Checkmate vs Uptime Kuma
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Checkmate
Open-source uptime and infrastructure monitoring tool
VS
Uptime Kuma
Easy self-hosted uptime monitoring tool
| Feature | Checkmate | Uptime Kuma |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | ≈5-minute setup |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 10,883 | ★ 91,752 |
| First released | 2024 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Better Uptime | Pingdom, UptimeRobot |
What are Checkmate and Uptime Kuma?
Checkmate
Checkmate is an open-source server monitoring application that tracks uptime, response times, and infrastructure health. It offers incident notifications and a clean dashboard for homelabs and small teams.
- Uptime and response monitoring
- Infrastructure health agent
- Incident notifications
- Modern dashboard
Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted monitoring tool that checks the availability of websites, services, and APIs with a clean dashboard. It targets users who want a simple, attractive status monitor. It is deployed via Docker as a single container.
- Monitors HTTP, TCP, DNS and more
- Beautiful dashboard and status pages
- 90+ notification integrations
- Single-container deployment
Checkmate vs Uptime Kuma: key differences
Checkmate is written in TypeScript, while Uptime Kuma is built with JavaScript. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Checkmate versus MIT for Uptime Kuma. Uptime Kuma is the more established project (first released 2021), while Checkmate arrived in 2024. Uptime Kuma has the considerably larger community, at 91,752 GitHub stars versus 10,883.
Why pick each one
Choose Checkmate if…
- Clean modern interface
- Active development
Watch out for
- Newer project
- Feature set still growing
Choose Uptime Kuma if…
- Very easy to use
- Great notifications
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Single instance, no clustering
- Not for deep metrics
Frequently asked questions
Is Checkmate or Uptime Kuma better?
Neither is universally better. Uptime Kuma has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Checkmate and Uptime Kuma free and open-source?
Yes. Checkmate is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Uptime Kuma under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Checkmate and Uptime Kuma with Docker?
Checkmate: yes. Uptime Kuma: yes.