[

4.9 (70)

](https://www.capterra.com/p/190028/Oh-Dear/ "Oh Dear on Capterra") [

4.7 (31)

](https://www.g2.com/products/oh-dear/reviews "Oh Dear on G2")

# How is Oh Dear different from Prometheus?

Prometheus is open-source metrics and alerting you assemble yourself. Oh Dear takes a wider view: uptime plus SSL, DNS, full-site crawling, cron checks and Lighthouse, in one tool with one bill. Here's the honest comparison.

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- Bitmovin
- HBO Nordic
- Obsidian
- Laravel
- Fathom Analytics
- PHP 8
- Stanford University
- Takeaway.com
- IGN
- VRT NWS
- spatie

the quick verdict **Choose Oh Dear** if you want uptime, SSL/TLS, DNS, full-site crawling, cron checks and Lighthouse in one place, with unlimited users and one predictable bill.

**Choose Prometheus** if you are building a metrics-driven stack with Prometheus, Blackbox Exporter, Alertmanager and Grafana and want probes in it.

## What we have that Prometheus doesn't

### 1. Hosted, zero maintenance

We run the servers, upgrades, probes and global checking locations. There is nothing to install, patch or babysit.

### 2. All-in-one, nothing to bolt on

Uptime, SSL, DNS, full-site crawling, Lighthouse, cron and more are built in. No plugins, exporters or extra tools to assemble.

### 3. AI checks, crawl & Lighthouse

Natural-language AI checks, whole-site broken-link and mixed-content crawling, and real Lighthouse audits, none of which self-hosted monitors offer.

## Oh Dear compared with Prometheus

| | | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime monitoring? | Yes | Yes |
| Ping monitoring? | Yes | Yes |
| TCP port monitoring? | Yes | Yes |
| Performance monitoring? | Yes | Partial |
| Lighthouse audits? | Yes | No |
| Certificate health (SSL/TLS)? | Yes | Partial |
| Broken links & mixed content? | Yes | No |
| Sitemap monitoring? | Yes | No |
| DNS monitoring? | Yes | Yes |
| DNS blocklist monitoring? | Yes | No |
| Domain expiry monitoring? | Yes | No |
| Scheduled-task / cron? | Yes | Partial |
| Application health checks? | Yes | Partial |
| Port scanning? | Yes | No |
| AI-powered checks? | Yes | No |
| Notifications & integrations? | Yes | Yes |
| Status pages? | Yes | No |
| Single sign-on (SSO)? | Yes | No |
| Hosted & managed for you? | Yes | No |
| Zero setup & maintenance? | Yes | No |
| All-in-one, nothing to bolt on? | Yes | No |
| Entry price? | $17 | Free |

Sourced from each vendor's docs · June 2026

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When Prometheus is the better call

### Metrics-first observability stack

Best if you are standardising on Prometheus for metrics and alerting and will assemble Blackbox Exporter, Alertmanager and Grafana for uptime probes yourself.

## Weighing other tools?

See how Oh Dear compares across the board, or head-to-head against another monitor.

[All comparisons](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-open-source-monitoring) [vs Uptime Kuma](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-uptime-kuma) [vs Zabbix](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-zabbix) [vs Nagios](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-nagios) [vs Icinga](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-icinga) [vs Checkmk](https://ohdear.app/oh-dear-vs-checkmk)

## Frequently asked questions

### When should I choose Prometheus over Oh Dear?

Prometheus is a good choice if you want open-source software you fully control and self-host, and you have the time and ops skills to install, configure, secure and maintain it. Choose it when control and zero licensing cost outweigh the setup and upkeep.

### What does Oh Dear offer that Prometheus doesn't?

Oh Dear is fully hosted with nothing to run or maintain, and includes website-specific checks self-hosted tools lack out of the box: AI-powered checks, full-site broken-link and mixed-content crawling, sitemap monitoring, real Lighthouse audits and public status pages, all in one place.

### Isn't self-hosted monitoring free?

The software is free, but you pay in servers, setup, upgrades, security patching and the engineering time to keep it running, plus the risk that your monitoring goes down together with your own infrastructure. Oh Dear runs independently of your stack from €10/month.

[See all other FAQ items →](https://ohdear.app/docs/faq)

## Start monitoring instantly

Start a no-strings-attached 10-day free trial. You're all set in less than a minute.
(No credit card needed.)

Not convinced yet? Need help?
Get in touch via <support@ohdear.app>.
