Bionic Uptime and Better Stack: what is actually different
Better Stack, which used to be called Better Uptime, is a whole toolkit for engineering teams: uptime, logs, on-call and status pages. Bionic Uptime does one part of that. This page says plainly where we are different, and where Better Stack is the better choice.
| Feature | Better Stack | Bionic Uptime |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 10 monitors, checked every 3 minutes, 1 status page | 3 websites, checked every 60 seconds, forever, no card |
| Free alerts | Email and Slack | Email, plus one Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat channel |
| Phone and SMS alerts | Yes, with a Responder licence: $34 a month ($29 billed yearly) | No |
| More websites | Add-ons, such as 50 more monitors for $25 a month ($21 billed yearly) | Portfolio: $12 a month, 20 websites, every 60 seconds |
| Fastest checks | Every 30 seconds, on paid plans | Every 60 seconds, on every plan including free |
| Status pages | 1 on the free plan | Yes: one page per website, to share with a client, on every plan. Off until you turn it on |
| Beyond uptime | Logs and telemetry; on-call scheduling and incident management with a Responder licence | No: uptime, page content, certificates and domain expiry only |
Better Stack prices as shown on betterstack.com/pricing on 2 October 2026. The 3-minute free and 30-second paid check intervals are from Better Stack's own comparison page, updated 22 May 2026. Check there for today's.
Choose Better Stack if
- you need phone call or SMS alerts, or an on-call rota that wakes the right person (both come with their paid Responder licence),
- you want logs and uptime in one place,
- you need up to 10 monitors free and a check every 3 minutes is often enough.
Choose Bionic Uptime if
- you look after client websites and mostly need to know, reliably, when one goes down,
- you want every website checked every 60 seconds, even the free ones,
- you have more than 3 websites and want 20 of them for $12 a month, with nothing else to buy,
- you want one plain email per real outage, saying what was seen and from where (see the exact email). Two locations on two different companies' networks, plus a retry, must agree within 45 seconds before it is sent.
See it before you sign up
Watch a real website being monitored right now, no sign-up. 3 websites are free, forever, with no card.