day retention	Custom metrics, logs, traces

Total monthly cost: $0

Setup time: ~1-2 hours

What you get: Uptime monitoring, error tracking, dependency status, custom dashboards

Why This Stack Works

✅ Covers All Bases

External dependencies: API Status Check tells you when Stripe/AWS/OpenAI is down
Your uptime: UptimeRobot pings your API/site every 5 minutes
Application errors: Sentry catches frontend crashes and backend exceptions
Custom metrics: Grafana visualizes performance, queues, business metrics

✅ Actually Free (Not Freemium Traps)

No credit card required for any tool
Free tiers are real (not 14-day trials)
No surprise bills when you hit limits
Generous limits for early-stage startups

✅ Production-Ready

Used by thousands of companies
Reliable alerting (Slack, email, Discord, webhooks)
Good documentation and support
Battle-tested tools

✅ Scales With You

When you outgrow free tiers, each tool has affordable paid plans:

UptimeRobot Pro: $7/mo
Sentry Team: $26/mo
Grafana Pro: $49/mo
API Status Check Pro: $9/mo

The Stack, Explained

1. API Status Check — Third-Party Dependency Tracking

What it monitors: 100+ external APIs and services your app depends on (Stripe, OpenAI, AWS, Vercel, Supabase, Cloudflare, Twilio, etc.)

Why you need it: When your app breaks, 50% of the time it's because a third-party service is down. API Status Check gives you one dashboard to see all your dependencies.

Free tier:

✅ Unlimited API monitoring
✅ Real-time status updates (every 5 minutes)
✅ Historical incident data
✅ Alerts (Slack, Discord, email, webhooks)
✅ API access + embeddable badges

Setup time: 2 minutes

2. UptimeRobot — Your Service Uptime

What it monitors: Your own websites, APIs, servers (HTTP, ping, keyword monitoring, port checks)

Why you need it: This is your "is my app up?" tool. It pings your endpoints every 5 minutes and alerts you if they go down.

Free tier:

✅ 50 monitors (more than enough for startups)
✅ 5-minute check intervals
✅ Unlimited alerts (email, Slack, webhooks, SMS*)
✅ Basic public status page
✅ 90-day data retention
✅ SSL monitoring

*SMS requires credits

Setup time: 10 minutes

3. Sentry — Error & Crash Tracking

What it monitors: Frontend errors (React, Vue, etc.), backend exceptions (Node, Python, Go, etc.), crashes, performance issues

Why you need it: Users won't report most bugs. Sentry captures every error with full context (stack trace, user info, breadcrumbs), so you can fix issues before they become problems.

Free tier:

✅ 5,000 events/month (~166/day)
✅ 1 user (owner)
✅ Unlimited projects
✅ 30-day event retention
✅ Source maps, releases, user feedback
✅ Slack/GitHub integrations

Setup time: 15-30 minutes (depending on framework)

4. Grafana Cloud — Dashboards & Custom Metrics

What it monitors: Custom application metrics, logs, distributed traces (optional—can be used with Prometheus, Loki, Tempo)

Why you need it: Sometimes you need to track custom metrics (API response times, queue lengths, active users, revenue). Grafana is the industry standard for visualization.

Free tier:

✅ 10,000 series (Prometheus metrics)
✅ 50GB logs (Loki)
✅ 50GB traces (Tempo)
✅ 14-day retention
✅ Unlimited dashboards
✅ Alerts (email, Slack, webhooks)

Setup time: 30 minutes - 1 hour (depends on integration complexity)

Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Step 1: Set Up API Status Check (2 minutes)

Visit: apistatuscheck.com
Browse APIs: No signup required—just browse 100+ APIs
Set up alerts (optional):
- Click "Get Alerts" on any API
- Choose Slack, Discord, email, or webhook
- Enter your notification endpoint
- Done!

Pro tip: Create a dedicated #api-status Slack channel and send all alerts there.

What to monitor:

Payment processors (Stripe, PayPal)
Authentication (Auth0, Clerk, Supabase)
Infrastructure (AWS, Vercel, Cloudflare)
AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Replicate)
Communication (Twilio, SendGrid, Resend)

Step 2: Set Up UptimeRobot (10 minutes)

Sign up: uptimerobot.com (free, no credit card)
Add monitors:
- Click "Add New Monitor"
- Type: HTTP(s) (for APIs/websites) or Ping (for servers)
- URL: Your production endpoint (e.g., https://api.yourapp.com/health)
- Interval: 5 minutes (free tier max)
- Save
Set up alerts:
- Go to "My Settings" → "Alert Contacts"
- Add email, Slack webhook, or Discord webhook
- Test the alert
Create a status page (optional):
- Go to "Status Pages" → "Add New Status Page"
- Select which monitors to display
- Customize design
- Publish (you'll get a URL like status.yourapp.com)

What to monitor:

Homepage: https://yourapp.com
API health endpoint: https://api.yourapp.com/health
Dashboard: https://app.yourapp.com
Critical background jobs (if they expose HTTP endpoints)

Pro tip: Create a /health endpoint in your API that returns 200 OK and checks database connectivity.

Step 3: Set Up Sentry (15-30 minutes)

Sign up: sentry.io (free, no credit card)
Create a project:
- Select your platform (JavaScript, Python, Go, etc.)
- Name your project (e.g., "yourapp-frontend" or "yourapp-api")
- Copy the DSN (data source name)
Install SDK:

For Node.js/Express:

npm install @sentry/node

const Sentry = require('@sentry/node');

Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'YOUR_DSN_HERE',
  environment: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  tracesSampleRate: 0.1, // 10% of transactions
});

// Use Sentry error handler
app.use(Sentry.Handlers.errorHandler());

For React:

npm install @sentry/react

import * as Sentry from '@sentry/react';

Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'YOUR_DSN_HERE',
  environment: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  tracesSampleRate: 0.1,
});

Test it:
- Trigger a test error: Sentry.captureException(new Error('Test error'))
- Check the Sentry dashboard—you should see the error
Set up alerts:
- Go to "Alerts" → "Create Alert"
- Choose "Issues" (or custom metric)
- Set conditions (e.g., "New issue created")
- Send to Slack or email

Pro tip: Use Sentry's release tracking to correlate errors with deployments:

Sentry.init({
  dsn: 'YOUR_DSN',
  release: 'yourapp@' + process.env.GIT_COMMIT,
});

Step 4: Set Up Grafana Cloud (30 minutes - 1 hour)

Sign up: grafana.com/auth/sign-up (free, no credit card)
Choose integrations:
- Prometheus (metrics)
- Loki (logs) — optional
- Tempo (traces) — optional
Send metrics to Grafana:

Option A: Using Prometheus client (Node.js example):

npm install prom-client

const promClient = require('prom-client');
const express = require('express');

// Create metrics
const httpRequestDuration = new promClient.Histogram({
  name: 'http_request_duration_seconds',
  help: 'Duration of HTTP requests in seconds',
  labelNames: ['method', 'route', 'status_code'],
});

// Expose /metrics endpoint
app.get('/metrics', async (req, res) => {
  res.set('Content-Type', promClient.register.contentType);
  res.end(await promClient.register.metrics());
});

Option B: Use Grafana Agent (easier, but requires installing on server):

Follow Grafana Cloud instructions to install the agent
Agent auto-scrapes /metrics endpoints

Create dashboards:
- Go to "Dashboards" → "New Dashboard"
- Add panels for key metrics:
  - HTTP request rate
  - Error rate
  - Response time (p50, p95, p99)
  - Active users (if tracked)
- Save dashboard
Set up alerts:
- In dashboard, click panel → "Alert"
- Define thresholds (e.g., error rate > 5%)
- Send to Slack/email

Pro tip: Import community dashboards instead of building from scratch:

Go to "Dashboards" → "Import"
Search for Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, etc.
Instant monitoring!

How They Work Together

Here's a real-world scenario:

Scenario: Your Stripe integration breaks at 2 AM

What happens:

API Status Check alerts you in Slack: "Stripe API - Major Outage"
- You check—Stripe's status page confirms it
- Action: None needed (it's Stripe's problem, not yours)
UptimeRobot is still happy: Your API is up, returning 200s
- Action: None needed
Sentry shows a spike in errors: StripeAPIError: Connection timeout
- You see the full context (user ID, transaction attempt, stack trace)
- Action: You deploy a fix to gracefully handle Stripe timeouts
Grafana shows your payment success rate dropped from 99% to 40%
- You create a dashboard annotation: "Stripe outage"
- Action: Track when the issue resolves

Result: You didn't cause the outage, but you knew about it instantly, understood the impact, and deployed a fix to handle it gracefully. When Stripe comes back, your app recovers automatically.

Bonus: How to Stay Within Free Limits

API Status Check:

No limits on the free tier—monitor as many APIs as you want

UptimeRobot:

50 monitors is generous (you probably need 5-10)
5-minute intervals work fine for most startups
If you need faster checks, upgrade to Pro ($7/mo for 1-minute intervals)

Sentry:

5,000 events/month = ~166 errors/day
If you hit the limit:
- Filter out noisy errors (third-party script errors, bot traffic)
- Use sampling: only send 50% of events
- Upgrade to Team plan ($26/mo for 50K events)

Grafana Cloud:

10,000 series = track hundreds of metrics
To stay under:
- Avoid high-cardinality labels (don't use user IDs as labels)
- Use aggregation (e.g., track "requests per endpoint" not "requests per user")
- Set appropriate scrape intervals (30s-60s, not 5s)

When to Upgrade (and What It Costs)

As you grow, you might outgrow free tiers. Here's when to upgrade and rough costs:

🚦 Stage 1: MVP / Early Beta (0-100 users)

Stack: Everything free

Cost: $0/month

Good until: You have paying customers or significant traffic

🚦 Stage 2: Launched Product (100-1,000 users)

Consider upgrading:

UptimeRobot Pro: $7/mo (1-minute checks, 100 monitors)
API Status Check Alert Pro: $9/mo (custom alert routing, priority support)

Cost: $16/month

Still free: Sentry, Grafana

🚦 Stage 3: Growing Startup (1,000-10,000 users)

Consider upgrading:

Sentry Team: $26/mo (50K events, 3 users, advanced features)
Grafana Pro: $49/mo (90-day retention, more series)

Total stack cost: ~$100/month

Still way cheaper than: Datadog ($500+/mo), New Relic ($1,000+/mo)

Alternative Free Tools

If this stack doesn't fit your needs, here are alternatives:

Instead of UptimeRobot:

Better Uptime (free tier: 10 monitors, 3-min checks)
Freshping (free: 50 checks, 1-min intervals)
Uptime.com (free: 10 monitors, 1-min checks)

Instead of Sentry:

Rollbar (free: 5K events/month)
Bugsnag (free: 7,500 events/month)
GlitchTip (open-source Sentry alternative, self-hosted)

Instead of Grafana Cloud:

Prometheus + self-hosted Grafana (100% free, but you host it)
Datadog free tier (5 hosts, 1-day retention—very limited)

Instead of API Status Check:

Downdetector (consumer services, no developer tools)
Manual bookmarks (visit 10 status pages individually—painful)

FAQs

Is this stack really enough for production?

Yes. Thousands of startups use this exact stack (or similar). It's not as comprehensive as Datadog, but it covers the essentials: uptime, errors, dependencies, and metrics. You can ship confidently with this setup. As you scale (Series A+), consider upgrading to more robust tools.

What's missing from this stack?

A few advanced features you might want later:

APM (Application Performance Monitoring): Request tracing, database query analysis (Datadog, New Relic)
Log aggregation: Centralized log search (Grafana Loki, Elasticsearch, Datadog Logs)
Distributed tracing: Track requests across microservices (Tempo, Jaeger, Zipkin)
Synthetic monitoring: Simulate user journeys (Checkly, Ghost Inspector)

For most startups, these are "nice to have" not "must have." Start simple, add complexity as needed.

Can I self-host these tools instead?

Yes! All of these have self-hosted alternatives:

API Status Check: No self-hosted version (it's a SaaS aggregator)
UptimeRobot alternative: Uptime Kuma (open source, self-hosted)
Sentry: Self-host Sentry (Docker image available)
Grafana: Self-host Grafana + Prometheus (free forever)

Self-hosting saves money but costs time (setup, maintenance, security). For most startups, managed free tiers are better—focus on building your product, not your monitoring infrastructure.

Final Checklist: Your Free Monitoring Stack

[ ] API Status Check set up (2 min)
- [ ] Alerts configured for Stripe, AWS, etc.
- [ ] Slack/Discord webhook connected
[ ] UptimeRobot set up (10 min)
- [ ] Homepage monitor added
- [ ] API health endpoint monitor added
- [ ] Alerts configured
- Public status page created
[ ] Sentry set up (30 min)
- [ ] Frontend SDK installed
- [ ] Backend SDK installed
- [ ] Test error confirmed in dashboard
- [ ] Slack alerts configured
[ ] Grafana Cloud set up (1 hour)
- [ ] Metrics endpoint created (/metrics)
- [ ] Grafana Agent installed (or Prometheus scraping configured)
- [ ] Dashboard created for key metrics
- [ ] Alerts set up for critical thresholds

Total setup time: 2-3 hours

Total cost: $0/month

What you get: Production-ready monitoring for uptime, errors, dependencies, and custom metrics

Conclusion

You don't need a $1,000/month monitoring budget to ship production-quality software. This free stack—API Status Check + UptimeRobot + Sentry + Grafana Cloud—gives you everything you need to monitor your app, catch errors, track dependencies, and visualize metrics.

Start with this. Upgrade as you grow. But don't skip monitoring because "it's expensive"—this stack proves it doesn't have to be.

Ready to get started?

Ship with confidence. Monitor everything. Pay nothing.