Interpreting Uptime Percentages

Interpreting Uptime Percentages

Uptime percentage is one of the most important metrics for your websites.

How It's Calculated

Uptime is calculated as:

Uptime % = (Successful checks / Total checks) x 100

For example, if your site had 2,880 checks in 24 hours (checking every 30 seconds) and 3 were down, your uptime would be:

(2877 / 2880) x 100 = 99.90%

Uptime Cards

On the monitor detail page, you'll see uptime cards showing:

  • 24-hour uptime — last day
  • 7-day uptime — last week
  • 30-day uptime — last month

While data is loading, these cards show a loading spinner (not placeholder values).

What the Numbers Mean

Uptime Annual Downtime Rating
99.99% About 52 minutes Excellent
99.9% About 8.7 hours Good
99.5% About 1.8 days Acceptable
99% About 3.6 days Needs improvement
Below 99% Over 3.6 days Poor

Tips

  • Most SLAs target 99.9% or higher
  • Brief downtimes (caught and resolved quickly) have minimal impact on the percentage
  • Blimey's monitoring is designed to provide accurate uptime data you can rely on
Last updated on March 5, 2026