How to Monitor Stripe API for Downtime (2026 Guide)

When your payment processor goes down, you lose money. Every minute of Stripe downtime means failed checkouts, abandoned carts, and frustrated customers reaching for their competitor's app.

Stripe is remarkably reliable — but not immune to outages. In the past year, Stripe has experienced multiple incidents affecting payments, webhooks, the Dashboard, and Connect. If your revenue flows through Stripe, monitoring their API isn't optional.

This guide covers how to monitor Stripe API status, set up instant alerts, and build payment systems that survive outages.

--------------|---------------------------|-----------------| | Payments API | Checkouts fail, subscriptions can't renew | Direct revenue loss | | Webhooks | Events don't fire, fulfillment stalls | Delayed orders, angry customers | | Connect | Marketplace payouts fail | Partner/seller trust erosion | | Dashboard | Can't issue refunds or manage disputes | Operational paralysis | | Billing | Subscription renewals fail silently | MRR leakage |

A 30-minute Stripe outage during peak hours can cost a mid-size e-commerce site thousands of dollars. Knowing about it in seconds versus discovering it from customer complaints is the difference between damage control and damage.

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Method 1: API Status Check (Fastest Setup)

API Status Check monitors Stripe's API status in real-time and alerts you instantly when issues are detected.

Setup (30 seconds):

1. Sign up at apistatuscheck.com
2. Add Stripe to your monitored APIs
3. Configure email alerts
4. Done

What you get:

• Real-time status monitoring of Stripe's API, webhooks, and dashboard
• Instant alerts when Stripe reports degradation or outages
• Historical uptime data
• Single dashboard for Stripe + 120 other APIs your app depends on

Pricing: Free (3 APIs) | $9/mo Alert Pro (10 APIs) | $29/mo Team (30 APIs)

Best for: Any team using Stripe that wants instant outage awareness without building anything.

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Method 2: Stripe's Official Status Page

URL: status.stripe.com

Stripe maintains a detailed status page with component-level status for:

• Core API
• Payments
• Payouts
• Webhooks
• Dashboard
• Connect
• Billing
• Terminal
• Radar

How to subscribe:

1. Visit status.stripe.com
2. Click "Subscribe to Updates"
3. Choose email, SMS, Slack, or webhook notifications
4. Select which components matter to you

Limitations:

• Updates require Stripe's team to acknowledge the issue (can be delayed 5-15 minutes)
• No programmatic API for automated responses
• Doesn't tell you if your specific integration is affected
• Status can show "Operational" during partial degradations

Best for: Baseline awareness, but don't rely on it as your only signal.

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Method 3: Webhook Health Monitoring

Stripe webhooks are the nervous system of most integrations. If webhooks stop firing, your app stops knowing about successful payments, subscription changes, and disputes. Here's how to monitor webhook health:

Heartbeat Pattern

Create a cron job that triggers a Stripe event and verifies your webhook receives it:

import stripe
import time
import redis

stripe.api_key = "sk_live_..."
cache = redis.Redis()

def send_heartbeat():
    """Create a test event and verify webhook receives it."""
    # Create a unique marker
    heartbeat_id = f"heartbeat_{int(time.time())}"
    cache.set(f"stripe_heartbeat:{heartbeat_id}", "pending", ex=300)
    
    # Trigger a benign Stripe event (update a test customer's metadata)
    stripe.Customer.modify(
        "cus_heartbeat_monitor",
        metadata={"heartbeat": heartbeat_id}
    )
    
    # Wait for webhook to confirm receipt
    time.sleep(30)
    
    status = cache.get(f"stripe_heartbeat:{heartbeat_id}")
    if status == b"pending":
        alert("🔴 Stripe webhook not received within 30s!")
    elif status == b"received":
        print("✅ Stripe webhook healthy")

# In your webhook handler:
def handle_webhook(event):
    if event.type == "customer.updated":
        heartbeat_id = event.data.object.metadata.get("heartbeat")
        if heartbeat_id:
            cache.set(f"stripe_heartbeat:{heartbeat_id}", "received", ex=300)

Monitor Webhook Delivery in Stripe Dashboard

Stripe provides webhook delivery metrics:

1. Go to Developers → Webhooks in your Stripe Dashboard
2. Check the delivery success rate
3. Look for elevated failure rates or increased latency
4. Set up alerts using Stripe's built-in webhook monitoring

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Method 4: Application-Level Monitoring

Use your existing observability tools to detect Stripe issues through your own metrics:

Track Stripe API Error Rates

from datadog import statsd  # Or your metrics library

def create_payment(amount, customer_id):
    try:
        intent = stripe.PaymentIntent.create(
            amount=amount,
            currency="usd",
            customer=customer_id,
        )
        statsd.increment("stripe.payment.success")
        statsd.histogram("stripe.payment.latency", intent.response_time)
        return intent
        
    except stripe.error.APIConnectionError:
        statsd.increment("stripe.payment.error", tags=["type:connection"])
        raise
    except stripe.error.RateLimitError:
        statsd.increment("stripe.payment.error", tags=["type:rate_limit"])
        raise
    except stripe.error.APIError as e:
        statsd.increment("stripe.payment.error", tags=[f"type:api_{e.http_status}"])
        raise

Then set up alerts in Datadog [AFFILIATE:datadog] or New Relic [AFFILIATE:newrelic]:

• Alert when stripe.payment.error rate exceeds 5% of total requests
• Alert when stripe.payment.latency p95 exceeds 3 seconds
• Alert when stripe.payment.success drops below expected baseline

Best for: Teams with existing observability infrastructure who want Stripe-specific metrics.

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Method 5: Synthetic Payment Monitoring

Run a synthetic payment check every few minutes to verify the full payment flow:

def synthetic_payment_check():
    """Run a $0.50 test charge and immediately refund it."""
    try:
        # Create a test payment
        intent = stripe.PaymentIntent.create(
            amount=50,  # $0.50
            currency="usd",
            payment_method="pm_card_visa",  # Test card
            confirm=True,
            automatic_payment_methods={"enabled": False},
        )
        
        if intent.status == "succeeded":
            # Immediately refund
            stripe.Refund.create(payment_intent=intent.id)
            return "healthy"
        else:
            alert(f"⚠️ Stripe payment status: {intent.status}")
            return "degraded"
            
    except Exception as e:
        alert(f"🔴 Stripe synthetic check failed: {e}")
        return "down"

⚠️ Important: Only use test mode API keys (sk_test_...) for synthetic checks. Running real charges as health checks is expensive and unnecessary.

Best for: Teams that need to verify the full payment flow is working, not just API reachability.

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Building Payment Resilience

Monitoring tells you when Stripe is down. Resilience keeps your business running:

1. Queue Failed Payments for Retry

from celery import Celery

app = Celery('payments')

@app.task(bind=True, max_retries=5, default_retry_delay=300)
def process_payment(self, amount, customer_id):
    try:
        return stripe.PaymentIntent.create(
            amount=amount,
            currency="usd",
            customer=customer_id,
        )
    except stripe.error.APIConnectionError as e:
        # Stripe is down — retry in 5 minutes
        raise self.retry(exc=e)
    except stripe.error.RateLimitError as e:
        # Rate limited — retry with exponential backoff
        raise self.retry(exc=e, countdown=60 * (2 ** self.request.retries))

2. Show Graceful Payment Errors

async function handleCheckout() {
  try {
    const result = await processPayment(cart);
    showSuccess("Payment successful!");
  } catch (error) {
    if (error.type === 'provider_outage') {
      // Check API Status Check for confirmation
      showMessage(
        "Our payment processor is experiencing temporary issues. " +
        "Your cart is saved — we'll notify you when payments are back online."
      );
      saveCartForRetry(cart);
      subscribeToRecoveryNotification(user.email);
    } else {
      showError("Payment failed. Please try again or use a different payment method.");
    }
  }
}

3. Consider a Backup Payment Processor

For critical revenue applications, maintain a secondary payment processor:

Scenario	Primary	Fallback
Subscriptions	Stripe Billing	Manual invoice + bank transfer
One-time payments	Stripe Checkout	PayPal Checkout
Marketplace payouts	Stripe Connect	Manual payouts via bank

This is extreme for most businesses, but for high-volume e-commerce ($100K+/mo), the insurance is worth the integration effort.

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Monitoring Checklist for Stripe

Set up these layers for comprehensive Stripe monitoring:

• Status monitoring — API Status Check for instant outage alerts
• Status page subscription — status.stripe.com email/Slack notifications
• Webhook health — Heartbeat pattern to verify webhook delivery
• Error rate tracking — Application-level metrics in Datadog/New Relic
• Latency monitoring — Alert on p95 response time spikes
• Payment success rate — Dashboard showing conversion funnel health
• Retry queue — Failed payments queued for automatic retry
• Graceful errors — User-friendly messages during outages

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Frequently Asked Questions

How often does Stripe go down?

Stripe has excellent reliability (99.99%+ uptime) but is not immune to issues. Expect 5-10 minor incidents per year (elevated error rates, webhook delays) and 1-2 significant outages. Most incidents are resolved within 30-60 minutes. Check status.stripe.com for historical incident data.

Will Stripe retry failed webhooks?

Yes. Stripe automatically retries failed webhook deliveries for up to 3 days with exponential backoff. However, if the issue is on Stripe's side (webhooks not firing at all), retries don't help. That's why monitoring webhook health independently is important.

Can I monitor Stripe in test mode?

Yes, but it's limited. Test mode has separate infrastructure from live mode — test mode being healthy doesn't guarantee live mode is healthy. For production monitoring, use API Status Check (monitors live status) and application-level metrics from your live environment.

What's the difference between Stripe being "degraded" vs "down"?

Degraded: Stripe is operational but experiencing issues — elevated error rates, slow response times, or partial functionality loss. Most payments still work, but some fail. Down: Stripe's API is not responding to requests. All payment attempts fail. Degraded is more common and harder to detect without monitoring.

Should I build my own monitoring or use a service?

Use a service for status-level monitoring (API Status Check — free or $9/mo). Build your own for application-specific metrics (error rates, latency, webhook health). The cost of building and maintaining a custom status monitor exceeds the cost of a monitoring service.

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Summary

Monitoring Layer	Tool	Cost	Detection Speed
Status alerts	API Status Check	Free-$9/mo	Minutes
Official updates	status.stripe.com	Free	5-15 min delay
Webhook health	Custom heartbeat script	Free (your infra)	30-60 seconds
Error rate monitoring	Datadog [AFFILIATE:datadog] / New Relic [AFFILIATE:newrelic]	$15+/mo	Real-time
Synthetic checks	Custom or Better Stack betterstack.com	Free-$29/mo	30s-5min

Don't wait for customers to tell you Stripe is down. Set up monitoring today — API Status Check takes 30 seconds and monitors Stripe plus 120+ other APIs your app depends on.

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