How to monitor a website for free.
You can watch a website for downtime, with alerts and a real check history, without creating an account or paying anything. Here's how, in about two minutes — and how to turn it up to fast checks when you need them.
The short version
Open the builder, choose an HTTP check, enter your URL, and keep to the free floors — up to 3 monitors at a 5 minutes interval. That's a genuine, free, running monitor with no sign-up and no payment.
Step 1 — Open the builder (no sign-up)
There is no registration form. When you open the monitor builder, an opaque access key is minted for you — that key is your account. Bookmark the page, or add a recovery email later for a magic link back in.
Step 2 — Point it at your website
Pick the HTTP / HTTPS check and enter the URL you want watched (one you own or are authorized to monitor). Optionally set the status code you expect and a word the page must contain, so a site that returns 200 while rendering an error is still caught. See website & API monitoring for the detail.
Step 3 — Stay inside the free tier
Keep the interval at 5 minutes or slower and stay within 3 monitors, and the live readout shows Free — no payment step at all. Scheduling controls (a UTC active window and a day mask) are available on the free tier too, since they only reduce checks.
Step 4 — Get alerted, keep the proof
PingDog probes on your schedule and shows a live check count, uptime percentage and latency trend — never an empty screen — and alerts you the moment a check fails. The delivered-check count is a verifiable record you can check against our public key.
When free isn't enough
Need checks every few seconds, or more than a handful of targets? Drag the interval faster or add targets and a price appears right on the slider — you then pay once, $0.0005 per delivered check in USDC, for exactly that. Nothing renews. See pricing for worked examples.