# ping

Tells whether the **server is up**.

- **Route:** `POST /api/v2/system/ping`, and `GET` as well
- **Category:** `system`
- **Authentication:** none, the route is public
- **Answer:** a single JSON envelope

Ping answers as soon as the server runs, **without touching the data**, which makes it the route for **liveness and readiness probes** and for **load balancers**, see **[Logging and Monitoring](/docs/eventsourcingdb/logging-and-monitoring)**. It needs **no API token** and ignores one that is sent, so it does not tell whether a token is valid; **[verify-token](/docs/eventsourcingdb/api/verify-token)** does. For the state of the database itself, ask **[health](/docs/eventsourcingdb/api/health)**.

## Request

The route takes **no body**, and ignores one that is sent. Besides `POST`, it answers `GET`, which load balancers and probes send:

```shell
curl \
  -X POST \
  http://localhost:3000/api/v2/system/ping
```

## Answer

The answer is a **single envelope** of the type `event`, which holds a **[CloudEvent](/docs/eventsourcingdb/cloud-events)** of the type `io.eventsourcingdb.api.ping-received`. Its `data` holds a `message`, which is always the same.

The request above is answered with:

```json
{
  "type": "event",
  "data": {
    "specversion": "1.0",
    "id": "01a180c6-b266-70ee-bf1f-ab2d018a02e4",
    "source": "https://www.eventsourcingdb.io",
    "type": "io.eventsourcingdb.api.ping-received",
    "subject": "/api/v2/system/ping",
    "time": "2026-10-28T04:31:07.878046Z",
    "datacontenttype": "application/json",
    "data": {
      "message": "My God, it's full of stars."
    }
  }
}
```

## Status Codes

The server answers with a status code other than `200` where it cannot take the request at all, as described in **[Errors](/docs/eventsourcingdb/api#errors)**:

- **`429`**: Too many requests were sent; the answer says when to try again. The route counts against the limit per client only, not against the global one, see **[Rate Limiting](/docs/eventsourcingdb/rate-limiting)**.
- **`500`**: The server failed unexpectedly.
- **`503`**: The server is shutting down.