Check If a Website Is Down

How to use it

1. Run the live check on the address.
2. Open the site on your phone using mobile data.
3. Test it with curl and nslookup if you are comfortable with a terminal.
4. Change one thing at a time on your own device until it loads.

Check if a website is down in five steps

An online check answers the main question in seconds. These manual tests answer the follow-up: if the site works for others, what is wrong on your side? Do them in this order, because each one rules out a larger part of the path between you and the site.

1. Use a different network

Turn Wi-Fi off on your phone and open the address over mobile data. This single test splits the problem in two. If the page loads, the site and your phone are fine, and the cause is your home network or the computer you used before. If it does not load, the site is probably down or blocked for everyone in your area.

2. Ask for the headers with curl

On Windows 10 and 11, macOS and Linux, curl is already installed. Open a terminal and run:

curl -I https://example.com

The first line of the answer is the status. HTTP/2 200 means the page is served. HTTP/2 503 means the server is overloaded or in maintenance. If curl prints Could not resolve host, your device cannot find the address, which points to DNS. If it prints Connection timed out, packets are not getting through, which points to a firewall, a routing problem or an outage.

3. Look up the address with nslookup

nslookup example.com
nslookup example.com 8.8.8.8

The first line asks your usual DNS server and the second asks Google's public resolver. If the second one returns an address and the first does not, your DNS server is the problem. Switching your device or router to a public resolver, or flushing the DNS cache, usually fixes it. If both fail, the domain itself may have expired or lost its records.

4. Skip ping

Ping sends a different kind of packet, and many sites and firewalls drop it. A failed ping proves nothing. If it succeeds, you have reached the machine, which is useful, but it still does not show that the web server on it works.

5. Read the browser's error

The message in the browser narrows it down more than people expect. Chrome codes such as ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED point to DNS, ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT to a blocked or dead route, and ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID to a certificate or your device clock. The full guide to these messages explains each one.

Reading the result against your own tests

Other signs that a site is down

Search the name of the service together with the word outage. If thousands of people are posting about it at the same moment, it is not you. Most large services also publish a status page, and ours link to it from every service page. Smaller sites rarely have one, so a quick look at their social accounts is worth a minute.

Check the time as well. Sites that go into scheduled maintenance often do it at night in their home time zone, which can be the middle of the afternoon for you. A 503 with a maintenance message is not a fault, only a closed door.

What not to do

Do not reinstall the browser, reset the router and change DNS servers all at once. If it starts working, you will not know which change fixed it, and you may have broken something else. Also avoid downloading "fix it" tools from search results. Everything on this page uses programs that come with your system.