What types of monitors does UpCanary support?
Learn how UpCanary monitors work - check types, intervals, regions, and how outages are detected.
Monitors are the core of UpCanary. Each monitor is a scheduled check that tests a specific service from multiple global locations and alerts you when something goes wrong.
What Monitors Do
A monitor runs on a configurable schedule - every 30 seconds, every minute, every 5 minutes, and so on. Each time a check runs, UpCanary sends a request (or probe) from your selected regions, evaluates the response against your configured expectations, and records the result.
If the result is unexpected - a wrong status code, a closed port, a certificate about to expire - UpCanary marks the monitor as Down or Degraded and fires your configured notifications.
Every check consumes 1 credit, regardless of how many regions run it.
Check Types
UpCanary supports four monitor types, each suited to a different kind of service:
HTTP / HTTPS
The most common check type. UpCanary makes an HTTP request to your URL and verifies the response.
- Supports all HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
- Assert on status code (e.g., must return 200)
- Assert on response body (e.g., must contain
"status":"ok") - Follow redirects with configurable max hops
- Verify SSL certificate validity
- Optional SSL certificate expiry and domain expiry checks (run on a fixed 24-hour schedule, no extra credits)
Full HTTP / HTTPS documentation →
TCP
Tests whether a TCP port is open and optionally validates the response after sending data.
- Works for any TCP-based service: databases, mail servers, game servers, custom protocols
- Optionally send data after connecting and match the expected response
- Detects port closures, firewalls blocking traffic, and service crashes
DNS
Verifies that a domain name resolves to the expected value.
- Supports A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS, and SOA record types
- Optionally query a specific nameserver
- Detects DNS hijacking, misconfigured records, and propagation failures
Ping
Sends an ICMP echo request (ping) to a host and checks for a response.
- Simplest check - tests basic network reachability
- Useful for servers, routers, and network equipment that don’t expose HTTP
- Note: Ping only confirms reachability, not application health. Use HTTP for web services.
SSL & Domain Expiry (HTTP Monitor Feature)
SSL certificate and domain expiry monitoring are features of HTTP monitors, not separate check types. When enabled on an HTTP monitor, they run on a fixed 24-hour schedule and consume no additional credits.
- Set a warning threshold (e.g., alert 30 days before expiry)
- Set a critical threshold (e.g., alert 7 days before expiry)
- Prevents unexpected certificate or domain expiration outages
Full SSL & Domain Expiry documentation →
How Checks Run Across Regions
When a monitor check fires, UpCanary runs it from every region you’ve selected - up to 6 global locations simultaneously. This gives you:
- Geographic coverage - detect outages that only affect certain parts of the world
- Per-region response times - see if your CDN or load balancer is performing evenly
- Consensus-based alerting - avoid false positives from regional network blips
UpCanary’s multi-region consensus means an alert only fires when 2 or more regions independently confirm the service is down. One region failing to connect won’t wake you up at 3am.
See Monitoring Regions for the full list of available regions and how consensus works.
Check Intervals
Monitors can be configured to check as frequently as every 30 seconds or as infrequently as every hour. The right interval depends on how critical the service is and how many credits you want to spend.
| Interval | Checks per Month | Recommended For |
|---|---|---|
| 30 seconds | ~2,592,000 | Critical payment flows, high-SLA APIs |
| 1 minute | ~43,800 | Production APIs and core services |
| 5 minutes | ~8,640 | Standard websites and staging environments |
| 10 minutes | ~4,320 | Internal tools and non-critical services |
| 1 hour | ~720 | Domain health, DNS records, certificate checks |
See Check Intervals & Credits for the full interval list and credit math.
Monitor States
Each monitor has one of three states at any given time:
- Up - all checks are passing as expected
- Degraded - checks are returning unexpected results but the service is technically reachable (e.g., wrong status code, slow response)
- Down - the service is unreachable or failing checks from 2+ regions