Free plan guide
Everything included for free, current limits, and what Pro unlocks.
#What free includes
The free plan is a real monitoring setup, not a trial. Without paying anything you get:
- 5 monitors checked every 5 minutes, with alerting when they go down.
- Push notifications on the UpCheck apps, and Slack, Discord, Telegram, and webhook channels.
- HTTP, keyword, heartbeat, and port check types.
- Authenticated checks: request headers, request bodies for write methods, and up to 4 text content rules per monitor.
- Response tuning: custom timeouts, slow thresholds, expected status codes, and redirect following.
- 1 active maintenance window per project.
- Full REST API and MCP access with project API keys.
#Limits at a glance
| Free | Pro | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monitors | 5 | 30 | 50 |
| Projects | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Check interval | 5 min | 1 min | 1 min |
| Active maintenance windows | 1 per project | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Team seats | Just you | Just you | Owner + 4 per project |
| Advanced check types (API, DNS, Scheduler) | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSL and domain expiry monitoring | No | Yes | Yes |
| Metric history | 7 days | 30 days | 90 days |
| Public status page | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom status page domain | No | Yes | Yes |
| Incidents | No | Yes | Yes |
| Email alert channels | No | Yes | Yes |
#What upgrading unlocks
Pro and Team raise the caps above and unlock the advanced monitoring features:
- 1 minute check intervals for faster detection.
- SSL certificate checks and domain expiry warnings.
- The API, DNS, and Scheduler check types, plus JSON field rules.
- 30 or 90 days of metric history instead of 7.
- Public status pages, plus incidents to post updates while you fix things.
- Your own domain on the status page.
- Email alert channels.
- Team adds shared projects with invited members and roles.
See pricing for current prices.
#Making the most of free
- Point one monitor at your most important user-facing URL and use a content rule to verify the page actually rendered, not just that it returned 200.
- A heartbeat monitor costs nothing on your side: have a cron job curl its ping URL and you will know when the job silently stops.
- Monitors are account-wide and free gives you one project, so spend all 5 on distinct services rather than doubling up on one.
- Automate with the free API and MCP access instead of clicking through the dashboard.