Downdetector
Outage tracker
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.
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.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Catches outages before status pages
“Downdetector shows when users are reporting problems, while most service status pages only post significant confirmed outages”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Google Cloud outage affects almost all banking and other operations in Europe” “they tend to pick up issues before the official status page”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Having Issues (Again)” More reliable than other status pages
“At this point downdetector is more reliable than any of these”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “Claude partial outage” “downdetector is the most reliable status page”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Widespread service disruptions reported as major platforms go down worldwide” Usually correct, fair basic indicator
“Downdetector is not perfect, but is usually correct when I check it.”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Google Cloud outage affects almost all banking and other operations in Europe” “it's a fair indicator at least on a basic level”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Downdetector and Speedtest sold to Accenture for $1.2B” Useful even when status pages fail
“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”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Can we stop with the uptime percentages?” “this website actually is useful”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare Down Again – and DownDetector Is Also Down”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Wrongly blames other services for outages
“It's a useful metric, but it also has error, because sometimes users blame the wrong service.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Elon Musk's X down for users” “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”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “Downdetector and Speedtest sold to Accenture for $1.2B” “DownDetector is falsely assuming that means Cloudflare is down. A flaw in their methodology.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 on Hacker News Goes down itself
“I couldn't even check on Downdetector.com”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues” “Really disappointed that down detectors down detector isn't detecting that down detector is down”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare was down” “does not detect that DownDetector's down”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare was down” Measures user reports, not actual status
“mostly users reporting that stuff is down, not whether they are actually down”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Google Cloud outage affects almost all banking and other operations in Europe” “doesn't actually have any probes or actual insight into status etc.”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?” “not checking the integrity, just reachability.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare was down”
What people said
30 of the 32 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Downdetector does provide useful data, but it's not necessarily clean data that establishes anything clear on its own.”
“Downdetector shows when users are reporting problems, while most service status pages only post significant confirmed outages”
“Downdetector is not perfect, but is usually correct when I check it.”
“mostly users reporting that stuff is down, not whether they are actually down”
“At this point downdetector is more reliable than any of these”
“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”
“Nothing beats downdetector.com anyway. Always quicker!”
“doesn't actually have any probes or actual insight into status etc.”
“all of the graphs are scaled to the same size”
“it says server error page not found, 404”
“it's a fair indicator at least on a basic level”
“at least they have tight data controls and don’t sell that information”
“I don’t think I would trust Downdetector in the hands of a company that its main business is consulting”
“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”
“they tend to pick up issues before the official status page”
“downdector always shows spikes when you go to look at it, and then they remove them later retroactively if the spikes are fake.”
“It's a useful metric, but it also has error, because sometimes users blame the wrong service.”
“DownDetector is falsely assuming that means Cloudflare is down. A flaw in their methodology.”
“I'm pretty sure that downdetectorsdowndetector.com is just faking the results.”
“this website actually is useful”
“No idea why the media always relies on/cites this useless site”
“does not detect that DownDetector's down”
“not checking the integrity, just reachability.”
“Really disappointed that down detectors down detector isn't detecting that down detector is down”
“is up :) but the status is not correct”
“downdetector is the most reliable status page”
“It just fakes it as far as I can tell.”
“It looks really nice, good job!”
“found myself pleasantly surprised”
“I couldn't even check on Downdetector.com”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.