Better Stack is what happens when you combine UptimeRobot (uptime), Logtail (logs), and PagerDuty (on-call) into one product. The question isn't whether it's good — it's whether the bundle is cheaper than the tools you're currently stitching together.
Pricing Tiers
| Free | Team ($24/mo) | Business ($84/mo) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime monitors | 10 | 20 | 40 |
| Check interval | 3 min | 30 sec | 30 sec |
| Log storage | 1 GB/month | 5 GB/month | 25 GB/month |
| Status pages | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| On-call scheduling | No | Yes | Yes (multi-team) |
| Phone call alerts | No | Yes | Yes |
| Incident management | Basic | Full | Full + SLA tracking |
| Integrations | Slack, email | + SMS, PagerDuty, webhooks | + custom |
What You Get vs What You'd Pay Separately
| Capability | Separate tools | Cost/month | Better Stack Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime monitoring | UptimeRobot Pro | $7 | Included |
| Log management | Logtail / Papertrail | $10-25 | Included (5GB) |
| On-call + alerting | PagerDuty (5 users) | $105 | Included |
| Status pages | Statuspage.io | $29 | Included |
| Total | $151-166 | $24 |
If you're using all four capabilities, Better Stack at $24/month is dramatically cheaper than buying them separately.
When Better Stack Makes Sense
- You need uptime + logs + on-call in one tool — instead of managing 3-4 separate products
- Your team is 2-10 people — the pricing sweet spot
- You want public status pages — included on all plans
- You want beautiful UI — arguably the best-looking monitoring tool on the market
When Better Stack Doesn't Make Sense
- You only need uptime checks — UptimeRobot's free tier (50 monitors) is more generous
- You need server-side API metrics — Better Stack only does external pings, no P95 latency or error rates per endpoint
- You need APM / distributed tracing — Better Stack doesn't offer APM
- Heavy log volumes (50GB+/month) — per-GB pricing gets expensive beyond 25GB
For Next.js Teams: A Different Approach
If you run Next.js and your main need is API monitoring (not just uptime), Nurbak Watch runs inside your server and monitors every API route with P50/P95/P99 latency and error rates — something Better Stack's external pings can't provide.
$29/month flat. 5 lines of code. WhatsApp/Slack/email alerts in under 10 seconds. Free during beta.
Best combo for small Next.js teams: Nurbak Watch ($29/mo) for API monitoring + Better Stack free tier for uptime + status page = $29/month total with full coverage.