What Is Better Stack? Free Plan, Pricing, Uptime Monitoring, Status Pages, Logs and MCP

You enter your site's or API's address in Better Stack; it checks it regularly from the outside and, when it goes down, alerts you by phone, SMS, email or Slack. It also offers a status page you can show customers, plus log and error collection. There's a Free plan, but the pricing page labels it “for personal projects”: 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page, Slack and email alerts. Phone and SMS alerts are in the paid Responder license ($29 per license per month, billed yearly). A Turkish interface is not stated in the official documentation.

What it does: Monitors your site, alerts you when it goes down
Phone and SMS: Not on the Free plan
Turkish interface: Not stated in the official documentation
Data location: EU by default
Where: Web (browser)
Free plan: Yes: 10 monitors, 1 status page
Price: Responder $29/month (billed yearly)

What Is Better Stack Used For? How Does Uptime Monitoring Work?

Better Stack checks your site or API regularly from the outside, like a real visitor. If the address doesn't return the expected response (per the docs, a successful 2XX HTTP code), it opens an incident and alerts you. This is called uptime monitoring; each check is called a monitor. You don't need to write code to monitor: you enter the address and save.

Getting alerts when your site goes downWhat you get: Incident record, alert and error screenshot when it goes downBuilt into the app Publishing a status pageWhat you get: A live status page, email subscriptionsBuilt into the app Managing monitors with ClaudeWhat you get: Querying and managing through chatNeeds a connection

The same account also has heartbeats for monitoring scheduled jobs (you ping an address at the end of the job; if the ping doesn't arrive, the alarm goes off), logs, application errors and session recordings. Error tracking is described as compatible with Sentry SDKs. The log and error side needs setup; you need someone to add software.

Who it's for: businesses that want to know right away when their site goes down, e-commerce sites and agencies. If you monitor client sites, you must own the site or have written authorization (see the Data and terms section).

Source: Better Stack product pages and docs (uptime, monitoring-start, FAQ); October 15, 2026.

How Do You Set Up Better Stack? Your First Monitor and Logs

Create an account. Sign up at betterstack.com. Whether a card or phone number is required at sign-up is not stated in the official documentation.
Create a monitor. On the Monitors page, click Create monitor and enter the address to monitor (URL or IP).
Choose the alert method. Options in the docs: Call (phone, fully automated), SMS, email, push notifications, and Critical alerts that bypass Do Not Disturb. Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations are separate.
Save. Once you save with Create monitor, the monitor starts checking right away.

To keep incoming alerts out of spam, the docs recommend allowlisting the @betterstack.com domain and saving Better Stack's calling numbers in your phone.

On the Sources page, click Connect source and choose the source type (for example Node.js, Docker, Nginx).
Copy the Source token from the source's Configure page.
Send your first log message with the test command below and see it in Live tail.

Test log (example from the docs)

› curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOURCE_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"dt":"'"$(date -u +'%Y-%m-%d %T UTC')"'","message":"Hello from Better Stack!"}' \
  "https://$INGESTING_HOST"

You get the $SOURCE_TOKEN and $INGESTING_HOST values from the source's page. The docs have separate setup guides for Node.js, Python, Ruby, Nginx, Apache, Ubuntu, Docker and Kubernetes.

The terms prohibit monitoring sites you don't own or aren't authorized for. If you'll monitor a client's site from your own account, get authorization in writing.

How Do You Use Better Stack? Status Pages and a Ready-Made Example

A status page lets customers see whether the site is really down without having to message you. Set up the monitors first, then create the page.

Create the page. On the Status pages page, click Create status page.
Choose the subdomain. Enter your company name; for the address, you choose a name under *.betteruptime.com or your own subdomain (for example status.yoursite.com). For your own subdomain, you add a single CNAME record in DNS.
Customize and save. Add your logo and website address, and publish with Save changes.
Choose what's shown. On the Structure tab, add monitors and heartbeats to sections, drag to reorder them and change their public names.

The monitor checksThe address is queried regularly.

An incident opensYou're alerted by phone, SMS, email or Slack.

The status page updatesCustomers can subscribe by email.

Ask Claude (if MCP is connected)"List the monitors in Better Stack that are currently down, summarize the incidents opened in the last 24 hours and write a short note for each."First connect Claude to Better Stack (MCP section). Claude can make these tool calls; write operations such as acknowledging and resolving incidents also go through the same connection, so check the result yourself.

Monitor your scheduled job (heartbeat)

A heartbeat waits for a scheduled job, such as a backup, to ping Better Stack when it finishes. If the ping doesn't arrive, an incident opens. Heartbeats are on the Free plan too (the product page says 10); 10 extra heartbeats cost $17–20 a month. For details, see the Heartbeats section of the docs.

How Do You Connect Better Stack to Claude? The MCP Server

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to external tools. Better Stack's remote server is at mcp.betterstack.com. Once connected, you can ask the assistant about monitors, incidents, the on-call schedule, logs and errors.

With the plugin (recommended)

› /plugin marketplace add BetterStackHQ/claude-plugin
/plugin install betterstack@betterstack

Or directly as MCP› claude mcp add --transport http betterstack https://mcp.betterstack.com

Then choose Better Stack from the /mcp command and sign in from the browser (OAuth). If the tools don't appear, start a new session.

MCP client config (OAuth)

› {
  "mcpServers": {
    "betterstack": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.betterstack.com"
    }
  }
}

For clients that don't support OAuth, you provide an API token with the Authorization: Bearer header. You get the token from the API tokens page in your Better Stack account. For clients that don't support remote servers, the docs point to the mcp-remote bridge. The docs also have an install link for Cursor.

What it can access

According to the docs, the tools both read and write: creating, acknowledging and resolving incidents, creating monitors and heartbeats, updating status pages, deleting dashboards and charts.

Making it read-only

In the MCP config, you can allow only the tools you choose with the X-MCP-Tools-Only header (for example monitors,incidents), or turn some off with X-MCP-Tools-Except.

On a free account

The docs don't distinguish plans for MCP; the pricing page lists MCP among the log and error features. Whether it's available on a free account is unclear.

If you give the assistant write access, a misunderstood command could close a real incident or delete a dashboard. Start with read-only tools.

Is Better Stack Free? Plans and Pricing

Free$0

10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page
Slack and email alerts
100,000 errors and 5,000 session recordings a month
3 GB of logs and traces (3-day retention)
Phone call and SMS alerts

Responder$29 /month per license (billed yearly)

Unlimited phone calls and SMS
Incident management and on-call scheduling
Unlimited team members
$34 billed monthly

Log bundle (Nano)$25 /month (yearly, Germany region)

40 GB of logs, 40 GB of traces, 40 GB of metrics
30-day log retention
$30 billed monthly

The pricing page has a Monthly/Yearly toggle and a data region toggle (Germany, US, Singapore); the figures change with both, and Germany is the cheapest. For yearly billing it says “about 2 months free.” Prices are in dollars; there's no lira pricing. Under the terms of use, fees exclude tax and payment is due within 15 days of the invoice date. The pricing page mentions a 60-day money-back guarantee but doesn't state its conditions.

Add-on prices (yearly / monthly billing)

Item	Billed yearly	Billed monthly
50 extra monitors	$21	$25
10 extra heartbeats	$17	$20
Extra status page	$12	$15
1,000 extra status page subscribers	$40	$40
Removing “Powered by Better Stack” from the status page (per page)	$208	$250
Password protection for the status page (per page)	$42	$50

All per month. Source: betterstack.com/pricing, October 15, 2026. Prices may vary by account and region.

The pricing page labels the Free plan “for personal projects.” The terms don't say separately whether monitoring a company site on the Free plan is allowed; if you're not sure, ask at hello@betterstack.com.

AI SRE (incident investigation assistant)

A paid add-on that investigates incidents inside Slack by scanning logs, metrics and errors. Its price is usage-based and shown in the app; the pricing page gives no figure.

Official pricing page last checked on October 28, 2026.

Better Stack Data, Terms of Use and Turkish Support

Data location

Security page: data is stored in EU regions by default, in ISO 27001-certified data centers. The pricing form offers America, Europe and Singapore; custom locations are for enterprise accounts.

Security

SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (report on request), GDPR compliant, data encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with TLS. Not HIPAA compliant. Payments are handled by Stripe.

Not allowed: other people's sites

Not allowed: sensitive data

The terms prohibit collecting, storing or transmitting special-category personal data and similar protected information through the service. Don't write data such as health or ID information to your logs.

Personal data and deletion

The privacy policy is published by Better Stack, Inc., based in the US; it says data may be transferred outside the EEA and that deletion requests are accepted unless there's a legitimate reason not to. The text is dated November 25, 2022. There's no statement specific to KVKK (Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law).

Age limit

The terms say the site is open to people aged 13 and over; the privacy policy says it doesn't knowingly collect information from people under 18. The two conflict.

Turkish interfaceUnclear	The docs and pricing are in English; a Turkish interface isn't mentioned.
Phone calls, TurkeyYes	Turkey is on the list of countries supported for phone calls.
SMS, TurkeyUnclear	There's no country list for SMS.
Status page translationBeta	The product page says it “can be translated into any language”; the pricing page lists multi-language support as beta. Turkish isn't specifically mentioned.
Lira pricingNo	Prices are in dollars; there's no official Turkish page.

Model training: whether data sent to the AI add-on (AI SRE) is used for model training is not stated in the official documentation.

How Do You Cancel a Better Stack Subscription? Refunds

The cancellation steps are not stated in the official documentation. The terms of use say that stopping use of the service is enough to terminate your account. The docs don't explain how to stop payment on a paid subscription; you can write to hello@betterstack.com.

The pricing page mentions a 60-day money-back guarantee. It doesn't say which payments it applies to or how to claim it.

Frequently asked questions

What is Better Stack and what is it for?

A web platform that regularly checks from the outside that your site or API is up and alerts you by phone, SMS, email or Slack when it goes down. It also offers status pages and log and error collection.

Is Better Stack free?

There's a Free plan: 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page, Slack and email alerts, 3 GB of logs. The pricing page labels this plan “for personal projects.” Phone and SMS alerts aren't on the Free plan.

How much does Better Stack cost?

The Responder license is $29 per license per month (billed yearly), or $34 billed monthly. 50 extra monitors cost $21–25, and an extra status page $12–15. Prices are in dollars.

Does Better Stack make phone calls, and does it work in Turkey?

Turkey is on the list of countries supported for phone calls; phone and SMS alerts are in the paid Responder license. There's no country list for SMS.

Can I monitor someone else's site?

No. The terms of use prohibit monitoring sites and systems you don't own or aren't authorized for.

Can I connect Better Stack to Claude?

Yes. The docs cover a plugin for Claude Code, the Customize, Plugins, Discover path in the Claude app, and the remote MCP server. The server can also perform write operations such as closing incidents.

Related guides

Sources

Not clear in the official sources: Whether the Free plan can be used for company sites (the pricing page says “personal projects”) · MCP on a free account · whether a custom subdomain works on the Free plan · Turkish interface and Turkish replies · lira pricing · the SMS country list · AI SRE pricing and whether data is used for model training · cancellation steps and the conditions of the refund guarantee · card and phone requirements at sign-up · price comparisons with other tools (no official facts, not included). Each one is covered in its section, along with what you can do.