Pharos / status engine / v1.0 / AGPL-3.0
Every status page you know waits for a human to notice. Pharos runs the checks itself — HTTP, TCP and heartbeat — opens the incident when something fails and closes it when it recovers. On your hosting, including the shared cPanel account you already pay for.
Components
Incidents
No open incidents.
Automatic check failed twice: no response on HTTP.
Delivered to n8n · 200
Responded normally for three consecutive checks.
38 min · opened and closed by a check · nobody typed this
A check fails twice, the component goes red, an incident opens with the probe error in it. The target comes back, three healthy checks later the incident closes itself and posts the closing update. Nobody logged in.
Only things that can be checked. Where Cachet 3.x publishes nothing, this says so rather than guessing.
| Pharos | Cachet 2.x | Cachet 3.x | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 | MIT, unmaintained since 2021 | Proprietary |
| Redistribute under your own brand | Yes | Yes | Forbidden by its licence |
| Checks its own services | HTTP, TCP, heartbeat | No — set by hand | Not published |
| Opens and closes incidents itself | Yes | No | Not published |
| One incident, many components | Yes | One per incident | Not published |
| Runs on shared cPanel hosting | Yes | Yes | Not published |
| API | Cachet 2.x compatible | The original | Not published |
| Signed updates | Both install shapes | No | Not published |
A VPS requirement is exactly what keeps a status page off a reseller’s stack. Pharos does not have one.
Put it somewhere else. A status page that runs on the infrastructure it watches goes down with it. External probe locations are on the roadmap rather than shipped — for now, host it away from what it is watching.
Same endpoints, same status integers, X-Cachet-Token accepted alongside
Bearer. Point an old workflow at a new base URL and it carries on.
Every feature is in the free version — no seat limits, no gates. What is paid is the work of not doing it yourself, and the one obligation the AGPL puts on companies.
Free
AGPL-3.0 · self-hosted€49
One-time · per installation€119/year
Yearly · cancel any timefrom €599/year
For companies that modify itYou probably do not need the last one. The AGPL only asks you to publish changes if you modify Pharos and let others reach it over a network. Running it unmodified for your customers costs nothing and obliges nothing. The commercial licence exists for the reseller who wired it into their own systems and would rather not publish that.
No. It runs on PHP 8.3 or later with SQLite or MySQL, which most shared cPanel hosting already supports, and one cron line drives the scheduled checks. Docker is also supported for anyone who prefers containers.
Cachet 2.x has had no release since 2021 and requires a human to change a component’s status, so it can stay green while a site is down. Cachet 3.x is maintained but no longer open source: its licence forbids removing its notices and forbids distributing it as a standalone product, which rules out reselling or white-labelling it.
Yes. The API is Cachet 2.x compatible: the same endpoints, the same status integers, and X-Cachet-Token accepted alongside Authorization: Bearer. Existing n8n workflows and scripts that talk to a Cachet 2.x instance do not need to change.
It is a check aimed at things you cannot poll from outside, such as a backup job or a cron script. Your job calls a URL on its own schedule, and if that call stops arriving, Pharos treats the silence as the failure and opens an incident.
Yes. Every section of the public page is a switch in Settings: the overall banner, uptime bar, services list, per-component bars, maintenance, incident history, empty days, subscribe button and API link. Visibility can also be set per service, and a live preview shows the real page as you toggle.
The core is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, with every feature in it — no seat limits, no gates. Three things are paid and all three are optional: a one-time Brand pack (€49) to use your own logo and drop the credit, a yearly Supported plan (€119) for one-click signed updates and support, and a commercial licence (from €599/year) for companies that modify Pharos and would rather not publish the change.
Your own logo, favicon and sender address on the status page, with the footer credit removed. It is a one-time purchase, verified locally with an Ed25519 signature rather than a phone-home check, so it keeps working even if the licensing server is unreachable.
Pharos checks for a signed release manifest and shows what is available under Updates. On shared hosting it downloads the release, verifies the checksum, backs up the current version and replaces its own files. On Docker the host pulls the new image. If the release server cannot be reached, that reads as no update available, never as an error.
Open source under AGPL-3.0, installed on the hosting you already run. Point it at your components, wire a heartbeat into the jobs nobody else can see, and let it write the incident before anyone has to ask.