Add Real-Time API Status Badges to Your GitHub README (Free)

Every developer has been there: your app is broken, users are complaining, and you're scrambling to figure out if it's your code or an upstream API outage. What if your README told you at a glance?

Real-Time Status Badges

I built API Status Check to monitor 70+ popular APIs. One of the most useful features is free, embeddable status badges that update every 5 minutes — like shields.io badges, but for live API status.

Here's what they look like:

Green = operational. Yellow = degraded. Red = down. Updated automatically.

How to Add Them

Markdown (GitHub README, docs)

[![OpenAI Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/openai)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/openai)

HTML (websites, dashboards)

<a href="https://apistatuscheck.com/api/stripe">
  <img src="https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/stripe" alt="Stripe Status">
</a>

That's it. No API key, no signup, no rate limits.

Why This Is Useful

For open source maintainers: When users file issues saying "it's broken," a status badge immediately shows whether the problem is upstream. Saves hours of debugging.

For internal docs: Add badges to your Notion, Confluence, or wiki pages. Your on-call team sees at a glance if dependencies are healthy.

For status dashboards: Building a custom status page? Embed badges instead of maintaining your own monitoring for third-party services.

Example: Full Dependency Status Section

Here's a README section you can copy-paste:

## Service Dependencies

| Service | Status |
|---------|--------|
| OpenAI API | [![Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/openai)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/openai) |
| Stripe | [![Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/stripe)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/stripe) |
| GitHub | [![Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/github)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/github) |
| Vercel | [![Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/vercel)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/vercel) |
| Supabase | [![Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/badge/supabase)](https://apistatuscheck.com/api/supabase) |

Renders as a clean table with live status indicators.

Available APIs

We currently monitor 70+ APIs including:

AI/ML: OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google Gemini, Hugging Face, Replicate, Stability AI

Developer Tools: GitHub, Vercel, Netlify, Supabase, PlanetScale, Linear, Render

Infrastructure: AWS, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Fly.io, Docker Hub, npm

Payments: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Plaid

Communication: Twilio, SendGrid, Mailgun, Discord, Slack

SaaS: Shopify, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Datadog, Sentry

Full list with copy-paste embed codes: apistatuscheck.com/badges

How It Works Under the Hood

Each badge hits our /api/badge/[slug] endpoint, which:

1. Reads the latest monitor state (updated every 60 seconds)
2. Generates an SVG badge with the current status color
3. Returns it with a 5-minute cache header

The monitoring system checks official status pages and performs real endpoint checks to verify actual API health — not just what the status page says.

Self-Hosting? Try Better Stack

If you need to monitor your own APIs (not just third-party services), I recommend Better Stack. They combine uptime monitoring, incident management, and status pages in one platform. Their free tier is generous enough for most indie projects.

What's Next

• Status API endpoint — JSON response for programmatic status checks
• Webhook notifications — Get pinged when an API you depend on goes down
• Custom badge styles — Flat, flat-square, for-the-badge, and more

The badges and monitoring are completely free. No signup required.

👉 Browse all badges: apistatuscheck.com/badges 👉 Live dashboard: apistatuscheck.com

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Built by Shibley. If this saved you time, a GitHub star or share would mean a lot.