ℹ️ Help - I think httpstat.us is offline

[aaronpowell]

If you have a look through the issues here, you'll see a lot of issues about this.

First off - it sucks when the service is offline and you've been relying on that. You're going to lose time working out if it's your code or httpstat.us that's the problem and you're going to have to find a workaround.

But here's the thing, httpstat.us is run by just me, and it's run out of my personal Azure subscription - which means it is tied to my personal credit card. Yep, I'm on the hook for any charges that come down the line for it.

And the service generates an insane amount of traffic. Here's the requests graph for the last hour out of AppInsights (and at the time I'm writing this, we're offline again):

Yep, over 800k requests in less than an hour, the last 30 days reports nearly 600m (yes, million) requests. Maybe I'm reading AppInsights wrong (I'm not an expert on that part of Azure) but still, this is a crazy amount of traffic that is being consumed for free.

A few years ago I posted about a fair use policy - #97. I haven't gotten around to introducing it because the traffic patterns settled down and I didn't find an option to add that would be financially sustainable for me, but maybe it's time to revisit it.

I'm going to pin this issue and point all future "is it down" issues here, because yeah, I know it's down, it'll be back up again soon.

[GeorgeWL]

have you considered setting up Github Sponsors ? I've heard many open source devs find it helps alleviate costs

[aaronpowell]

I have considered it in the past but there's some complexities that it'd add to my life that I like to keep ignoring 🤣.

This isn't really a cost problem, it's more an abuse problem.

[pauliesnug]

@aaronpowell I wonder if it would be possible to do this with a free/static hosting solution?

[maor-rozenfeld]

Providing another URL for bots to abuse:

https://httpstatuses.maor.io/

https://httpstatuses.maor.io/200

https://httpstatuses.maor.io/500