Downdetector tells you people are complaining. We tell you what the vendor says.
No crowd reports, just official status data.
Downdetector is a free public site that collects user reports of problems with consumer services, from banks to streaming apps to mobile networks. A spike in reports is often the first public sign that something is wrong. It is a useful site, and it answers a different question from ours.
Different sources
Downdetector counts reports from people who visit the site and say a service is not working. That reflects real user pain, including problems the company has not acknowledged. It can also reflect confusion, local network issues or a wave of reports after news coverage.
Outage Clock reads the vendor's own status page, which tells you what the vendor has confirmed and which components are affected. We add a basic reachability check of our own as a second signal.
Different audiences
Downdetector is built for the public checking a service they use. Outage Clock is built for teams who depend on a service inside their product and need an alert in Slack, not a page to refresh.
Side by side
| Outage Clock | Downdetector | |
|---|---|---|
| Data source | Official status pages plus our own check | User reports |
| Coverage focus | Cloud and SaaS services used by developers and IT | Consumer services, apps and networks |
| Component and region detail | Yes, as published by vendors | Limited to reported problem types |
| Alerts to Slack, Teams, webhook | Yes | Not its focus |
| Cost | Free for 5 vendors, then from $19/mo | Free public site |
Use both
If a consumer service your staff rely on breaks, Downdetector may show it first. If AWS, Stripe or your email API has a confirmed incident affecting the region you use, Outage Clock puts it in your team channel with the component name attached.
FAQ
Why not use crowd reports for developer services?
Most users of developer APIs never visit a public outage site, so report volumes are low. The vendor's own status page is the better signal for those.