{"id":555,"date":"2019-02-24T05:29:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T05:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uptimerobot.com\/blog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2025-11-13T15:06:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T15:06:02","slug":"a-change-in-handling-http-401-statuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uptimerobot.com\/blog\/a-change-in-handling-http-401-statuses\/","title":{"rendered":"A Change in Handling HTTP 401 Statuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Uptime Robot<\/strong> treats all HTTP statuses equally. They mean either up or down&#8230; <strong>except HTTP 401<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>HTTP 401 is expected in some situations and not expected in others. Currently, HTTP 401 is handled as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If auth info is mentioned in monitor&#8217;s settings but HTTP 401 is returned, monitor is marked as down<\/li>\n<li>if no auth info is mentioned but HTTP 401 is returned, it is marked as up<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which\u00a0looked like the best way at the early days of <strong>Uptime Robot<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, there are edge cases on both scenarios like &#8220;a monitor\u00a0with no auth info returning HTTP 401&#8221; may also mean that the site\/server is experiencing configuration issues and this must be detected as down.<\/p>\n<h3>The change<\/h3>\n<p>As there is now\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/uptimerobot.com\/blog\/custom-http-statuses-a-new-feature-for-the-pro-plan\/\">a Pro Plan feature to customize HTTP statuses<\/a>, <strong>Uptime Robot will start treating HTTP 401 just like other HTTP statuses<\/strong> (which are equal to or bigger than 400):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>will be considered as down by default no matter auth info exists or not<\/li>\n<li>if needed, it\u00a0will be customizable with the HTTP status customization feature.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This change will give room to handling this HTTP status however preferred and <strong>the change is planned to go live on 1 March 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uptime Robot treats all HTTP statuses equally. They mean either up or down&#8230; except HTTP 401. HTTP 401 is expected in some situations and not expected in others. Currently, HTTP 401 is handled as: If auth info is mentioned in monitor&#8217;s settings but HTTP 401 is returned, monitor is marked as down if no auth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_is_featured_guide":false,"_post_views":18,"_reading_completions":49,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,14],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","tag-4","tag-http"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Change in Handling HTTP 401 Statuses | UptimeRobot Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UptimeRobot now treats HTTP 401 status as down by default, giving you clearer error detection and more control via custom status rules.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uptimerobot.com\/blog\/a-change-in-handling-http-401-statuses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Change in Handling HTTP 401 Statuses | UptimeRobot Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"UptimeRobot now treats HTTP 401 status as down by default, giving you clearer error detection and more control via custom status rules.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/uptimerobot.com\/blog\/a-change-in-handling-http-401-statuses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"UptimeRobot Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-24T05:29:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-13T15:06:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta 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