Checkmate review
A broad free monitoring stack for teams comfortable running it themselves.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Checkmate is an open-source monitoring platform for teams that need self-hosted visibility across websites, APIs, network targets, containers, services, and server hardware. Its coverage includes HTTP and HTTPS endpoints, ICMP ping checks for hosts and virtual machines, TCP ports, DNS, gRPC, WebSocket, game servers, PageSpeed, SSL, and Docker containers. The Capture agent adds CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature, and S.M.A.R.T. metrics. It also includes incident management, public status pages, historical data, alerting, and REST API access, making it suited to teams that want one system for uptime and infrastructure checks.
The published Free plan costs 0 and includes self-hosted deployment, no monitor limits, all features, and an AGPL-3.0 license. There are no separate feature tiers to compare, so the product's value comes from the breadth of the single offering rather than from paid-plan upgrades. Notification options include email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, SMS, PagerDuty, and webhooks, while integrations extend to Matrix, Rocket.Chat, Pushover, ntfy, Docker, Kubernetes/Helm, and Google Lighthouse. That combination gives Checkmate a wide ecosystem fit for teams already operating these tools.
Deployment is available through Docker, Kubernetes/Helm, or source, with web, API, Linux, Windows, macOS, and self-hosted support listed. This flexibility suits teams that can manage their own monitoring environment and want control over deployment and data handling. The trade-off is operational ownership: self-hosting requires the team to handle installation, upgrades, availability, and maintenance. Checkmate is a strong fit for cost-conscious technical teams needing broad checks without monitor limits. Teams seeking a vendor-managed service, a longer-established product, or AI-assisted monitoring should consider alternatives with those priorities.
Checkmate pros and cons
- Where it wins
- No monitor limits and all features included on the Free plan
- Covers endpoints, hosts, containers, services, DNS, SSL, and hardware
- Alerts through Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, SMS, webhooks, and more
- Where it doesn't
- Self-hosted deployment puts infrastructure responsibility on your team
- No AI features are included
- Founded in 2023, it has a shorter operating history than older tools
Checkmate fact sheet, pricing and score →
Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. Bought places stand at the number bought; this page and our disclosure say so. Paying vendors may get a fuller, more detailed review from our editors, and that review can change their score. How we rank.
Last updated · How we research and update