# Downdetector

17 Hacker News commenters recommended Downdetector and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Shows user-reported outage spikes, often before official status pages update. Critics say spikes can reflect curiosity or wrong blame, and it does not check services directly.

## Why people recommend it

- Catches outages before status pages (2 comments): "Downdetector shows when users are reporting problems, while most service status pages only post significant confirmed outages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167649)) "they tend to pick up issues before the official status page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876499))
- More reliable than other status pages (2 comments): "At this point downdetector is more reliable than any of these" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49894099)) "downdetector is the most reliable status page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061853))
- Usually correct, fair basic indicator (2 comments): "Downdetector is not perfect, but is usually correct when I check it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167407)) "it's a fair indicator at least on a basic level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48402649))
- Useful even when status pages fail (2 comments): "Its useful for sure but not actually hooking into any officialy API or anything. Great for when the status page also goes down but surely a lag time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744218)) "this website actually is useful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159333))

## What people warn about

- Wrongly blames other services for outages (3 comments): "It's a useful metric, but it also has error, because sometimes users blame the wrong service." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46648539)) "Downdetector is inaccurate as hell - if AWS is genuinely down, folks get curious and search other providers, causing Downdetector to mark them as down too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48338845)) "DownDetector is falsely assuming that means Cloudflare is down. A flaw in their methodology." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201468))
- Goes down itself (3 comments): "I couldn't even check on Downdetector.com" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45964015)) "Really disappointed that down detectors down detector isn't detecting that down detector is down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158367)) "does not detect that DownDetector's down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158589))
- Measures user reports, not actual status (3 comments): "mostly users reporting that stuff is down, not whether they are actually down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50164600)) "doesn't actually have any probes or actual insight into status etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49557489)) "not checking the integrity, just reachability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158379))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://downdetector.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Downdetector", https://hackerapproved.com/p/downdetector/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).