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Traces

Service Error Ratio

Updated Nov 3, 2026 · 1d ago

Watches the share of each service's own requests that fail, and tells you when that share rises well above its normal level.

Example alert

cart: EmptyCart failed 5 of 15 requests in 02:43-02:48Z (normal is under 0.5%)

Exact wording varies, because the detector generates titles from the anomaly it finds. This is representative of what an alert looks like when it fires.

How it works

Counts failed server spans per service and per main operation, using the span error status, so a service that returns HTTP 200 on a failed call is still counted. It compares each 5-minute window over the last 30 minutes with a budget learned from that service's clean hours, and needs at least 5 failed requests and a 2% failure share before it fires. Late spans still count, because long failed calls can arrive many minutes after they start. It sends a warning and never pages on its own.

Availability

Runs on these tiers:

TrialTeamGrowthCustom

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Related detectors

  • Trace Latency Break

    Catches a service whose request latency regressed against its own past, with the whole distribution shifted slower.

  • Trace Tail Shift

    Catches partial degradation: most requests are fine but a slice falls off a cliff. The tail blows up while the median holds.

  • Trace Error Origin

    Walks the span graph to find the origin service of an error cascade: where the failure started, rather than the services that merely reported it.

  • Trace Throughput Drop

    Catches a service whose request volume collapsed (crashed, deadlocked, or off the load balancer) when no slow or error spans give it away.

  • Trace New Operation

    Flags a service serving an operation it never served before: an unannounced deploy, a new endpoint, or a client calling a new path.

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