Free tier infrastructure monitoring tools

Best if you want server metrics, logs, application performance, and alerting in one place.

New Relic free tier

2. Grafana Cloud

Best for flexible metrics, logs, and dashboards

Its permanent free tier includes 10,000 metrics series, 50 GB of logs, 50 GB of traces, and 14-day retention for the listed telemetry allowances. It also supports dashboards and alerting.grafana.com+2

Best if you like customizable dashboards and an open-source ecosystem. Setup can be more involved than an all-in-one platform.

Grafana Cloud pricing

3. Netdata

Best for quick server-level visibility

The free Community plan supports up to 5 actively connected nodes, with real-time charts and centralized alert visibility. Containers on a monitored host are included.www.netdata.cloud

Best if you want to install an agent and quickly see CPU, RAM, disk, network, and service health.

Netdata pricing

4. Zabbix

Best for lots of servers at zero licensing cost

Free, open-source, self-hosted monitoring for servers, VMs, networks, databases, and applications, with configurable event notifications.www.zabbix.com

Best if you want to monitor a larger fleet without paying per host. The trade-off is that you maintain the monitoring server yourself.

Zabbix

5. Better Stack

Best for uptime checks and straightforward alerts

Its free plan includes 10 monitors and heartbeats, one status page, Slack and email alerts, plus limited logs, traces, and metrics. The plan is designated for personal projects.betterstack.com

Best if you mainly need to know when a website, endpoint, or scheduled job stops working. It is less suitable as a complete, free, large-fleet server monitoring solution.

Better Stack pricing

Which one should you choose?

What I would monitor first

Whichever tool you choose, configure alerts for:

• CPU usage sustained above 85–90%
• Memory pressure or low available RAM
• Disk space below 10–15%
• Server unreachable or a critical service stopped
• Website/API endpoint returning errors
• SSL certificate nearing expiration
• Backup or scheduled job failures

Send critical alerts to a channel you will actually see, such as email, Slack, or a dedicated on-call system. Also test an alert deliberately so you know the notification path works.

One question to narrow it down

How many servers do you need to monitor, and where are they running?

1. Number of servers

1–5

6–20

21–100

100+

2. Environment

Cloud VPS / Linux servers

Windows servers

Kubernetes / containers

Mixed cloud and on-premises

3. Most important requirement

CPU, RAM, disk, and server-down alerts

Logs and application errors

Website/API uptime

Full observability: metrics, logs, and traces

[Find the best fit]