How to Check If a Website Is Down (3 Methods)

When a website won't load, the first question is always the same: is it down for everyone, or just for me? The answer determines everything that follows. Here are three ways to find out, from fastest to most reliable.

Why "it's down" is often the wrong question

A website that won't load for you is not necessarily a website that is down. There are at least four distinct failure modes that all look identical from the user's perspective — a blank page or a "can't reach this site" error:

• The site really is down. Its servers are offline, overloaded, or being updated.
• Your internet is down. Your connection to your ISP is broken, or your Wi-Fi has dropped.
• Your DNS is failing. The system that translates domain names to IP addresses can't resolve the site.
• Something between you and the site is broken. A router, firewall, VPN, or content filter is blocking the request.

To figure out which one you're dealing with, you need to test the site from somewhere other than your own device. That's what the methods below do.

Method 1: The cache-busting tab

This is the fastest check, and it takes about five seconds. Open a new private or incognito window and try the site again with a query string appended to the URL:

https://example.com/?test=1

The ?test=1 part tells the browser to ignore any cached version of the page and fetch it fresh. If the site loads in the private window but not in your regular one, the problem is your browser — cached files, cookies, or an extension.

If it still fails in a private window, that rules out browser state. Move on to Method 2.

Method 2: Try a few unrelated sites

Before you blame the target site, check whether the problem is your connection. Open a few sites you know should be up:

• https://www.google.com
• https://www.wikipedia.org
• https://www.cloudflare.com

If none of them load, the problem is almost certainly your internet connection — not the site you're trying to reach. Restart your router, check whether you're connected to Wi-Fi, or try again on a different network (like your phone's cellular data).

If other sites load fine but the target site doesn't, keep going to Method 3.

Method 3: Use a status checker (the reliable one)

A status checker is a service that fetches the website from outside your network and reports back whether it succeeded. This is the only way to know for certain whether a problem is on your side or the site's side.

Here's how to use one:

1. Open a status checker — for example, SitePulse, which runs in your browser.
2. Type the site's address — for example, example.com.
3. Wait a second or two for the check to complete.
4. Read the result.

There are two possible outcomes:

• The checker also reports the site as down. The problem is on the site's end. Nothing you do on your device will fix it — you'll need to wait for the site's operators to bring it back.
• The checker reaches the site successfully. The problem is on your end. Your internet, DNS, browser cache, a VPN, or a firewall rule is preventing you from reaching a site that is otherwise fine.

Understanding the response

When a status checker reaches a website, it typically reports an HTTP status code. Those codes tell you exactly what happened:

• 200 OK — the site is up and responding normally.
• 301 / 302 Redirect — the site is up, but pointing to a different URL (usually the HTTPS version or a canonical domain).
• 403 Forbidden — the site is up, but refusing the request. Often due to bot protection (Cloudflare, AWS WAF).
• 404 Not Found — the server is up, but the specific page doesn't exist.
• 500 Internal Server Error — the server is up but something inside the application is broken.
• 502 Bad Gateway — an upstream server couldn't reach the application server. Usually temporary.
• 503 Service Unavailable — the server is up but can't handle the request right now (overload or maintenance).

Any 4xx or 5xx code means the site is up enough to respond, which is different from being fully functional. A 502 usually clears on its own. A 500 might persist until the site's developers fix a bug.

A note about bot protection

Some modern websites — particularly ones using Cloudflare, Akamai, or AWS WAF — block automated requests from third-party checkers even though the site is perfectly reachable from a human's browser. If a checker reports a site as down but you can open it in your browser without any trouble, the checker's result is inconclusive. The site isn't actually down.

This is a limitation of every automated status checker, including SitePulse. It's not a bug — it's a consequence of how bot protection works. When in doubt, trust what your own browser sees.

What to do when a site really is down

If the site is genuinely down, there's usually nothing you can do except wait. A few things that help:

• Check the site's social media. Most services post about outages on Twitter/X or a status page (often at status.example.com).
• Wait a few minutes and try again. Many outages are brief — a server restart, a network blip, or a failed deploy that gets rolled back.
• Use a cached version. Search for the page on Google and click the small arrow next to the result to see Google's cached copy — useful if you just need to read something.
• Use the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive at web.archive.org keeps historical snapshots of most popular sites.

If a site you rely on is down frequently, it's worth looking for an alternative. That's not something a status checker can help with, but it's the long-term answer.

Why we built SitePulse

Most status checkers are hosted services — you type a URL, and a server somewhere fetches it. That works, but it introduces a middleman and usually comes with ads or account requirements.

SitePulse runs the check from your own browser. It tries a direct request first, and if a site blocks cross-origin checks, it falls back to public CORS proxies. No account, no ads, no tracking. The result you see is the result your browser got, without a third-party service in between.