UptimeRobot vs Pingdom: free plan against free trial, and prices

UptimeRobot vs Pingdom: the short answer

UptimeRobot has a Free plan with 50 monitors and Pingdom has no free plan, and for 10 checks UptimeRobot Solo is $13 a month billed monthly against Pingdom's $18. Pingdom suits a buyer who also wants real user monitoring from the same vendor. UptimeRobot's prices come from its US pricing page as captured on September 29, 2026, and Pingdom's were read on 7 October 2026.

Free plan or free trial

Pingdom's pricing page shows no free plan. It offers a free trial and says the trial includes Synthetics and RUM, with no trial length stated; RUM, real user monitoring, is a separate Pingdom product priced from $16.50 a month billed annually. UptimeRobot is the reverse: a Free plan and no trial of a paid plan. It words the Free plan as 50 monitors at a 5-minute interval with "No credit card required".

Entry prices on the same billing basis

On monthly billing, UptimeRobot Solo with 10 monitors is $13 a month, and Pingdom's Synthetic Monitoring tier of 10 uptime checks, 1 advanced check and 50 SMS is $18 a month. On annual billing, Solo is $12 a month ($144 a year) against $16.50 a month ($198 a year) for Pingdom. UptimeRobot Solo with 50 monitors is $28 a month billed monthly or $24 a month billed annually.

Pingdom's next tier, 25 uptime checks, 4 advanced checks and 100 SMS, is $40 a month billed monthly or $36.33 a month billed annually ($436 a year). Pingdom's tier bundles advanced checks and SMS alerts; UptimeRobot sells SMS as credits, so the lower UptimeRobot figure does not buy the same bundle.

What counts as a check on each

UptimeRobot counts monitors, each one tracked endpoint such as a URL, a port, a keyword check or a heartbeat. Pingdom counts uptime checks, advanced checks and SMS alerts as separate numbers in each tier, with unlimited users and public status pages and reports on every plan. UptimeRobot's Free plan has 1 status page on an UptimeRobot address, and an own-domain status page starts on Solo.

SMS alerts, users and who should pick which

Pingdom's plan card lists email and SMS alerting, with 50 or 100 SMS in the tier, and names no on-call scheduling. UptimeRobot's Free plan sends email and mobile app alerts, and it meters SMS and voice alerts in one-time credits, from 10 for $3.00 to 1,000 for $100.00. Solo lists no login seats, and Team includes 3, where Pingdom has unlimited users.

• UptimeRobot to start on the Free plan, or to pay $13 a month billed monthly for 10 monitors at 60-second checks. The UptimeRobot pricing page prices every plan, and the UptimeRobot free plan page lists what Free keeps.
• Pingdom for uptime checks and real user monitoring from one vendor, with unlimited users on every plan. See the Pingdom alternative page for other options.