--- title: "How does API endpoint degradation alerting work? —…" description: "Lemwatch compares each endpoint's current response time against a rolling 24-hour baseline and alerts when it degrades by 2× or more." canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/help/api-endpoint-degradation" source: "https://lemwatch.com" --- # How does API endpoint degradation alerting work? > Lemwatch compares each endpoint's current response time against a rolling 24-hour baseline and alerts when it degrades by 2× or more. ## Quick answer Each endpoint keeps a 24-hour rolling average response time. If the current p50 goes above 2× baseline for 3 consecutive checks, we open a degradation incident. ## Why not a hard millisecond threshold? APIs have wildly different normal ranges. A 500 ms baseline API paged at 500 ms is fine; a 50 ms baseline API at 500 ms is broken. Baseline math catches both. ## Where to find it in Lemwatch **Site → API Endpoints → → Alerts**. ## FAQ ### Can I set a hard cap too? Yes — the "max response time" field overrides baseline logic. ### How long until a new endpoint gets a baseline? 24 hours of data. Until then only status-code alerts fire. ## Related - API endpoint monitoring ## Related - [Help centre](https://lemwatch.com/help) - [API Endpoint Monitoring](https://lemwatch.com/help/api-endpoint-monitoring) - [How do I monitor a JSON API endpoint?](https://lemwatch.com/help/monitor-json-api-endpoint) - [How does Lemwatch detect DNS record changes?](https://lemwatch.com/help/dns-change-monitoring) - [How does Lemwatch track SSL certificate expiry?](https://lemwatch.com/help/ssl-expiry-tracking) - [Lemwatch pricing](https://lemwatch.com/pricing) - [API Authentication](https://lemwatch.com/help/api-authentication)