Set Up Uptime Kuma at Home: Step by Step

Uptime Kuma watches your other self-hosted services and tells you the moment one goes down, or becomes reachable when it should not be. This sets up a basic instance and its first monitor in around ten minutes.

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CE: Secure Configuration⏱ 10 minutes

A computer screen showing a monitoring dashboard

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What you will need

Docker installed on a spare PC, Raspberry Pi, or a VM
About 10 minutes
At least one other self-hosted service already running to monitor

Run the container

Start Uptime Kuma with a persistent volume so its data survives a restart:

docker run -d --name uptime-kuma --restart unless-stopped -p 3001:3001 -v uptime-kuma-data:/app/data louislam/uptime-kuma:2

Note: Version 2 is the current recommended tag. Avoid the "latest" tag, it is deprecated and makes it harder to know what you are actually running.

Open the dashboard and create your admin account

Visit the web interface in a browser:

http://<your-server-ip>:3001

Note: The first thing it asks for is your admin username and password. Use a strong, unique one, this dashboard will end up knowing about everything else you run.

Add your first monitor

Click "Add New Monitor". Choose the monitor type (HTTP(s), TCP port, ping, and others are supported), give it a name, and point it at one of your existing services.

Note: Start with something simple, like your router or Pi-hole’s web interface, to confirm it is working before adding everything else.

Set up a notification

Under Settings > Notifications, add a way to be alerted, email and several chat platforms are supported. Test it before relying on it.

Note: An uptime monitor that only alerts inside a dashboard nobody is looking at defeats the point, connect it to something you actually check.

What you will have at the end

A working monitoring dashboard that checks your other services on a schedule and alerts you the moment one changes state.

What to monitor first

A handful of checks cover most of the genuinely useful ground for a home lab.

Anything you have deliberately made reachable from outside your network, so you know immediately if it goes down
Anything that should never be reachable from outside your network, an unexpected "up" result there is worth investigating straight away
Core infrastructure like Pi-hole or your router, since losing these affects everything else

3 steps

Frequently asked questions

Does Uptime Kuma need much in the way of hardware?

No, it runs comfortably on a Raspberry Pi or similarly modest hardware, even monitoring a dozen or more services.

Can it monitor things outside my home network too?

Yes, it can check any reachable HTTP address, TCP port, or ping target, inside or outside your network.

What happens if the Uptime Kuma server itself goes down?

It cannot alert on its own downtime. Some people run a second, separate instance elsewhere to monitor the first, though for most home setups this is optional.

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