Updog, a cheeky yet powerful dashboard from Datadog, uses AI to alert developers about outages across major platforms like AWS, OpenAI, and Slack — for free
Meet Updog: Datadog’s Answer to Downtime Frustration
Datadog, the cloud monitoring and security company, has launched a new free tool called Updog — and no, it’s not just a joke. With a clever nod to the classic “What’s updog?” gag, Datadog created a real-time dashboard that shows the operational status of key SaaS and cloud services including:
- AWS
- Cloudflare
- Slack
- OpenAI
- And dozens more
Developers and businesses alike can use Updog to quickly check whether a provider is down — no login or Datadog subscription required.
A Joke Turned into a Legit Tool
The name originated from a viral tweet: “You’re telling me that Datadog has an uptime monitoring product and they didn’t call it Updog?” Months later, Datadog engineer Tim Brown responded: “Here you go,” linking to the now-live Updog dashboard.
- The tool extends beyond Datadog’s paid platform, offering a public-facing service for general outage monitoring.
- It’s a developer-friendly utility wrapped in a playful brand — but with serious functionality under the hood.
Why Updog Matters
Recent incidents highlight why outage awareness tools are crucial. During a day-long AWS outage that disrupted banks, payments, and public services, early alerts could have helped teams respond faster.
Updog aims to:
- Surface outages early, sometimes even before official announcements.
- Allow teams to troubleshoot proactively, rather than reactively.
- Serve as a centralized status checker for cloud-dependent businesses.
AI Is What Sets Updog Apart
While many status dashboards rely on manual updates, Updog leverages AI to analyze telemetry data in real time. This means:
- Detection of subtle anomalies before full outages occur.
- Faster recognition of service degradations across cloud environments.
For example, Datadog shared that Updog detected an Amazon DynamoDB degradation 32 minutes before AWS updated its own status page — a critical lead time for engineers managing cloud infrastructure.
How It Works and Who It’s For
Updog is accessible to anyone — no sign-up required. It aggregates public telemetry and status information, enhanced with Datadog’s internal AI-driven systems, to provide:
- A clean, constantly updated dashboard
- Early visibility into potential disruptions
- Simple, shareable URLs for teams to track outages collectively
Ideal for:
- Developers
- SREs (Site Reliability Engineers)
- IT teams
- Product managers
- Startups and enterprises relying on third-party SaaS tools
Updog vs. Paid Datadog Monitoring
To clarify: Updog is not a full-featured monitoring solution. It complements Datadog’s premium platform, which offers:
- Custom observability tools
- In-depth metrics and tracing
- End-to-end infrastructure visibility
But Updog is a lightweight, public-facing utility that fills the need for simple, instant outage checks.
