QUARK · SIGNAL API SLA
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Signal API Service Level Agreement

What we commit to on uptime, response time, and maintenance windows — and what you get when we miss. This SLA applies to every paid tier of the Quark Signal API.

Version 1.0  ·  Effective 2026-04-21

Monthly uptime
99.5%
~3.6 hours permitted downtime / month
Cache-hit p50
< 500ms
/signals/current & /signals/usage
Cache-hit p99
< 5s
Warmed endpoints
Maintenance notice
48h
Posted on status page + email
Contents

1. Scope

This SLA covers the production Signal API served from api.quarkresearch.cc for paying subscribers on the Regime Alert, Market Pulse, Research Reports, and Signal Feed tiers. It does not cover:

2. Uptime commitment

We target 99.5% monthly uptime on the API surface, measured as the fraction of minutes in a calendar month during which the API returns a valid 2xx response to a synthetic probe against GET /api/health. A minute counts as "down" only when every probe in that minute fails.

AvailabilityPermitted downtime / monthService-credit tier
≥ 99.5%≤ 3h 36mNo credit owed
99.0% – 99.49%3h 37m – 7h 12m10% of monthly fee
98.0% – 98.99%7h 13m – 14h 24m25% of monthly fee
< 98.0%> 14h 24m50% of monthly fee

The public status page at status.quarkresearch.cc shows probe history and any declared incidents for the current month. Credits are capped at one month's subscription fee per billing period; they do not roll over between tiers or become cash refunds.

Single-region architecture. The current deployment runs on one US-East VPS fronted by Cloudflare. Regional network outages on the upstream provider count against the uptime target; we do not exclude them. If you need multi-region failover, that's a Custom Institutional engagement.

3. Response-time targets

Measured from the Cloudflare edge, warmed cache, during business hours (09:00 – 16:00 ET on US trading days):

Endpoint classp50 targetp99 targetNotes
/api/signals/current, /api/signals/usage< 500ms< 5sCache-hit; refreshed post-close daily
/api/signals/history, /api/signals/history.csv< 1.5s< 10sSize-dependent; days=730 can hit p99 ceiling
/api/alpha/attribution< 1s< 5sCached snapshot; 24h refresh
Webhook delivery attempt< 10s from signal change< 60sFirst delivery; retries follow documented backoff

Response-time misses outside the uptime calculation do not trigger credits on their own. Chronic breaches (> 10% of requests exceeding p99 across a full billing period) should be reported to support and will be investigated as an incident.

4. Maintenance windows

Planned maintenance follows two rules:

Planned-maintenance minutes, properly noticed, are excluded from the uptime calculation.

5. Incident response

SeverityDefinitionTarget response
SEV-1API fully down or returning wrong data (stale > 24h, wrong regime, etc.)Acknowledged within 30 minutes, mitigation in progress within 2 hours
SEV-2Single endpoint down; cache stale; degraded p99Acknowledged within 2 hours, fix within 1 business day
SEV-3Documentation gaps, schema-discrepancy bugs, minor rate-limit miscountsAcknowledged within 1 business day, fix in next regular release

Every SEV-1 or SEV-2 incident gets a public post-mortem on the status page within 5 business days of resolution, including: what happened, why, how we fixed it, and what we're changing so it doesn't happen again.

6. Service credits

Credits are the sole and exclusive remedy for any failure to meet this SLA. The credit schedule in §2 applies monthly and is capped at one month's subscription fee per billing period.

Why service credits, not refunds? Credits apply to the next invoice; they keep you on the service rather than forcing a billing round-trip. If you would prefer to cancel and take a pro-rated refund after a credit-eligible incident, email hello@quarkresearch.cc within 10 business days of the incident close.

7. Exclusions

The uptime calculation excludes downtime caused by:

8. How to claim a credit

  1. Within 30 days of the end of the affected calendar month, email hello@quarkresearch.cc with subject line SLA Credit Request — [YYYY-MM] — [account email].
  2. Include, at minimum: (a) the time range(s) when you observed downtime, (b) the endpoint(s) affected, (c) any HTTP response codes and/or Cloudflare ray IDs from your logs.
  3. We'll reconcile against our probe history and the status page and reply within 5 business days with the credit amount (if any) and the invoice it will apply to.

9. Changes to this SLA

We may revise this SLA with 30 days' notice by email to the account contact on file and a prominent notice on the status page. Changes apply to billing periods starting after the notice period ends. Prior versions are archived in the API docs changelog at /api_docs.html#changelog.

Questions: hello@quarkresearch.cc.