An uptime percentage is meaningful only when you know what is measured, over which period and with which exclusions. A 99.9% target is not a prediction of when your application will fail, and a 100% marketing guarantee is not proof that it never does.

Convert the Percentage Carefully

The arithmetic is downtime equals measurement period multiplied by one minus availability. For a hypothetical 30-day period:

Availability Downtime corresponding to the percentage
99% 7 hours 12 minutes
99.9% 43 minutes 12 seconds
99.95% 21 minutes 36 seconds
99.99% 4 minutes 19.2 seconds
99.999% 25.92 seconds

These are mathematical equivalents, not contract allowances. A monthly SLA should not be evaluated by taking an annual downtime total and assuming the provider can concentrate it in one month without consequence.

For a 365-day year, 99.9% corresponds to 8 hours 45 minutes 36 seconds. That number can illustrate scale, but only the actual contract determines how service availability and a claim are calculated.

Read the Service Definition

Does the SLA measure host reachability, network availability, storage access or the trading application itself? A VPS can be reachable while the terminal has disconnected or a strategy has stopped receiving data.

Check scheduled-maintenance exclusions, customer-caused incidents, third-party failures and the evidence required for a credit. Identify the claim deadline and how incidents must be reported. A brief homepage percentage is not enough to compare two providers fairly.

Credits Are Not Trading Insurance

As one concrete example, Hostinger's hosting agreement describes a monthly uptime commitment and a conditional hosting-fee credit. That remedy is distinct from compensation for a trading loss or a failed prop evaluation.

Read the selected provider's own contract rather than applying that example universally. A larger advertised percentage can still have exclusions or remedies that matter more than the extra decimal place.

Track Application Health Separately

Monitor the process, feed age, account connection and order acknowledgments. A public status page is useful for understanding reported incidents, but does not establish that your own instance or trading workload remained healthy.

Use a separate notification path and a documented response. Test whether you can inspect the account when the host is unavailable. External broker access and retained configuration backups can matter more during an incident than a headline uptime claim.

Evaluate Recovery

Ask what happens after a host failure and who restores the application. Test recovery in simulation, including account-state reconciliation before automation resumes. Automatic restart can create errors if the strategy assumes an empty account while orders or positions still exist.

There is no universal minimum uptime percentage that makes a trading setup safe. Required availability depends on the application, order location, account rules and the consequences of an interruption.

Key Takeaways

  • Match uptime arithmetic to the contract's measurement period.
  • Distinguish host availability from application health.
  • Fee credits are not compensation for trading outcomes.
  • Compare recovery procedures alongside availability claims.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 99.999% five minutes of guaranteed yearly downtime?

No. It is roughly five minutes as annual arithmetic, not a schedule or assurance about actual incidents.

Does a broker-held stop solve every outage risk?

No. Local strategy logic, access and execution conditions still matter.

How should I compare providers?

Use our VPS selection guide to request the same service definition, maintenance and recovery information.