Overview

Downdetector aggregates customer reports and other online signals to show when popular services may be failing. It serves consumers who need a quick outage check and operations or support teams tracking customer-visible incidents across many services. Its breadth and four-minute reevaluation are valuable for early warning, but report-based status is not a replacement for internal infrastructure telemetry.

Key features

Downdetector combines user reports with monitoring of other online sources. It declares an incident when reports rise significantly above the average for that time of day over the preceding six months, then continuously reassesses monitored services every four minutes. That baseline helps distinguish an unusual surge from normal reporting volume, while the method still reflects reported customer experience rather than every underlying system condition.

The service says it covers more than 36,000 services in 72 countries and processes tens of millions of problem reports monthly. This scale is particularly useful for checking widely used consumer services and for teams comparing signals across regions.

Explorer provides a real-time dashboard combining multiple services, trends and issue sources. Configurable email, RSS, push and API alerts can include impacted locations and internet service providers. Geographic breakdowns show where reports are concentrated, and Historical Data supports trend analysis, competitive benchmarking and predictive analytics from past incidents.

Downdetector Communicate lets companies publish customizable, real-time status updates on their Downdetector page, giving affected customers a public explanation channel. Explorer is aimed at NOC and customer-care teams in sectors including banking, gaming, communications, SaaS, streaming, cloud hosting and travel. Consumers can also access Downdetector through the Speedtest app.

Ookla's privacy policy says the service collects outage data such as anonymous reports, comments and social-media posts, and licenses Downdetector data to business customers. Ookla says it applies technical and organizational safeguards against unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, misuse or unauthorized access to personal information.

Pricing

Downdetector uses a freemium model with a free plan and a free trial. Free is free and allows up to five favorites, up to three outage notifications per day through the Speedtest app, and one notification per favorite per day. It is appropriate for occasional personal checking, but the notification ceiling limits it for people following many services.

Pro costs 13.99 USD per month. It raises the allowance to 10 favorites and up to 10 outage notifications per day through the Speedtest app, while retaining one notification per favorite per day. It also removes advertising on the web and in the Speedtest app. Pro suits individuals who monitor more services and want fewer interruptions; it remains a consumer plan rather than a multi-service operations console.

Enterprise has custom pricing. It supports continuous monitoring of up to 100 services, custom alerts and incident-management integrations, API access, AI-powered insights and root-cause analysis, and up to five years of outage history. This is the relevant tier for NOC and customer-care organizations, but its cost must be obtained directly and its 100-service ceiling matters to larger portfolios.

Platforms

Downdetector is available on web, Android and iOS, with API access for integrations. Mobile access is also provided inside the Speedtest app, where the Free and Pro notification allowances apply.

Who it's for

Choose Downdetector when you need a public, customer-oriented view of outages across a very broad service catalogue. Free fits occasional checks; Pro fits individuals who follow up to 10 favorites and want ad-free access. Enterprise is aimed at NOC and customer-care teams that need alerts, regional context, historical analysis, integrations and a customer-facing status channel. Organizations needing definitive internal health data should pair it with their own monitoring rather than rely on reports alone.

Pros and cons

Pro: Coverage of over 36,000 services across 72 countries makes it useful for broad consumer and vendor monitoring.
Pro: Four-minute status reevaluation and multiple alert channels provide a timely way to detect customer-visible disruption.
Pro: Explorer adds geographic, historical and source-level context instead of presenting only a yes-or-no outage label.
Con: Free and Pro notifications have explicit daily and per-favorite caps, limiting high-volume personal monitoring.
Con: Advanced monitoring, integrations, analytics and five years of history are reserved for custom-priced Enterprise.
Con: Report-based detection indicates user impact but cannot verify a service's internal infrastructure health.

Alternatives

For a wider shortlist, see Website Monitoring Software.

Visual Sentinel is a freemium, free-trial option available on Android, iOS, web and API, with a Solo plan at 6.00 USD per month.
HostTracker is a freemium, free-trial web/API service whose free plan covers two monitors and two contacts with checks every 30 minutes.
OnWebChange offers freemium page tracking across Android, iOS, web and API, including three daily-monitoring trackers free.
Cronitor is a freemium API/Linux/web option with a free Hacker plan covering five monitors, email and Slack alerts, and one status page.
GTmetrix is a paid web/API service with a free option and a Lite plan at 4.99 USD per month when billed yearly.
Treo is a freemium web/API service with a free plan for 50 CrUX pages and a Vital plan at 75.00 USD per month.
WebSite-Watcher is a freemium Android, iOS and Windows product with a free tier for 10 bookmarks and hourly checks.
Pinger Man is a freemium web/API monitoring option with a free plan.

Verdict

Downdetector is the right choice for consumers and customer-facing operations teams that need a broad, frequently refreshed view of reported service disruption. Its main reason to choose it is the combination of massive coverage, regional context and practical alerts; its main reason to look elsewhere is the capped consumer notifications and custom-priced Enterprise features, especially if you require authoritative internal telemetry.

	Downdetector	Pingdom
Free plan	Yes
Free trial	Yes	Yes
Paid from	$13.99/mo
Platforms	Android, api, iOS, Web	Android, api, iOS, Web
Free plan	Yes	No
Status page	Yes
API access	Yes
SSL expiry alerts		Yes
Server monitoring		Yes
Alert channels		Email, SMS, push notifications, Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps, HipChat, webhooks

Downdetector vs Pingdom

Downdetector

Pingdom