What does 99.9% uptime actually mean?

A 99.9% SLA ("three nines") allows about 43.2 min of downtime per month, or roughly 8.8 hr per year. Moving to 99.99% ("four nines") cuts the allowed downtime to about 4.3 min per month.

What is a good SLA for a cloud service?

99.9% is the common baseline across the 53 vendors we tracked; 99.95%–99.99% is considered strong. Only 13 vendors publish a 99.99% or higher guarantee, and hyperscaler compute typically lands at 99.95%–99.99%.

Does the SLA percentage guarantee actual uptime?

No. An SLA is a contractual promise with service credits if breached — not a measurement of real availability. Actual measured uptime is often higher or lower than the SLA. PulsAPI tracks the real, observed uptime of these vendors so you can see the gap.

PulsAPI Research

Cloud SLA Benchmark 2026

Name: Cloud Vendor SLA Benchmark 2026
Creator: PulsAPI

We compiled the published SLAs of 53 major cloud vendors — from AWS and Stripe to the AI inference upstarts. The average promise is 99.908%, only 13 guarantee 99.99% or better, and most "nines" cost far more downtime than teams assume.

Last updated July 12, 2026 · Published SLA commitments, not measured uptime · Source-linked

99.908%Average published SLAacross 47 vendors with a formal SLA

13/53Promise 99.99%+four-nines or better

43.2 minAllowed downtime at 99.9%per month — the common baseline

99.995%Highest guaranteeMongoDB Atlas

What each "nine" really means

An SLA percentage is easy to nod at and hard to feel. Here is the maximum downtime each tier actually permits before the vendor owes you service credits.

SLA	Nickname	Downtime / month	Downtime / year
99.999%	Five nines	26 sec	5.3 min
99.99%	Four nines	4.3 min	52.6 min
99.95%	Three-and-a-half nines	21.6 min	4.4 hr
99.9%	Three nines	43.2 min	8.8 hr
99.5%	Two-and-a-half nines	3.6 hr	44 hr
99%	Two nines	7.2 hr	88 hr

How the 53 vendors stack up

99.99% and above

99.9% (three nines)

Below 99.9%

Published SLA by vendor

Cloud & Hosting

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
AWS (EC2)	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Vercel	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Netlify	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
DigitalOcean	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Google Cloud (GCE)	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Microsoft Azure (VMs)	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Heroku	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Render	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Fly.io	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Railway	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
CoreWeaveno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Lambda Labs	99.50%	3.6 hr/mo	SLA terms

AI & ML

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Groqno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Together AIno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Replicateno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Fireworks AIno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Modalno public SLA	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms

Data & Backend

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
MongoDB Atlas	99.995%	2.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Upstash	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Elastic Cloud	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Supabase	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Convex	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Cloudinary	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms

Developer Tools

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
GitHub	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Snyk	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Docker	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Atlassian (Jira/Confluence)	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Sentry	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Linear	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
ClickUp	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
SonarCloud	99.50%	3.6 hr/mo	SLA terms

Payments

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Stripe	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Shopify	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Square	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms

Communication

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Slack	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Postmark	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Twilio	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
SendGrid	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms
Zoom	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Mailchimp	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Intercom	99.50%	3.6 hr/mo	SLA terms

Identity & Security

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Auth0	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Okta	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Clerk	99.99%	4.3 min/mo	SLA terms
Kong Konnect	99.95%	21.6 min/mo	SLA terms

Monitoring

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Datadog	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
PagerDuty	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Grafana Cloud	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
New Relic	99.80%	1.4 hr/mo	SLA terms

Productivity

Vendor	SLA	Allowed downtime	Source
Notion	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Figma	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
HubSpot	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms
Zendesk	99.90%	43.2 min/mo	SLA terms

Methodology & the honest caveat

Figures are each vendor's publicly documented SLA for its primary service tier, linked to the source. A few vendors — mostly newer AI-infrastructure providers — publish no formal SLA; those are marked "no public SLA" at a 99.9% industry-baseline placeholder and are excluded from the published-average figure.

Most importantly: an SLA is a promise, not a measurement. Real observed uptime is routinely different from the contract. That gap — between what a vendor guarantees and what it actually delivers — is exactly what PulsAPI measures across 53+ services in real time.

Cite or share this benchmark

Free to reference and republish with attribution and a link back to this page. Journalists, analysts, and engineers — copy the citation below.

PulsAPI. (2026). Cloud SLA Benchmark 2026: What 50+ Cloud Vendors Actually Promise. Retrieved from https://www.pulsapi.com/reports/cloud-sla-benchmark

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