Best offer on record: Uptime Kuma software itself: free MIT license, unlimited monitors & status pages (self-hosted). 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Uptime Kuma software itself: free MIT license, unlimited monitors & status pages (self-hosted) high confidence
Uptime Kuma is free open-source (MIT) self-hosted monitoring: $0 license, no tiers, no vendor, no monitor caps. Unlimited monitors, multiple public status pages, ~20-second check intervals, 90+ notification channels (Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, webhooks, Pushover, Apprise), 2FA, SSL certificate expiry alerts. Free identically for students, startups, and enterprises. The only cost is hosting: a small VPS (~$5-20/mo per third-party pricing pages) or $0 on an existing always-on box. No .edu email needed, no region limits, no credit card. Funding of the project itself is via GitHub Sponsors/Open Collective (noted special sponsor Atlas Cloud, USD 400/month) - this is optional support, not a purchase requirement. Verified on the official repo today: the page mentions no pricing page, no commercial tier, no cloud service, no education or startup program.
Eligibility
Universal - any person or company, including students and startups; no .edu email, no age/funding cap, no region restriction, credit card NOT required (nothing to purchase).
How to claim
No claim step: git clone / download, run the Docker image louislam/uptime-kuma (or bare-metal Node.js >= 20.4 with PM2) on any server; no sign-up, no account, no credit card. A full install via Docker Compose takes ~5-15 minutes. Optional community plugins via the built-in plugin marketplace.
Expiry
Perpetual; MIT license grants rights without time limit. No renewal, no trial countdown. Note v2.0.0 (released 2025-10-20) was a major breaking upgrade (rootless Docker images, removed legacy JSON backup/restore, LiquidJS templating) - existing instances must migrate; the software remains free.
Gotchas
Trial-vs-free: there is no trial - the entire product is permanently free; the paid components are third-party hosting/support, never the software. Data/egress: you pay your VPS host, and misconfigured shared cloud (e.g. Oracle Cloud always-free idle policy, which took down the maintainer's own instance in 2023) can silently stop the monitor. Operational cost: TLS, backups, upgrades, and security are on you; a single self-hosted instance monitors from one location and cannot monitor its own host. NFS filesystems are not supported. The public demo at demo.kuma.pet is temporary (data wiped every 10 minutes) and is not a hosted offering.
Third-party managed-hosting free tiers/trials for Uptime Kuma (not student/startup programs) medium confidence
No Uptime Kuma first-party hosting exists, so any 'hosted free Uptime Kuma' comes from third-party PaaS/VPS vendors offering generic free tiers or short trials: Elestio (managed, $20 in trial credits valid 3 days, then hourly credit billing, free level-1 support), Stellar Hosted (14-day free trial; paid plans EUR 49-199+/mo in Amsterdam EU), DANIAN (7-day free trial, no credit card, from EUR 9/mo, 21 regions), Enzonic (free 'Wood-adjacent' tier: 812 MB RAM, 100% CPU, 10 GB NVMe, no credit card, always-on, subject to availability). Kuma Engine (kumaengine.com, third-party LLC, terms updated 2025-07-01) offers fully-managed Uptime Kuma at US$4/mo or US$24/yr with 5 GB block storage, 5 GB monthly transfer, and 5,000 SMTP email notifications - NO free tier. None of these target students or startups with special eligibility.
Eligibility
Generic end users; none require .edu email, startup age, or a funding cap. Age 18+ per Kuma Engine ToS. No region limits on Elestio/DANIAN; Stellar is EU (Amsterdam). Credit card NOT required on Enzonic free tier, DANIAN trial, and Elestio trial; Kuma Engine requires prepaid payment.
How to claim
Generic (not student/startup-specific) trials: sign up at the host, deploy the Uptime Kuma instance from its catalog. E.g. Elestio: create instance, use $20 trial credits over 3 days (then pay hourly credits; level-1 support free). Stellar Hosted: 14-day free trial on the 100%-money-back-guarantee plans. DANIAN: 7-day free trial, no credit card, then from EUR 9/mo. Enzonic: permanent free tier (812 MB RAM / 100% CPU / 10 GB SSD, no card) that runs Uptime Kuma always-on, subject to availability - the closest thing to a $0 hosted path.
These are hosting offers, not Uptime Kuma offers - terms change with the host, not the project. Enzonic's free tier is capped at ~812 MB RAM and can be reclaimed; Elestio credits expire after 3 days and you keep paying hourly after; Kuma Engine's 5,000 SMTP email cap and 5 GB egress can throttle heavy alerting. Do not confuse the temporary public demo (kuma.pet) with a free hosted instance. All third-party plans disclaim SLA unless explicitly stated.
MIT-licensed Uptime Kuma software, free for anyone (no student or startup program) high confidence
Uptime Kuma is released under the MIT License (GitHub LICENSE: Copyright (c) 2021 Louis Lam). Downloading, using, modifying and self-hosting it cost $0 (Doolpa review, Pricing Starts At $0) and GBP 0 (uptimekuma.io licence line). The license imposes no paid tier, feature gating or monitor-count cap, and no monitor-count cap appears in the official sources read. Official Docker image: louislam/uptime-kuma:2. Minimum check interval: 20 seconds (README feature list; Doolpa review). Non-Docker install needs Node.js >= 20.4 and Git; pm2 is recommended for background running. Platforms per README: major Linux distros and Windows 10 x64 / Windows Server 2012 R2 or higher. README lists FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Replit and Heroku as unsupported, and NFS storage as unsupported.
Eligibility
Anyone. Checked for gates: no .edu or school email requirement, no startup age or funding cap, no credit card, and no region limits, because the MIT license and the official README contain none of these. It is not a student- or startup-specific program, so there is nothing to apply for.
How to claim
No sign-up or claim step. Get the software from https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma and run it on your own server. Docker: docker run -d --restart=always -p 3001:3001 -v uptime-kuma:/app/data --name uptime-kuma louislam/uptime-kuma:2, or curl the repo compose.yaml and run docker compose up -d. Non-Docker: git clone the repo, run npm run setup, then node server/server.js or pm2 start server/server.js --name uptime-kuma.
Expiry
None. MIT has no expiry or renewal and applies to every copy of the software with no time limit.
Gotchas
(1) uptimekuma.io is NOT the project author's site. Its footer and licensing page name SMARTX TECHNOLOGIES Ltd (London), which sells paid managed hosting. The homepage shows a plan reported at 4.2 PLN per month (figure as summarized by the fetch tool, not independently checked). The homepage's free subdomain (uptimekuma.eu), free SSL and daily backups are bundled into that paid plan and are not a standalone free tier. Its 'unlimited monitored services' wording describes the paid plan, not the software. (2) uptimekuma.co is an unofficial fan site that disclaims affiliation with the author. GitHub metadata lists uptime.kuma.pet as the homepage; per the README it is a temporary demo server whose data is deleted after 10 minutes. It returned HTTP 403 to WebFetch. A demo is not an account, trial or credit. (3) Free means the software is free, not the hosting: you pay for the server, backups, updates and admin time. The uptimekuma.io March 2026 marketing article estimates GBP 5 per month for a small UK VPS and GBP 60 to 120 over 12 months for a self-hosted server. That is a vendor estimate, not an offer. (4) Because README lists Replit and Heroku as unsupported, those free app platforms cannot host it.
As of 2026-10-22, Uptime Kuma has no student-specific, education, or startup offers, and never has - it is MIT-licensed software with a $0 license for everyone, so no vendor cap, trial, or discount program exists to sunset. 2025-2026 changes: (1) v2.0.0 shipped 2025-10-20 as the project's biggest release - breaking changes (rootless Docker images, LiquidJS SMTP templates replacing regex-based ones, removed legacy JSON backup/restore, UI refresh); the 2.3.x line (through v2.3.2, 2026-05-03) added OracleDB monitor support and SQLite-locking fixes, and 2.5.x extends push-interval limits beyond ~24 days - still all free. (2) No first-party cloud/managed service launched; 'Uptime Kuma hosting' listings are third parties (Kuma Engine LLC since at least 2025 at $4/mo per-instance with no free tier; Stellar Hosted, DANIAN, Elestio, Enzonic, ElfHosted, DreamHost pre-installed VPS). (3) Project funding remains volunteer-based: GitHub Sponsors / Open Collective, with Atlas Cloud as a noted special sponsor (USD 400/month). (4) No free-hosting sunset in 2025-2026 detected; the oldest known host-side gotcha is Oracle Cloud's always-free idle-instance policy (2023), which still affects Kuma self-hosters on that tier. The official site (uptime.kuma.pet) blocks automated fetchers (403), so pricing/program verification relies on the GitHub repo plus third-party pages. Confidence: high on absence of official offers (read the official repo today); medium on third-party trial details (from host pages, not tested).