---
title: HTTP / website monitors
description: Check that a website or API endpoint is up and responding.
category: monitors
updated: 2026-09-06
tags: [http, https, website, api, throttled]
---

An HTTP/S monitor requests a URL on a schedule and confirms it responds. It's the
right choice for websites, web apps, and API endpoints.

![The Add Monitor dialog with HTTP/S selected, showing the name field, a URL field prompting for something like https://example.com, and a check interval of 30 seconds](/img/docs/app-add-monitor.png)
*HTTP/S is the default type. Give it a name and the full URL, including `https://`.*

## Setting it up

- **Target** — the full URL, including `https://`, e.g. `https://example.com` or
  `https://api.example.com/health`.
- Point it at a lightweight, reliable URL. A dedicated health-check endpoint (say,
  `/health`) is ideal because it loads fast and doesn't depend on every part of your
  app.

## What counts as up or down

The monitor is **up** when the URL responds successfully, and **down** when it can't
connect, times out, or returns an error response. The dashboard shows the response
time of each check so you can spot slowdowns before they become outages.

Some refusals are not outages. If the site answers **429 Too Many Requests**,
serves a bot-protection challenge instead of the page, or returns a 503 that asks
us to retry later, the check is recorded as **throttled** rather than down — the
service is up and declining *us*, which is not an outage and will not alert you.
See [check intervals](/docs/configuration/check-intervals) for how we handle sites
that do this consistently.

## Response time and "degraded"

We record how long each request takes. If a monitor starts responding much slower
than its normal baseline, it's flagged **degraded** — up, but worth a look. This
catches creeping performance problems that a simple up/down check would miss.

## Tips

- If your site is behind a firewall or allowlist, make sure our checkers can reach
  it — see [Allowing our checkers through your firewall](/docs/advanced/firewall-allowlist).
- Only care that the certificate is valid and current? Add a separate
  [SSL monitor](/docs/monitors/ssl) alongside your HTTP one.
- Choose where we check from with [check regions](/docs/configuration/check-regions).

## Get started

- [Create an HTTP monitor](/docs/getting-started/quickstart)
- [Set alert thresholds](/docs/configuration/alert-thresholds)

## Related

- [SSL certificate monitors](/docs/monitors/ssl)
- [Firewall allowlist](/docs/advanced/firewall-allowlist)