As one of the countries situated in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines suffers from an inexhaustible number of natural disasters every year. One of the most destructible ones is the occurrence of earthquakes. Because of the high damage that earthquakes incur, along with their inevitability and unpredictability, developing effective methods of earthquake damage mitigation as well as disaster preparedness is imperative to lessen the negative impacts it is capable of producing in communities. One efficient way of doing this is by implementing an earthquake early warning (EEW) system that is capable of sending message alerts to receivers to warn them in the event of a hazardous earthquake. With this objective, this study centers on creating an earthquake detector with SMS messaging to function as an EEW system with an added advantage of being low-cost to make it more accessible to the public. Using electronic components based on an Arduino Mega 2560 and a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) module, the earthquake detector and its alert message system were created. A series of tests in different locations across Butuan City was then performed to assess the device’s accuracy in measuring different Intensity levels when subjected to surface vibrations. Comparative analysis showed that its recorded values. Corresponded with the values obtained from accelerometer-based mobile applications. In conclusion, the study was deemed functional in its ability to detect low and high surface vibrations, which proves that it is successful in detecting earthquake tremors and vibrations in the event of an earthquake.