Lampwick vs Oh Dear

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

Oh Dear watches websites from outside. Lampwick does most of the same checks, but starts from inside your app: exceptions, requests, queries, jobs and logs. For site checks across many client sites, pick Oh Dear. For your own app's errors and uptime in one place, pick Lampwick.

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

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 with SSL, domain and DNS checks.
• Oh Dear Freelance, $55: 10 sites, unlimited users, every check type.¹ For exceptions and requests add application monitoring, such as Nightwatch Pro at $20.¹⁰ Total: $75.

For site checks alone, compare €29 with $55. Prices exclude VAT; we don't convert currencies.

Topic by topic

Uptime: Oh Dear wins

Oh Dear checks every minute from a location you choose and confirms a failure from a second one, out of 16.⁴ Lampwick checks from one place. Oh Dear also has ping and TCP checks; Lampwick checks URLs only.

SSL, domain and DNS: tie

Both check certificate expiry, domain expiry and DNS changes.¹ Oh Dear checks more often by default: certificates every 30 minutes, DNS every 2 hours, domains every 4 hours.⁶ Lampwick reads certificates every 6 to 12 hours, NS and MX records hourly and domains daily over RDAP.

Cron: depends on how you run it

Oh Dear gives each task a ping URL, so it works for any cron job on any server; spatie/laravel-schedule-monitor syncs a Laravel schedule. It includes 5 tasks per monitor.⁵ Lampwick needs no ping URLs: it works out each task's cron from the runs your app reports, up to 500 per project, but can't see tasks outside your app.

Broken links: tie

Both crawl daily for broken links and mixed content.⁶ Lampwick stops at 250 pages per crawl.

Status pages: Oh Dear wins

Oh Dear includes unlimited status pages on your own domain, and can post incident updates automatically.⁷ Lampwick has up to 10 per team at app.lampwick.dev/status/<slug>, with notices you write yourself.

Inside your app: Lampwick wins

Oh Dear tells you a site is down or slow. Lampwick also shows why: the exception, the slow route or query, the failed job and the log lines.

Alerts: Oh Dear wins

Oh Dear sends email and 11 other channels, including Slack, Teams, SMS, PagerDuty and webhooks.⁸ Lampwick sends iOS push, email, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams and signed webhooks (alert channels), but no SMS or PagerDuty.

MCP: tie

Oh Dear's MCP server uses OAuth 2.1, reads monitors and their check results and, with write access, manages monitors, status pages and maintenance windows.⁹ Lampwick's MCP server also signs in with OAuth 2.1, or takes a personal token, and adds your app's issues, requests and logs.

When to pick Oh Dear instead

• You look after many client sites and need site checks, not app monitoring.
• You want checks from several locations, or ping, TCP, performance and Lighthouse checks.
• You need status pages on your own domain.
• Alerts must reach PagerDuty or SMS.
• Your cron jobs run outside your app.

Start free. Also see Lampwick vs Nightwatch and the Nightwatch alternatives.