Downdetector vs Tallwatch

Downdetector collects user reports and monitors other online sources so consumers can check service status and businesses can see when customers report problems. It identifies an incident when reports rise significantly above the average for that time of day over the prior six months, and updates monitored service status every four minutes. Downdetector says it covers over 36,000 services in 72 countries and processes tens of millions of reports each month. Consumers can use the Free plan for up to five favorites, with outage notifications through the Speedtest app subject to daily limits. Pro costs $13.99 a month and allows up to 10 favorites, offers more daily notifications and removes ads on the web and in the Speedtest app. For organizations, Explorer has a real-time dashboard for multiple services, configurable alerts, geographic breakdowns and historical analysis. Communicate lets companies post customizable status updates for affected customers. Downdetector is available on Android, iOS, web and API, and mobile access is also available in Speedtest. A free trial is listed.

Tallwatch monitors websites and APIs from multiple regions and opens an incident when at least two regions report the same failure in a check round. Check types include HTTP, keyword, ping, TCP, DNS, SSL, and heartbeat, with probes in Virginia, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, São Paulo, and Oregon. Alerts can be routed to email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, Discord, PagerDuty, and signed webhooks. On-call rotations and escalation policies direct incidents to responders until acknowledgment. Public or private status pages can use a custom domain and include incident history and email or RSS subscribers. Developers can manage monitors and triage incidents using a REST API, CLI, or hosted MCP endpoint. The CLI runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows and can import monitors from UptimeRobot. The free plan includes 10 monitors and 60-second checks from three regions. Pro costs $11.99 a month billed annually, or $14.99 a month billed monthly; Business is $19.99 a month billed annually, or $24.99 a month billed monthly. Tallwatch says it does not publish a formal customer uptime SLA with automatic credits.