How do I get notified when an API goes down?

The simplest uptime monitor is a curl on a timer. You hit the endpoint, check the status code, and if it's not what you expect, you send yourself a push. Because your Lert link is the credential, the alerting half takes one line — no dashboard, no monitoring service, no API key to store on the box.

The entire setup — under 30 seconds

1. Download the app. Open it once. There's no account to create, and your private link is waiting on screen.
2. Copy your link. One tap copies something like https://lert.dev/p/your-id.
3. Add the healthcheck to cron. Curl the endpoint every minute; POST to your link if the status isn't 200.

Then your phone buzzes — instantly, even locked in your pocket.

The healthcheck script

#!/usr/bin/env bash
URL="https://api.example.com/health"
LERT="https://lert.dev/p/your-id"

code=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" --max-time 10 "$URL")

if [ "$code" != "200" ]; then
  curl -s -X POST "$LERT" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"title\":\"API down\",\"body\":\"$URL returned $code\",\"tag\":\"uptime\"}"
fi

Schedule it in crontab with * * * * * /path/to/check.sh to run every minute. A timeout or connection refusal makes curl return a non-200 code too, so a hard outage triggers the same alert. Add a flag file if you'd rather be pinged once per outage instead of every minute.

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It's free for one channel and 50 notifications a day; Lert Pro is $2.99/month for unlimited. See the docs for the full API, or the answers index for more recipes.