Home » Products » API Monitoring

Catch Failing APIs Before They Break Your Product With Dotcom-Monitor API Monitoring

Dotcom-Monitor runs synthetic checks against every API your team depends on — REST, SOAP, GraphQL, Postman and Insomnia collections — from 30+ global locations. Chains multi-step workflows, validates every payload, and pages the right people the moment something breaks.

10,000+

Organizations Worldwide

99.99%

Platform Uptime SLA

30+

Global Monitoring Locations

Since 1998

Website Monitoring Leader

The basics

What Is API Monitoring?

Quick Answer

API monitoring is the continuous, automated practice of validating API endpoints for availability, response time, and data correctness — running synthetic requests from outside your infrastructure and alerting your team the moment any of those break. Unlike one-off tests, monitoring runs 24/7 on a fixed cadence from multiple global locations.

API monitoring is the practice of continuously validating your APIs’ availability, response times, and data correctness from outside your infrastructure. In modern architectures — where microservices, third-party integrations, and distributed systems depend on dozens of API calls per user session — a single endpoint failure can cascade into checkout failures, blocked logins, and broken data syncs.

There’s a meaningful difference between simple uptime checks and full API validation. An HTTP 200 doesn’t mean your API is working. A broken dependency can still return 200 while delivering incomplete or wrong data. Real API monitoring validates response payloads (JSONPath, XPath, schema), verifies authentication flows (OAuth, JWT, API keys), checks headers, and measures Time to First Byte alongside total response time — across REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and every other API protocol your team runs.

For complex workflows — login → fetch → mutate → confirm — multi-step transaction monitoring chains sequential API calls into a single monitor, validating each step before proceeding. Combined with alerting that routes failures into PagerDuty, Slack, or Teams, this ensures the entire user journey returns correct data within expected latency — not just isolated endpoints.

Choose your protocol or tool

Pick the API Surface You Need to Monitor

Each protocol has its own deep-dive page with setup guides, code samples, and use cases. Or just start a trial and we’ll auto-detect what you’re running.

REST

REST API Monitoring

JSON validation, schema assertions, multi-step chaining, OAuth/JWT. The workhorse spoke for any team running HTTP REST APIs.

SOAP

SOAP API Monitoring

WSDL import, XPath validation, SOAP 1.1/1.2 support, WS-Security. Built for enterprise, financial, and healthcare APIs.

GQL

GraphQL API Monitoring

Query-aware monitoring. Inspects the errors array and response data, since GraphQL returns 200 even on failure.

POSTMAN

Postman Collection Monitoring

Import Postman Collection v2.0/v2.1 JSON directly. Turn the API tests your team already maintains into 24/7 production monitors.

INSOMNIA

Insomnia Collection Monitoring

Import Insomnia v4 exports with full request details, environment variables, and auth configs preserved.

Looking for OAuth, JWT, mTLS, or other auth schemes? Every protocol above supports them — see the full auth matrix →

External references: learn more about REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and the API pattern itself.

Why teams pick us

API Monitoring Built for Engineers Who Answer Pages

Six things teams tell us they couldn’t do as cleanly with Datadog, Pingdom, Uptrends, or Postman Monitors.

30+ Global Locations

Run distributed checks from North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. Catch the regional CDN issue, the DNS propagation gap, the geo-routing fault.

99.99% Uptime Sla

Contractual uptime backed by 25+ years of monitoring infrastructure. Your monitoring tool itself never becomes the single point of failure.

Multi-Step Transactions

Chain login → fetch → mutate → confirm into one monitor. Pass tokens between steps, abort on first error, capture step-level logs.

Native PagerDuty, Slack, Teams

Route alerts directly into your incident tools — with diagnostic context, response payloads, and trace IDs in the first notification.

Private Agents (Behind Firewall)

Drop a lightweight agent inside your VPC to monitor internal microservices. Outbound connection only — no inbound firewall rules.

CI/CD & Monitors-As-Code

Trigger monitor runs from GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps. Gate releases on assertion results, latency, or availability.

Multi-step monitoring

Validate Real Workflows, Not Just Isolated Endpoints

A working /health check doesn’t prove your business logic still works. Chain real sequences — auth → fetch → mutate → verify — and validate every step. The moment the chain breaks, you know exactly where, why, and what the response looked like.

Pass variables between calls — tokens, IDs, and dynamic values flow automatically.
Per-step assertions — status, headers, schema, payload contents on each request.
Abort on first error — full per-step request/response logs captured.
Works across protocols — REST, SOAP, GraphQL, mixed chains.

Authentication

Every Auth Scheme Your APIs Actually Use

Production APIs don’t live behind one auth method. Dotcom-Monitor natively supports the full spread — and masks every secret in Secure Vault, so credentials never leak into logs or exported scripts.

OAuth 2.0 — Client Credentials, Authorization Code, Refresh Token flows.
JWT with automatic refresh, plus API Key, Basic, and Bearer Token.
Enterprise: NTLM, Kerberos, mTLS (Client Certificate), AWS Signature v4.
Custom headers for any proprietary auth scheme.

Global monitoring network

Checks That Run Where Your Users Live

Dotcom-Monitor operates its own monitoring infrastructure across 30+ locations on six continents — plus Private Agents you can deploy inside your VPC, behind firewalls, or on-prem to monitor internal microservices.

That means you catch the regional outage, the DNS propagation gap, the CDN misroute — not just the global ones.

30+

Global locations

Continents covered

1 min

Minimum check interval

Private Agents

For behind-firewall

Getting started

Define Endpoints & Assertions

Configure REST, SOAP, or GraphQL endpoints, headers, JSONPath/XPath assertions, and auth. Or import a Postman or Insomnia collection directly.

Schedule Synthetic Checks

Run checks at 1-, 3-, 5-, or 15-minute intervals from 30+ global locations across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America.

Track Uptime & Performance

Track availability %, P95/P99 response times, TTFB, DNS time, and error rates by HTTP status code across every monitored endpoint.

Receive Real-Time Alerts

Get alerted via email, SMS, Slack, PagerDuty, or Teams within seconds — with response time, status code, and validation failures attached.

Why it matters

The Hidden Cost of API Downtime

APIs power payments, authentication, inventory, financial transactions, and SaaS integrations. When they fail — even briefly — the impact is immediate.

Mttr Impact

Mean Time to Resolution

Without proactive monitoring, teams rely on customer reports to detect failures — adding 30–60 minutes to detection alone. Continuous synthetic monitoring shortens detection to under 60 seconds, enabling faster root-cause isolation.

Sla & Compliance Exposure

Contractual & regulatory risk

For B2B SaaS, FinTech, and healthcare, API downtime triggers SLA penalties, compliance violations, and audit findings. Documented uptime evidence is what defends SLA adherence in renewal conversations.

Revenue-Per-Minute Exposure

Direct financial impact

An e-commerce platform processing 100 orders/min at $50/order loses $25,000 per 5-minute outage. A failed checkout, payment authorization, or auth call halts conversion immediately.

Vendor accountability

Modern apps depend on Stripe, Auth0, Okta, Twilio. Even when your infrastructure is healthy, a degraded upstream can break checkout, login, and data sync. Monitor third-party endpoints to isolate fault origins.

Not ready for a trial?

Want a 15-Minute Walkthrough First?

A performance engineer will show you how to set up your first monitor in your environment — no sales pitch, just a working monitor by the end of the call. Direct calendar booking, no gatekeeping.

Compared to alternatives

Where API Monitoring Tools Win and Lose

A reference for buyers weighing options. We try to be fair — every tool has a job; this is where we fit.

Capability	Dotcom-Monitor	Postman Monitors	Pingdom / Uptime-only	Datadog Synthetics
Multi-step API chains with variable passing	Full	Partial
JSON / XML / XPath payload assertions			Limited
OAuth 2.0 + JWT auto-refresh		Manual	Limited
SOAP / WSDL / WS-Security				Partial
Private Agents (behind firewall)
30+ global monitoring locations		Limited
Import Postman / Insomnia collections		(Postman)
CI/CD gate-blocking via API		Partial
Free trial	30 days, full features	Paid plans	14 days	14 days

In production

What Teams Catch With Us They Couldn’t Catch Before

Malcolm Group

Built a full checkout-flow monitor with EveryStep Recorder that runs every 15 minutes — adds items, applies coupons, validates pricing, submits with a declined card to test payment logic end-to-end.

LuckyVitamin

Millions of monthly visitors across 50+ countries. Implemented Dotcom-Monitor synthetic + performance testing to safeguard checkout under peak load.

What customers say

The Teams Running Production APIs Say It Best

"I absolutely love the comprehensive monitoring services Dotcom-Monitor provides. The real-time alerts and detailed performance analytics have been a game-changer for our website's uptime and speed. The global monitoring feature ensures that our site is optimized everywhere, and the intuitive dashboard makes it easy to track performance. Their customer support is exceptional — always responsive and efficient."

Tomer C.

Managing Director · Facilities Services

Verified Capterra review · March 2025

"One of Dotcom's best features is the push/pull API capabilities that provide us with network performance data. We use this to monitor for performance issues as well as page loading stats. Dotcom-Monitor allows us to monitor multiple services within one interface and platform. It's allowed us to operate more efficiently."

Gregory S.

Manager · Broadcast Media

Verified Capterra review · May 2020

"I have been thoroughly impressed with the level of detail and comprehensiveness of the reports generated by the software. Moreover, the support team at Dotcom-Monitor has exceeded my expectations. On almost a daily basis, I reach out with various questions and they have consistently demonstrated unwavering patience, providing detailed and insightful answers."

Shirin R.

Software Test Engineer · Computer Software

Verified Capterra review · February 2023

"I'm a network analyst and use Dotcom tools inside the ISP I work, it's a really good and reliable tool for monitoring things along the network, and testing network components, I usually use it to make diagnostics of servers latency, and dns resolve time."

Leonardo J.

IT & Network Infrastructure Analyst Internet

Verified Capterra review · October 2022

4.5

Capterra

80 reviews

4.6

Ease of Use

Capterra Score reviews

4.6

Customer Service

Capterra Score reviews

All reviews sourced from Capterra verified reviews. Ratings as of January 2026.

Pricing

Start Free. Scale as Your APIs Grow.

Every plan includes REST API monitoring, synthetic checks, multi-step transactions, and uptime reporting. No hidden fees.

Free

Free Forever

API Monitoring Across Every Industry That Depends on Uptime

SAAS Providers

Monitor internal and third-party API dependencies to keep integrations returning correct data on time. Detect partner-API degradation before it cascades.

E-commerce

Track payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal), inventory systems, and shipping endpoints. A 5-min outage at checkout can cost tens of thousands during peak.

FinTech

Ensure financial APIs meet regulatory security and sub-second latency. Monitor transaction processing, KYC, and banking integrations to avoid failed transactions.

Healthcare

Monitor EHR APIs, insurance portals, and telemedicine platforms. Keep HIPAA-compliant data exchange endpoints available and responsive.

Enterprise IT

Validate cross-department API integrations — CRM, ERP, HR, communications. Detect cross-system failures before they disrupt internal workflows.

Media & Broadcast

Monitor content delivery APIs, streaming endpoints, and rights-management services. Validate that downstream consumers see correct data globally.

A common question

Synthetic API Monitoring vs. Logs & Traces — Which Do You Need?

The honest answer is both. They answer different questions. Here’s what each one is actually for.

Synthetic API Monitoring

Tests from outside — the way your customers experience your API
Catches DNS failures, TLS errors, CDN misroutes, network timeouts
Runs 24/7 from 30+ global locations, even during zero-traffic periods
Detects failures before customers do — proactive, not reactive

Logs, Traces, APM

The takeaway: Logs answer “what went wrong in our code?” Synthetic answers “can our customers actually use this API right now?” Teams with the lowest MTTR run both.

Best practices

What Good API Monitoring Looks Like

Seven things every team running production APIs should do — independent of which tool they pick.

Monitor From Multiple Geographic Locations

A single location can’t detect regional DNS failures, CDN misconfigurations, or geo-routing issues. Use at least 5 distributed locations.

Validate Payloads — Not Just Status Codes

An HTTP 200 doesn’t guarantee correctness. Use JSONPath or XPath assertions to verify response bodies have the expected structure and content.

Set Baseline-Derived Alert Thresholds

Static thresholds trigger false positives. Establish per-endpoint baselines, then alert at 2× the P95 response time.

Monitor Authentication Flows End-To-End

Token expiration, OAuth refresh failures, and cert rotation are common causes of outages. Include auth steps so credential issues get caught early.

Test Multi-Step Transactions

A single endpoint may pass while the full transaction fails. Multi-step monitors catch session, sequencing, and data-dependency failures.

Monitor Third-Party Dependencies Separately

Payment gateways, identity providers, and shipping APIs degrade independently. Dedicated monitors isolate whether failures are internal or external.

Include API Monitoring in CI/CD

Run post-deploy synthetic checks. Automated smoke tests catch schema changes, missing fields, and regressions before they reach users.

Frequently asked questions

What is API monitoring?

API monitoring is the continuous, automated practice of validating API endpoints for availability, response time, and data correctness from outside your infrastructure. Unlike one-off tests, monitoring runs 24/7 from multiple global locations on a fixed cadence — and alerts you the second any of those break.

What types of APIs can Dotcom-Monitor monitor?

REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and any HTTP/S API. Dotcom-Monitor also imports Postman and Insomnia collections directly, turning existing API tests into continuous production monitors.

What authentication methods are supported?

API Key, Basic Auth, OAuth 2.0 (Client Credentials, Authorization Code, Refresh Token), JWT with automatic refresh, Bearer Token, AWS Signature v4, NTLM, Kerberos, mTLS, and custom headers. Secrets are masked through the Secure Vault.

Can I chain multiple API calls into a single monitor?

Yes. Multi-step monitors pass tokens, IDs, and dynamic values between steps, validate each step independently, and abort the chain at the first failure with full per-step request/response logs.

Can I monitor APIs behind a firewall?

Yes. Deploy lightweight Private Agents inside your network — they initiate outbound connections, so no inbound firewall rules are required.

How is this different from uptime-only monitoring?

Uptime tools mark you green when a 200 comes back. We validate the actual response — JSON schema, headers, payload contents, latency percentiles, downstream chain success — so partial failures (the 200-but-broken kind) get caught.

How does API monitoring differ from APM?

API monitoring tests from outside (the user’s perspective). APM tracks internal behavior — code, database, server. Mature teams run both: synthetic for customer-facing checks, APM for root-cause debugging.

Can I integrate API monitoring into a CI/CD pipeline?

Yes. Trigger monitor runs via API from GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps. Gate the deploy on availability, latency, or assertion results to stop bad builds from reaching production.

How often can checks run?

As often as every minute per endpoint. We recommend 1-minute intervals for critical paths (login, checkout, payment) and 5- or 15-minute intervals for lower-priority endpoints.

What metrics matter most?

Availability % (target 99.9%+), response time (P95/P99), error rate (4xx + 5xx), TTFB, DNS resolution time, SSL handshake time, and throughput. Plus payload validation — the metric uptime tools miss entirely.

How often should I monitor a production API?

For revenue-impacting APIs (login, payment, checkout), every minute. For less critical endpoints, every 5 or 15 minutes is fine. The right cadence balances detection time against check-volume cost.

What is the difference between API monitoring and API testing?

Testing happens in development and CI to verify endpoints behave correctly before release. Monitoring runs continuously in production, tracking real-world availability, latency, and response accuracy over time. Testing catches bugs before deploy; monitoring catches failures, regressions, and degradation after deploy.

Does API monitoring replace APM?

No. API monitoring tests from outside (the user perspective). APM tracks internal behavior — code execution, database queries, server resources. Mature teams run both: synthetic for customer-facing checks, APM for root-cause debugging.

What is TTFB and why does it matter for APIs?

Time to First Byte measures the elapsed time from sending a request to receiving the first byte of response. From a synthetic client this includes DNS, TCP, TLS, and server processing — but not the time to transfer the body. High response time with low TTFB points to a large payload; high TTFB points to slow server processing.

How many monitoring locations do I need?

For global apps, at least 5 distributed locations covering your primary user regions. Typical baseline: North America East, North America West, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America. This catches regional CDN issues, DNS propagation gaps, and geo-routing anomalies that single-location monitoring misses entirely.

Catch the Next API Outage Before Your Users Do

30-day free trial. No credit card. Full platform access. Live in under five minutes.