---
description: Learn about create monitor in this guide.
title: Create monitor
image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/og-docs.png
---

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# Create monitor

Last updated Aug 24, 2026|Copy as Markdown|[View as Markdown](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/load-balancing/setup/create-monitor/index.md)|[Agent setup](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/agent-setup/)

Instead of starting on your production domain, you likely should create a load balancer on a test or staging domain. This may involve temporary changes to your monitors and pools, depending on your infrastructure setup.

Starting with a test domain allows you to verify everything is working correctly before routing production traffic.

**Set up the monitor** 

You can create a monitor within the [load balancer workflow](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/load-balancers/create-load-balancer/) or in the **Monitors** tab:

1. Go to **Load Balancing**.
2. Select the **Monitors** tab.
3. Select **Create monitor**.
4. Add the following information:  
  * **Type**: The protocol to use for health monitors  
    * _Non-enterprise customers_: Choose **HTTP**, **HTTPS**, or **TCP**.
    * _Enterprise customers_: Choose **HTTP**, **HTTPS**, **TCP**, **UDP ICMP**, **ICMP Ping**, or **SMTP**.
  * **Path**: The endpoint path to run health monitor requests against
  * **Port**: The destination port for health monitors
5. For additional settings, select **Advanced health monitor settings**:  
  * **Interval**:  
    * By increasing the default, you can improve failover time, but you may also increase load on your endpoints.
    * Minimum time in seconds is 60 (Pro), 15 (Business), and 10 (Enterprise).
  * **Timeout** and **Retries**:  
    * The health monitor request will return unhealthy if it exceeds the duration specified in **Timeout** (and exceeds this duration more times than the specified number of **Retries**).
  * **Expected Code(s)**: The expected HTTP response codes listed individually (`200`, `302`) or as a range (for example, entering `2xx` would cover all response codes in the `200` range).
  * **Response Body**:  
    * Looks for a case-insensitive substring in the response body.
    * Make sure that the value is relatively static and within the first 10 KB of the HTML page.
  * **Simulate Zone**:  
    * It is recommended to use the same zone in which the Load Balancer exists.
    * Changes the egress zone settings of a health monitor request to ensure compatibility with features like [Authenticated Origin Pulls (mTLS)](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/origin-configuration/authenticated-origin-pull/), [Argo Smart Routing](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/argo-smart-routing/), [Bring your own CA (mTLS)](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/client-certificates/byo-ca/), [Dedicated CDN Egress IPs](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/), and [HTTP/2 to Origin](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/speed/optimization/protocol/http2-to-origin/).
  * **Follow Redirects**:  
    * Instead of reporting a `301` or `302` code as unhealthy, the health monitor request follows redirects to the final endpoint.
  * **Configure Request Header(s)**:  
    * Useful if your endpoints are expecting specific incoming headers.
  * **Header**:  
    * The HTTP request headers to send in the health monitor. It is recommended that you set a Host header by default. The User-Agent header cannot be overridden. This parameter is only valid for HTTP and HTTPS monitors.
6. Select **Save**.

Note

To increase confidence in pool status, you can also increase the `consecutive_up` and `consecutive_down` fields when [creating a monitor with the API](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/load%5Fbalancers/subresources/monitors/methods/create/).

To become healthy or unhealthy, monitored endpoints must pass this health monitor request the consecutive number of times specified in these parameters.

**Prepare your servers**

Make sure that your firewall or web server does not block or rate limit your configured health monitors or requests associated with [Cloudflare IP addresses ↗](https://www.cloudflare.com/ips).

Each health monitor has the HTTP user-agent of `"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Cloudflare-Traffic-Manager/1.0; +https://www.cloudflare.com/traffic-manager/; pool-id: $poolid)"`, where the `$poolid` is the first 16 characters of the [associated pool](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/).

Caution

If you know that your endpoint is healthy but Load Balancing is reporting it as unhealthy, refer to our [Monitor troubleshooting guide](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/troubleshooting/load-balancing-faq/#why-is-my-endpoint-or-pool-considered-unhealthy).

**Set up the monitor** 

For a full list of monitor properties, refer to [Create Monitor](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/load%5Fbalancers/subresources/monitors/methods/create/). If you need help with API authentication, refer to [Cloudflare API documentation](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/api/).

Required API token permissions

At least one of the following [token permissions](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/api/reference/permissions/) is required:
* `Load Balancing: Monitors and Pools Write`

```bash
curl "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/$ACCOUNT_ID/load_balancers/monitors" \
	--request POST \
	--header "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN" \
	--json '{
		"type": "https",
		"description": "Login page monitor",
		"method": "GET",
		"path": "/health",
		"header": {
				"Host": [
						"example.com"
				],
				"X-App-ID": [
						"abc123"
				]
		},
		"port": 8080,
		"timeout": 3,
		"retries": 0,
		"interval": 90,
		"expected_body": "alive",
		"expected_codes": "2xx",
		"follow_redirects": true,
		"allow_insecure": true,
		"consecutive_up": 3,
		"consecutive_down": 2,
		"probe_zone": "example.com"
	}'
```

The response contains the complete definition of the new monitor.

```json
{
  "success": true,
  "errors": [],
  "messages": [],
  "result": {
    "id": ":monitor-id",
    "created_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z",
    "modified_on": "2021-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z",
    "type": "https",
    "description": "Login page monitor",
    "method": "GET",
    "path": "/health",
    "header": {
      "Host": [
        "example.com"
      ],
      "X-App-ID": [
        "abc123"
      ]
    },
    "port": 8080,
    "timeout": 3,
    "retries": 0,
    "interval": 90,
    "expected_body": "alive",
    "expected_codes": "2xx",
    "follow_redirects": true,
    "allow_insecure": true,
    "consecutive_up": 3,
    "consecutive_down": 2,
    "probe_zone": "example.com"
  }
}
```

**Prepare your servers**

Make sure that your firewall or web server does not block or rate limit your configured health monitors or requests associated with [Cloudflare IP addresses ↗](https://www.cloudflare.com/ips).

Each health monitor has the HTTP user-agent of `"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Cloudflare-Traffic-Manager/1.0; +https://www.cloudflare.com/traffic-manager/; pool-id: $poolid)"`, where the `$poolid` is the first 16 characters of the [associated pool](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/).

Caution

If you know that your endpoint is healthy but Load Balancing is reporting it as unhealthy, refer to our [Monitor troubleshooting guide](https://docs-durable-objects-instance-replaced-errors.previews.developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/troubleshooting/load-balancing-faq/#why-is-my-endpoint-or-pool-considered-unhealthy).

Example monitor configuration

| Field            | Value     |
| ---------------- | --------- |
| Type             | HTTP      |
| Path             | /         |
| Port             | 80        |
| Interval         | 60        |
| Method           | GET       |
| Timeout          | 5 seconds |
| Retries          | 2         |
| Expected Code(s) | 200       |

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