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Beszel vs PHP Server Monitor

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
Beszel Lightweight server monitoring with a clean hub VS PH PHP Server Monitor Simple PHP tool for monitoring servers and websites
FeatureBeszelPHP Server Monitor
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score97 · Excellent19 · At risk
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageGoPHP
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 25,691★ 2,188
First released20242010
ReplacesUptimeRobotPingdom, UptimeRobot

What are Beszel and PHP Server Monitor?

Beszel

Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform with a central hub and small agents tracking CPU, memory, disk, and Docker stats. It targets home labbers who want simple multi-host monitoring. It is deployed via Docker.

  • Hub and agent architecture
  • Tracks Docker container stats
  • Configurable alerts
  • Very low overhead

Read the full Beszel guide →

PHP Server Monitor

PHP Server Monitor is a lightweight script that checks whether websites and servers are up and sends notifications by email, SMS, or messaging services when they go down. It runs on common LAMP hosting.

  • Website and port checks
  • Email and SMS alerts
  • Uptime history
  • Runs on shared hosting

Read the full PHP Server Monitor guide →

Beszel vs PHP Server Monitor: key differences

Beszel is written in Go, while PHP Server Monitor is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for Beszel versus GPL-3.0 for PHP Server Monitor. PHP Server Monitor is the more established project (first released 2010), while Beszel arrived in 2024. Beszel has the considerably larger community, at 25,691 GitHub stars versus 2,188.

Why pick each one

Choose Beszel if…

  • Extremely lightweight
  • Simple multi-host view
  • Easy setup

Watch out for

  • Young project
  • Fewer metrics than Netdata
Beszel details

Choose PHP Server Monitor if…

  • Very easy to deploy
  • Low resource use

Watch out for

  • Basic feature set
  • Limited graphing
PHP Server Monitor details

Frequently asked questions

Is Beszel or PHP Server Monitor better?

Neither is universally better. Beszel has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Beszel and PHP Server Monitor free and open-source?

Yes. Beszel is licensed under MIT and PHP Server Monitor under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Beszel and PHP Server Monitor with Docker?

Beszel: yes. PHP Server Monitor: yes.

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