Spike detection

Learn how BugSnag’s error spike detection works.

Email, team notification and incident management integrations can be configured to alert you when the error rate on your project increases significantly. The spike detection is particularly useful in highlighting time critical issues in your app - for example a loss of connectivity to a database or a bad deploy.

How it works

BugSnag is constantly monitoring the rate of errors in each of your projects. The notification will be triggered when there is a significant increase in error rates that is sustained for at least 5 minutes.

When spike detection is configured with an error status filter, spikes may be triggered unexpectedly when errors change status.

What isn’t detected

Some scenarios will not trigger a spike to be detected:

A significant increase in occurrences of one individual error won’t necessarily trigger a notification, especially if there is a high background level of errors in your project.
Brief spikes lasting less than five minutes won’t trigger a notification.
Spikes will not be detected for the first two hours after configuration while a baseline error rate is established.