Check HTTP Status Codes with Curl

Learn how to check website HTTP status codes using curl for monitoring and scripting purposes.

Use curl to quickly check if a website is responding with a successful HTTP status code:

curl \
    --output /dev/null \
    --silent \
    --write-out "%{http_code}" \
    "https://decaf200.com"

• --output /dev/null: Discards the response body (we only want the status code)
• --silent: Suppresses progress meter and error messages
• --write-out "%{http_code}": Outputs only the HTTP status code
• The URL in quotes to handle special characters

For more robust monitoring, you can create a script that handles different scenarios:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

url="https://decaf200.com"
status_code=$(curl --output /dev/null --silent --write-out "%{http_code}" "$url")

if [[ "$status_code" -eq 200 ]]; then
    echo "✅ Site is up (HTTP $status_code)"
elif [[ "$status_code" -ge 400 ]]; then
    echo "❌ Site has issues (HTTP $status_code)"
else
    echo "ℹ️  Site returned (HTTP $status_code)"
fi