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How to Set Up Uptime Kuma on a VPS (2026)

Published May 4, 2026 · 5 min read · Galaxy Cloud Solutions

Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted monitoring tool that tells you when your websites, APIs, or servers go down. It is the kind of thing you used to pay $20 to $50 a month for. Running it on a $5 VPS costs nothing extra and gives you unlimited monitors, a clean status page you can share publicly, and alerts via email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, and a dozen other channels.

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What You Need

• Any VPS running Ubuntu 24.04 (512MB RAM is enough)
• Docker installed

Step 1: Install Docker

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | bash
sudo systemctl enable --now docker

Step 2: Run Uptime Kuma

docker run -d   --name uptime-kuma   --restart unless-stopped   -p 3001:3001   -v uptime-kuma:/app/data   louislam/uptime-kuma:1

Step 3: Access the Dashboard

Open http://your-vps-ip:3001 in your browser. The first time you visit, Uptime Kuma asks you to create an admin account. Do that and you are in.

Step 4: Put It Behind Nginx With SSL (Optional but Recommended)

If you want a clean URL like status.yourdomain.com:

sudo apt install -y nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/uptime-kuma << 'EOF'
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name status.yourdomain.com;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3001;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }
}
EOF
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/uptime-kuma /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d status.yourdomain.com

Adding Monitors

Click Add New Monitor and choose what you want to watch:

• HTTP/HTTPS — checks if a URL returns a 200 status
• TCP Port — checks if a port is open (useful for game servers)
• Ping — checks if a host is reachable
• DNS — checks if a domain resolves correctly
• Docker Container — checks if a container is running

Setting Up Notifications

Go to Settings → Notifications and add your preferred alert channel. Discord and email are the easiest to set up. Once configured, every monitor can send alerts to one or more channels when something goes down or recovers.

The Public Status Page

Uptime Kuma includes a built-in status page you can share with customers or your team. Go to Status Page, create a new page, and add the monitors you want to display publicly. Point a subdomain at it and you have a professional status page for free.