Softonic

Website Down Checker

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Before you blame your provider or open a support ticket, get a second opinion. This checker sends one request to the URL from our server in Europe, completely separate from your network, and tells you whether the site answered. If it responds from our server but not in your browser, the problem is almost certainly on your side (DNS cache, ISP routing, VPN or firewall). If our server cannot reach it either, the outage is on the site, not on you.

How to check if a website is down

  1. 1

    Enter the URL

    Type or paste any public web address. Private intranet and local addresses cannot be reached.

  2. 2

    Run the check

    We send one request to the site from our server in Europe and wait up to 10 seconds for an answer.

  3. 3

    Read the result

    You get UP or DOWN, the HTTP status code, the response time in milliseconds and the server IP that answered.

  4. 4

    Compare with your browser

    If our server reaches the site but you cannot, the fault is local to you; if neither can, the site is down.

What “up” and “down” mean here

“UP” means the site answered our request with a normal HTTP status (200 to 499), so the server is reachable and responding. “DOWN” means it did not answer at all (a timeout or a refused connection) or it returned a 5xx server error. A redirect (301 or 302) or even a 404 still counts as reachable: the server is alive, it just did not serve that exact page. The checker asks only for the page’s headers, not the full page, so it is fast and light; it can confirm the server answered, but not whether the page looks right in a browser.

What you see What it usually means What to try
DOWN, no status DNS failure, connection refused or timeout Wait and retry; check the domain
HTTP 5xx Server is up but failing on every request It is the site’s problem; wait
HTTP 403 / 429 Reachable, but blocking automated requests Often bot protection, not an outage
HTTP 4xx (e.g. 404) Reachable, but that page moved or is gone Check the exact URL
UP, but slow (high ms) Degraded, not technically down The site is under load
UP with 200 Fully reachable from our server If you can’t load it, it’s local

If our server cannot reach it either

  • Note the HTTP status. A 503 usually means the site is restarting or throttling; Cloudflare’s 520 to 524 codes mean the origin behind Cloudflare is misbehaving.
  • If there is no status at all, it is a DNS or connection problem: the domain may have a nameserver issue or the server is completely offline.
  • An expired or invalid TLS certificate also makes the check fail. Certificate expiry is a surprisingly common cause of outages, especially after a long weekend.

If it works from our server but not for you

  • Flush your local DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns on Windows, sudo dscacheutil -flushcache on macOS).
  • Try a different DNS resolver such as 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1.
  • Switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data to rule out your local network and ISP.
  • Check any VPN or corporate proxy, which often block specific sites.

One check, from one place

This tool checks from a single location, our server in Europe, at the moment you click. That is exactly what you need to separate a real outage from a local problem, but it is not continuous monitoring and it cannot test your own country or your exact network. To watch a site over time, use our companion uptime probe or a dedicated monitoring service.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our server requests the page from a data centre, without your cookies or your IP address. Some sites behind aggressive bot protection (for example Cloudflare or DataDome) refuse anonymous requests from data-centre IPs while still serving normal visitors. That shows up as a 403 or a failure here even though the site works for you.

No. The check runs from a single server in Europe. That is enough to give you an independent second opinion, but it is not a global multi-location test. If a site is blocked or slow only in one region, a single European check will not reveal that.

No. The checker can only reach public internet addresses; private and local addresses are blocked for security. For internal systems, run a monitor inside your own network.

No. The address is used only to run the single check and is not saved. We keep anonymous counts of how often the tool is used, but not the addresses you enter.

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