Lampwick vs Laravel Nightwatch

We make Lampwick. Here's where each tool is the better pick.

For Laravel application monitoring alone, Nightwatch is cheaper and keeps data longer. Pick Lampwick if you also want uptime, certificate, domain, DNS and cron checks, status pages and a link crawler on the same bill, from an EU company.

Last reviewed 8 Nov 2026. Competitor facts come from the vendor's own pages, linked in the footnotes.

Same instrumentation, different backend

Lampwick's Laravel package requires laravel/nightwatch (^1.24, MIT-licensed) and uses its instrumentation inside your app.¹ Our own ingest daemon (php artisan lampwick:agent) then sends the records to Lampwick instead (Laravel docs). So both capture the same data; what differs is everything after that. When Laravel changes its package, we follow.

At a glance

What does a typical app cost?

The sample: 2 Laravel apps, 3M events a month in total, 5 people, 10 uptime monitors with SSL checks.

• Lampwick Pro, €29: 5M events, 5 projects, unlimited seats, 20 monitors every minute, 14 days of history.
• Nightwatch Pro, $20: 7.5M events, unlimited apps and seats, 30 days of history.² The 10 monitors need a second tool: Better Stack's free tier (for personal projects)⁷ or Oh Dear Freelance at $55.⁸ Total: $20 to $75.

Prices exclude VAT; we don't convert currencies.

Topic by topic

Events and retention per dollar: Nightwatch wins

At every tier Nightwatch includes more events and keeps them longer.

Application monitoring: tie, Nightwatch ahead on collaboration

Both group exceptions into issues and show routes with p95 and a timeline per request or job. Nightwatch adds issue assignment and comments, per-route performance thresholds and a Linear integration.⁹ Lampwick adds activity and errors per signed-in user, and logs tied to the request or job that wrote them.

Uptime, SSL, domain and DNS: Lampwick wins

Lampwick alerts 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before a certificate expires, looks up the domain daily over RDAP and checks NS and MX records hourly. Nightwatch's docs have no pages on any of this.⁴

Cron and scheduled tasks: Lampwick wins

Lampwick works out each task's schedule from its runs and alerts when a task is missed, starts failing or runs too long, with one project alert when the whole scheduler stops. Nightwatch's scheduled-task page shows next run and execution times; we found no missed-run alert.⁵

Status pages and link crawling: Lampwick wins

Lampwick has public status pages with incident and maintenance notices, and a daily crawl for broken links and mixed content on up to 250 pages. Nightwatch's docs cover neither.⁴

Alerts: Lampwick wins

Nightwatch sends issue updates to Slack and webhooks, and issues to Linear.¹⁰ Lampwick sends every alert and every new or reopened issue by iOS push, and alerts (not issues) by email, with no setup. Once a team owner adds an alert channel, both also go to Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams or a signed webhook. Nightwatch still has Linear, which Lampwick doesn't.

MCP: Lampwick wins

Both MCP servers sign in with OAuth. Nightwatch's lets an agent browse issues and stack traces, change their status and comment.⁶ Lampwick's MCP server also covers requests, jobs, logs and monitors, and you choose read-only or read & write when you connect. Its agent can change an issue's status too, but Lampwick's issues have no comments.

Data location: depends on what you need

Both can keep your data in the EU.² The difference is the company: Laravel Holdings Inc. is based in New York, with terms under New York law.³ Lampwick is an EU company, and the services that see your data (Hetzner, Lettermint) are EU companies.

Beyond Laravel: Lampwick, narrowly

Nightwatch is for Laravel only.² Any app can send records to Lampwick's HTTP ingest, but without a package for other frameworks you build the records yourself.

When to pick Nightwatch instead

• You want the most events and the longest history for your money.
• You want the first-party tool from the Laravel team.
• Your issues must land in Linear.
• You already have uptime and certificate checks you're happy with.

Weighing more than these two? See the Nightwatch alternatives.

Start free, or read how to connect a Laravel app.