> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.catops.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Health Checks

> Monitor your websites and APIs for uptime

Health checks monitor your websites and APIs, alerting you when they go down.

## Creating a Health Check

1. Go to **Health Checks** in the dashboard
2. Click **Add Health Check**
3. Fill in the details:

| Field    | Description       | Example                          |
| -------- | ----------------- | -------------------------------- |
| Name     | Display name      | `Production API`                 |
| URL      | Full URL to check | `https://api.example.com/health` |
| Method   | HTTP method       | `GET`, `POST`, `HEAD`            |
| Interval | Check frequency   | `30` (seconds)                   |
| Timeout  | Max response time | `10` (seconds)                   |

4. Click **Create**

## How It Works

Every interval, we:

1. Send an HTTP request to your URL
2. Record response time and status code
3. Mark as **UP** if status is 2xx, **DOWN** otherwise
4. Send alert if status changes

## Alert Behavior

* **First failure**: Wait and retry
* **Confirmed down**: Send alert after multiple failures
* **Recovery**: Send "back up" notification

<Info>
  We use confirmation checks to avoid false alerts from temporary network issues.
</Info>

## Expected Status Codes

By default, 2xx responses are considered healthy. You can customize:

| Expected  | Behavior               |
| --------- | ---------------------- |
| `200`     | Only 200 is healthy    |
| `200,201` | 200 or 201 is healthy  |
| `2xx`     | Any 200-299 is healthy |

## Keyword Matching

Optionally check that the response contains specific text:

| Field   | Description                  |
| ------- | ---------------------------- |
| Keyword | Text to find in response     |
| Mode    | `contains` or `not_contains` |

Example: Check that your API returns `"status":"ok"`.

## Retry Settings

| Setting        | Description              | Default |
| -------------- | ------------------------ | ------- |
| Retries        | Number of retry attempts | `3`     |
| Retry Interval | Seconds between retries  | `10`    |

## Uptime Statistics

For each health check, you'll see:

* **24h Uptime**: Last 24 hours
* **7d Uptime**: Last 7 days
* **30d Uptime**: Last 30 days
* **Response Time**: Average, min, max

## Public Status Pages

<Note>
  Requires PRO plan
</Note>

Share a public status page with your users:

1. Go to the health check settings
2. Enable "Public Status Page"
3. Copy the public URL

Your users can see uptime status without logging in.

## Incidents

When a health check fails, an incident is created:

* Start time
* Error message or status code
* Duration (when recovered)

View incident history in the Health Check details.

## Best Practices

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="What endpoint should I monitor?">
    Create a `/health` endpoint that checks critical dependencies:

    ```json theme={null}
    {
      "status": "ok",
      "database": "connected",
      "redis": "connected"
    }
    ```
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How often should I check?">
    * **Critical services**: Every 30 seconds
    * **Regular websites**: Every 60 seconds
    * **Non-critical**: Every 5 minutes
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What timeout should I use?">
    Set timeout higher than your typical response time. If your API responds in 500ms, use 5-10s timeout.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Limits

| Plan | Health Checks |
| ---- | ------------- |
| Free | 3             |
| PRO  | Unlimited     |