Create a monitor

#Before you start

A monitor checks one target on a schedule and records the result as up, slow, or down. You need an UpCheck account and a project; every monitor lives inside a project.

Free plan limits

The free plan includes 5 monitors checked every 5 minutes. Pro raises this to 30 monitors on a 1 minute interval.

#Create from the dashboard

Open your project and choose New monitor. The form asks for a name, a target, and a check interval; everything else has a sensible default.

#Choose a check type

Type	What it checks
HTTP	Requests a URL and judges the response status.
Keyword	Requests a URL and looks for text in the response body.
API	Requests a URL and validates JSON fields in the response.
Heartbeat	Waits for your job to check in; goes down when it goes quiet.
Scheduler	Calls your URL on a schedule to trigger it, with alerting.
Port	Opens a TCP connection to a host and port.
DNS	Resolves a host and optionally compares the record value.

Each type is covered in depth in Check types. The API, DNS, and Scheduler types require a paid plan; HTTP, Keyword, Heartbeat, and Port are free.

#Configure the request

HTTP family monitors default to a HEAD request and switch to GET automatically when content rules are set. You can add:

Up to 4 request headers, for example an Authorization header for a protected endpoint.
A request body for write methods (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE). The body is sent with every scheduled check, so point it at test data, never at real customer writes.
Up to 4 content rules: text that must appear, text that must be absent, or a JSON field check.

What needs a paid plan here

SSL certificate and domain expiry monitoring, and JSON field rules, require a paid plan. Everything else is free: custom timeouts, slow thresholds, expected status codes, redirect following, auth headers, request bodies, and text content rules.

#Interval and thresholds

The interval is how often the check runs. Your plan sets the floor: 5 minutes on free, 1 minute on Pro. Two thresholds decide when status flips:

fail_threshold: consecutive failed checks before the monitor turns down and alerts fire.
recover_threshold: consecutive passing checks before it turns up again.

#After you create it

The first check runs right away, so the monitor shows a real status within seconds. From the monitor page you can watch latency, uptime, and the event timeline, pause the monitor, or edit any field from the settings sheet.

#Other ways to create monitors

Everything the form does is also available programmatically: the REST API accepts the same fields, and the MCP server lets an AI agent register monitors for you from a plain request like "monitor my site".