API Monitoring: Catch Endpoint Failures Before Your Users Do
Your API is your product. PingWatchdog makes sure it is always responding.
For API-first companies, your API is the product. If an endpoint returns 500 errors or response times spike, your customers' applications break. PingWatchdog monitors your API endpoints for uptime, response time, and correct status codes, so you catch issues before your users open a GitHub issue.
The problem
An endpoint starts returning 500 errors. Your users notice before you do because they are the ones making the requests.
Response times creep up slowly over days. By the time users complain about slowness, the problem has been building for a week.
Your API is up but returning wrong data or incorrect status codes. A simple ping check says "up" but users are getting failures.
Different API endpoints have different criticality. Your health check endpoint might be fine while the payment processing endpoint is down.
How PingWatchdog solves it
Monitor specific API endpoints and validate that they return the expected HTTP status code (200, 201, 401, etc.)
Track response times over time and get alerted when they exceed your threshold, not just when they fail
Monitor from multiple regions so you can tell if the issue is global or specific to one geographic location
Use the PingWatchdog API to programmatically create and manage monitors as part of your infrastructure provisioning
How to set up in 2 minutes
Add your critical API endpoints as HTTP monitors with expected status codes
Set response time thresholds so you are alerted when performance degrades
Configure monitors for your authentication endpoint, data endpoints, and webhook receivers
Use the PingWatchdog API to auto-create monitors when you deploy new API versions
How teams use it
A developer platform runs an API used by mobile apps. They use PingWatchdog to monitor critical endpoints with 30-second checks and response time tracking. When a database migration causes query times to spike, PingWatchdog alerts on degraded response times before any end users report issues.
Frequently asked questions
Can PingWatchdog validate API response bodies?
PingWatchdog checks HTTP status codes and response times. For response body validation (checking that JSON contains expected fields), you would need a more advanced API testing tool. PingWatchdog tells you if the endpoint is reachable and fast, which catches most production issues.
What is the fastest check interval for API monitoring?
30 seconds on the Team plan. For most APIs, this is fast enough to catch issues before users notice. If you need sub-30-second monitoring, you would need an internal health check system alongside PingWatchdog.
Can I create monitors through the PingWatchdog API?
Yes. PingWatchdog is API-first. You can create, update, and delete monitors programmatically. This is useful for automating monitor creation when you deploy new services or endpoints.