How to Self-Host Uptime Kuma: Website Monitoring 2026

TL;DR

Uptime Kuma (MIT, ~56K GitHub stars, Node.js) is a beautiful self-hosted uptime monitoring tool with a polished real-time dashboard. Monitor websites, APIs, TCP ports, DNS records, Docker containers, and databases. UptimeRobot's free plan limits you to 50 monitors with 5-minute intervals. Uptime Kuma is unlimited monitors at 20-second intervals, with a customizable public status page, for free.

Key Takeaways

Uptime Kuma: MIT, ~56K stars, Node.js — uptime monitoring with a gorgeous UI
Monitor types: HTTP/HTTPS, TCP port, Ping, DNS, Docker container, Push (for cron jobs)
Status pages: Public status pages — share uptime with customers or team
Alerts: 90+ notification services (Slack, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, ntfy, email)
Intervals: Down to 20 seconds (UptimeRobot free: 5 minutes)
Certificates: TLS certificate expiry monitoring with alerts

Part 1: Docker Setup

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:latest
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"
    volumes:
      - uptime_kuma_data:/app/data
      # For Docker container monitoring:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
    environment:
      TZ: America/Los_Angeles

volumes:
  uptime_kuma_data:

docker compose up -d

Visit http://your-server:3001 → create admin account.

Part 2: HTTPS with Caddy

status.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3001
}

Part 3: Monitor Types

HTTP/HTTPS (websites and APIs)

+ Add New Monitor
Monitor Type: HTTP(S)
URL: https://yourdomain.com
Heartbeat interval: 60 seconds
Retries: 3
Save

Advanced options:

Expected HTTP status: 200 (alert if not 200)
Expected keyword: "Welcome" (alert if keyword missing — useful for detecting fake 200s)
Certificate expiry notification: Alert 30 days before cert expires
Authentication: Basic auth or bearer token

TCP port monitoring

Monitor SSH, databases, mail servers:

Monitor Type: TCP Port
Hostname: your-server.com
Port: 22      ← SSH
Port: 5432    ← PostgreSQL
Port: 3306    ← MySQL
Port: 25      ← SMTP

Docker container monitoring

Checks if a Docker container is running:

Monitor Type: Docker Container
Container Name: nginx
Docker Host: /var/run/docker.sock (local)

DNS monitoring

Check that DNS resolves correctly:

Monitor Type: DNS
Hostname: yourdomain.com
Record Type: A
Resolver: 1.1.1.1

Expected value: YOUR.SERVER.IP

Push monitoring (heartbeats for cron jobs)

For scheduled tasks — Uptime Kuma alerts if the job doesn't check in:

Monitor Type: Push
Generate a Push URL → copy the URL

# In your cron job, ping the URL on success:
0 2 * * * /opt/scripts/backup.sh && \
  curl -s "https://status.yourdomain.com/api/push/UNIQUE_TOKEN?status=up&msg=OK"

Part 4: Notifications

Slack

Settings → Notification → Add notification
Type: Slack
Webhook URL: https://hooks.slack.com/services/...
Channel: #alerts
Test → save

Type: Telegram
Bot Token: 1234567890:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSs0K7MDk (from @BotFather)
Chat ID: -1001234567890 (your channel/group ID)

ntfy (self-hosted push)

Type: ntfy
Server URL: https://ntfy.yourdomain.com
Topic: uptime-alerts
Priority: High

PagerDuty (for production)

Type: PagerDuty
Integration Key: your-pagerduty-routing-key

Email (SMTP)

Type: Email (SMTP)
Host: mail.yourdomain.com
Port: 587
Security: TLS
Username: alerts@yourdomain.com
Password: your-email-password
From: alerts@yourdomain.com
To: you@yourdomain.com

Part 5: Status Pages

Create a public status page for customers or team:

Status Pages → + New Status Page
Slug: status (page at /status)
Title: YourProduct Status
Description: Real-time uptime and incident status

Add monitors to page

Status Page → Edit → + Add group
Group name: Core Services
Add monitors: website, API, database

Custom domain

status.yourproduct.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3001
}

In Uptime Kuma → Status Pages → [page] → Custom Domain: status.yourproduct.com

Incident reporting

Status Page → + Create incident
Title: API degraded performance
Content: We are investigating elevated error rates in the API.
Status: Investigating → Identified → Monitoring → Resolved

Part 6: Monitor Groups and Tags

Organize many monitors:

Groups:
├── Production
│   ├── Website (https://yourdomain.com)
│   ├── API (https://api.yourdomain.com/health)
│   └── Database port (TCP 5432)
├── Development
│   ├── Staging (https://staging.yourdomain.com)
│   └── Dev API
└── Infrastructure
    ├── VPS SSH (TCP 22)
    └── Mail server (TCP 25)

Tags for filtering: production, critical, customer-facing

Part 7: REST API

# Authenticate and get API key:
# Settings → API Keys → + Add API Key

API_KEY="your-api-key"
BASE="https://status.yourdomain.com"

# Get all monitors:
curl "$BASE/api/v1/monitor" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" | jq '.[].name'

# Get monitor status:
curl "$BASE/api/v1/monitor/1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" | jq '.heartBeatList'

# Add a monitor programmatically:
curl -X POST "$BASE/api/v1/monitor" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "type": "http",
    "name": "New API",
    "url": "https://api.yourdomain.com/health",
    "interval": 60,
    "retryInterval": 60,
    "maxretries": 3
  }'

Maintenance

# Update:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Backup:
tar -czf uptime-kuma-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz \
  $(docker volume inspect uptime-kuma_uptime_kuma_data --format '{{.Mountpoint}}')

# Logs:
docker compose logs -f uptime-kuma

# Export monitor list (JSON):
# Settings → Export Configuration → Download

Why Self-Host Uptime Kuma?

The case for self-hosting Uptime Kuma comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Uptime Kuma means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Uptime Kuma, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Uptime Kuma headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Uptime Kuma data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Uptime Kuma without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Uptime Kuma's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Uptime Kuma backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Uptime Kuma's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Uptime Kuma's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Uptime Kuma's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Uptime Kuma's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f uptime-kuma

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Uptime Kuma's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats uptime-kuma. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Uptime Kuma Updated

Uptime Kuma follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Uptime Kuma is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.