How to Check If a Website Is Down: 7 Methods for 2026

You're trying to access a website, and it won't load. Is the website down, or is it just you? Maybe it's your internet connection, your DNS settings, or an issue on your end. Before you start troubleshooting your entire network setup, you need to verify whether the problem is actually with the website itself.

In this guide, we'll walk through seven reliable methods to check if a website is down in 2026—from quick online tools to command-line diagnostics that developers love. Whether you're a casual user wondering why your favorite site won't load or a developer investigating an API outage, these methods will help you get answers fast.

Method 1: Use a Website Down Checker Tool

The fastest way to check if a website is down is to use a dedicated website down checker tool. These tools check website availability from multiple locations worldwide, so you can instantly see if the problem is global or just affecting you.

How it works: A website down checker sends requests to the target website from various geographic locations and reports back whether the site is responding. If the site is down for everyone, you'll see failed requests from all locations. If it's just you, the tool will show that the site is accessible elsewhere.

Try it now: Visit apistatuscheck.com/tools/website-down-checker for a free, instant website availability check. Enter any URL and get results from multiple global checkpoints within seconds.

Pros:

• Instant results
• No technical knowledge required
• Shows geographic availability patterns
• Works on any device with a browser

Cons:

• Only shows current status (not historical data)
• Limited to HTTP/HTTPS checks

Best for: Quick verification when you need an answer right now.

Method 2: Check the Official Status Page

If you're checking on a service or API you depend on regularly, the official status page should be your first stop. Many companies maintain public status pages that show real-time service health, ongoing incidents, and scheduled maintenance windows.

Where to find status pages:

• Usually hosted at status.[company].com (e.g., status.github.com)
• Sometimes linked in the website footer
• Often indexed on apistatuscheck.com, where we track 500+ API and service status pages in one place

What you'll find:

• Current operational status
• Recent outage history
• Scheduled maintenance notices
• Component-level status (API, web app, database, etc.)

For example, if you're wondering whether Stripe is down, OpenAI is experiencing issues, or AWS is having an outage, checking their official status pages gives you authoritative information directly from the source.

Pro tip: Bookmark the status pages of services critical to your business. Better yet, subscribe to their RSS feeds or status update notifications so you're alerted the moment something breaks.

Method 3: Try a Different Network or Device

Sometimes the problem isn't the website—it's your connection to it. Before you conclude a site is down, rule out local issues.

Quick tests:

1. Switch networks: Turn off Wi-Fi and try mobile data (or vice versa)
2. Try a different device: Check on your phone if you were using a laptop
3. Use a VPN: Sometimes regional blocks or ISP issues prevent access
4. Clear your cache: Old cached data can cause loading issues
5. Try incognito/private mode: Bypasses extensions and local storage issues

If the website loads fine on mobile data but not on your office Wi-Fi, you've identified a network-level issue. This could be:

• Firewall blocking the domain
• DNS resolution problems
• ISP routing issues
• Local network configuration problems

When this matters most: Corporate networks, public Wi-Fi, and networks with strict security policies often block legitimate websites. This method helps you distinguish between website downtime and access restrictions.

Method 4: Use Command Line Tools (ping, curl, traceroute)

For developers and power users, command-line tools provide detailed diagnostic information that browser-based checkers can't match.

Ping

The simplest test—does the server respond at all?

ping example.com

What you're looking for:

• Reply from [IP] = Server is reachable
• Request timeout = Server isn't responding (could be down, or ICMP blocked)
• Unknown host = DNS resolution failed

Important caveat: Many modern websites block ICMP (ping) requests for security reasons, so no response doesn't always mean the site is down.

Curl

Check if the HTTP/HTTPS service is actually responding:

curl -I https://example.com

This sends an HTTP HEAD request and shows response headers. A successful response looks like:

HTTP/2 200
server: nginx
date: Fri, 24 Jan 2026 10:30:00 GMT

Status codes to know:

• 200 = Site is up and working
• 301/302 = Redirect (follow to the new location)
• 403 = Forbidden (site is up, but access denied)
• 404 = Page not found (site is up, but page doesn't exist)
• 500/502/503 = Server error (site is down or misconfigured)
• Connection refused or Timeout = Server unreachable

Traceroute

Find out where the connection breaks:

# macOS/Linux
traceroute example.com

# Windows
tracert example.com

This shows every network hop between you and the target server. If the trace stops partway, you can see exactly where the connection fails—helpful for identifying ISP routing issues versus server problems.

Best for: Developers, DevOps engineers, and anyone comfortable with the terminal who wants detailed diagnostic data.

Method 5: Check Social Media & Down Detector Sites

When a popular website goes down, the internet talks about it—loudly. Social media becomes a real-time crowdsourced outage detector.

Where to look:

1. Twitter/X Search: Search for "[website name] down" or "is [website name] down"—you'll see immediate chatter if others are experiencing issues
2. DownDetector.com: Aggregates user reports and shows outage heat maps
3. Reddit: Subreddits like r/webhosting or service-specific communities
4. Hacker News: Especially for developer tools and SaaS outages

Why this works: Major outages generate hundreds of reports within minutes. If you're seeing complaints from users worldwide, it's almost certainly a real outage, not just you.

The downside: False positives are common. A few users complaining doesn't confirm an outage—it could be regional issues or user error. Cross-reference with other methods for accuracy.

Method 6: DNS & CDN Checks

Websites don't go down for just one reason. Sometimes the web server is fine, but DNS can't resolve the domain, or the CDN edge servers are failing.

DNS Lookup

Check if the domain resolves to an IP address:

nslookup example.com

Or use online tools like:

• DNS Checker (dnschecker.org)
• What's My DNS (whatsmydns.net)
• MXToolbox

What to check:

• Does the domain resolve at all?
• Are you getting the expected IP address?
• Is DNS propagation complete (if changes were recently made)?

CDN Health

Many websites use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai. If the CDN goes down, the website becomes unreachable even if the origin server is fine.

How to check:

• Look at the response headers (curl -I) for cf-ray (Cloudflare), x-served-by (Fastly), etc.
• Check the CDN provider's status page
• Try accessing the origin server directly (if you know the IP)

Example: If Cloudflare is experiencing issues, thousands of websites become inaccessible simultaneously. Checking Cloudflare's status page confirms whether it's a widespread CDN problem.

Method 7: Set Up Proactive Monitoring

Why wait for a website to go down before you find out? If you depend on a service for your business or personal workflow, proactive monitoring gives you instant alerts the moment something breaks.

For APIs and Services You Depend On

RSS Feeds: Many status pages offer RSS feeds. Add them to your feed reader (Feedly, Inoreader) to get notified of incidents without checking manually.

API Status Check: We aggregate 500+ API and service status pages at apistatuscheck.com. You can:

• Subscribe to RSS feeds for specific services
• Get Slack notifications for outages (learn how)
• Check multiple services at once from a single dashboard

Webhooks & Integrations: Some status pages offer webhook subscriptions that ping your Slack, Discord, or email when incidents occur.

For Your Own Websites

If you run websites or APIs and need to know immediately when they go down:

Uptime monitoring services:

• Uptime Robot (free tier available)
• Pingdom
• StatusCake
• Better Uptime

These tools check your site every 1-5 minutes from multiple locations and alert you via email, SMS, Slack, or PagerDuty when downtime is detected.

What to monitor:

• HTTP/HTTPS endpoints (web pages, API endpoints)
• Response time (slow = almost as bad as down)
• SSL certificate expiration
• DNS resolution
• Specific content on the page (to detect partial failures)

Best for: Anyone who can't afford to discover outages hours after they happen. Prevention beats reaction.

What to Do When a Website Is Down

Now you've confirmed the website is actually down. What next?

If You're a User:

1. Wait it out: Most outages resolve within minutes to hours
2. Check for announcements: Look at the service's status page or social media
3. Find alternatives: If it's critical, look for backup services
4. Save your work: If you were mid-task, save what you can locally
5. Set an alert: Use a monitoring tool to notify you when it's back up

If You're a Developer/Business Owner:

1. Assess impact: Which features or workflows are affected?
2. Check dependencies: Is it your server, or a third-party service you rely on?
3. Communicate proactively: Update your own status page and notify users
4. Implement fallbacks: Can you gracefully degrade functionality?
5. Review your SLA: If it's a paid service, check if downtime compensation applies
6. Post-mortem: Once resolved, document what happened and how to prevent it

For API-dependent applications: Consider implementing circuit breakers, retry logic, and fallback mechanisms. When an external API goes down, your application shouldn't crash—it should degrade gracefully.

If you're building critical applications, maintaining a real-time view of your dependencies' health is essential. That's where a tool like API Status Check becomes part of your monitoring stack—giving you visibility into third-party service health before your users report problems.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I tell if a website is down just for me?

Use a website down checker tool like apistatuscheck.com/tools/website-down-checker to check the site from multiple locations. If it loads elsewhere but not for you, the issue is local (your network, ISP, or device). Try switching networks, clearing cache, or using a VPN.

What does "website is down for everyone or just me" mean?

This phrase refers to the key diagnostic question when a site won't load. "Down for everyone" means the website's server is offline or unreachable globally. "Just me" means the server is fine, but something on your end (network, DNS, firewall) is preventing access.

How long do website outages typically last?

Most unplanned outages last between 5 minutes and 2 hours. Planned maintenance windows are usually scheduled during low-traffic hours and can last several hours. Critical infrastructure outages (like major CDN or cloud provider issues) can last longer, but providers prioritize rapid resolution.

Can I check if a website is down without visiting it?

Yes. Use command-line tools like curl or ping, third-party down checker services, or status page aggregators. These methods check website availability without using a browser, which is useful for scripting, automation, or when browser access is blocked.

What's the difference between a website being down vs. slow?

"Down" means the server isn't responding at all—you get timeouts, connection errors, or 500-level HTTP errors. "Slow" means the server responds, but with high latency (pages take 10+ seconds to load). Both impact user experience, but slow sites are still technically operational. Monitoring tools typically track both uptime and response time.

Stay Ahead of Downtime

Waiting for a website to go down before you notice is reactive. The best approach is proactive monitoring—knowing about outages the moment they happen, or even before your users do.

Whether you're tracking the APIs your business depends on or monitoring your own infrastructure, having a real-time view of service health is essential for modern web development and operations.

Ready to stop wondering "is it down right now?"

Visit apistatuscheck.com to track 500+ API and service status pages in one place. Get instant visibility into the health of GitHub, Stripe, OpenAI, AWS, and hundreds of other services—plus RSS feeds and Slack alerts so you're always in the know.

Because downtime is inevitable. Being caught off guard isn't.