Frequently asked questions

Type the website’s address (for example, example.com) into the box on the home page and press Check. Within a couple of seconds we’ll tell you whether the site looks online or down, along with its response time. You can also jump straight to a result by visiting isdownoronline.com/example.com.

It means our server successfully connected to the website and received a normal response — technically, an HTTP status code in the 200–399 range. That indicates the site’s server is up and serving content. It does not guarantee every page or feature works, only that the site responded. See our guide to HTTP status codes for more.

A few things can cause this:

• Bot protection: some sites block automated requests, so our check is refused even though browsers get through.
• Geographic restrictions: the site may serve some regions but not the location our server checks from.
• Caching: your browser might be showing a stored copy of a page that’s actually offline at the source.
• Timing: outages can last seconds — the site may have recovered between your check and your browser load.

If a site loads fine for you, trust your own experience — it’s working for you.

If we can reach a site but you can’t, the problem is almost certainly on your end. Things like switching networks, flushing your DNS, disabling a VPN, or trying a different device usually pinpoint it. Our guide on whether a site is down for everyone or just you walks through each step.

Yes, completely free. There’s no account, no sign-up, and no limit on casual use. We keep the lights on with unobtrusive advertising, which you can read about in our Privacy Policy.

We keep anonymous, aggregate records of which domains have been checked so we can show "Recent" and "Popular" status lists and improve the tool. These records reflect the domains looked up, not who looked them up.

As a rough guide: under 300 ms is snappy, 300–1000 ms is normal, and consistently over a few seconds suggests the server is struggling even if it’s technically "up." Treat response times as a signal rather than an exact benchmark.

Yes. We check https by default, but if a site only serves over plain http, the checker supports that too. Most modern sites use https.

Besides bot protection and regional blocks, some servers reject requests that don’t look like a full browser, enforce strict rate limits, or sit behind security services that challenge automated visitors. In those cases our result reflects what the server told us, which may differ from your browser experience.