# Status Badges SITE_NAME provides status badges that you can embed in your READMEs, internal dashboards, or public status pages. Each SITE_NAME badge reports the combined status of checks tagged with a particular tag. There is also a catch-all badge that reflects the status of all checks in a project. ![The "Badges" page](IMG_URL/badges.png) The badges have public but hard-to-guess URLs. Badges do not expose information other than the badge label and the aggregate status of their corresponding checks. It is not possible to reverse-engineer ping URLs from badge URLs. ## Badge States Each badge can be in one of the following three states: * **up** (green) – all matching checks are up. * **late** (orange) – at least one check is running late (but has not exceeded its grace time yet). * **down** (red) – at least one check is currently down. By default, SITE_NAME displays badge URLs that only report the **up** and **down** states (and treat **late** as **up**). Using the "Badge states" button, you can switch to alternate URLs that report all three states. ## Badge Formats SITE_NAME offers badges in three different formats: * SVG: returns an SVG document that you can use directly in an `` element or a Markdown document. * JSON: returns the badge label and the current status as a JSON document. Use this if you want to render the badge yourself. This can also serve as an integration point with a hosted status page: instruct your status page provider to monitor the badge URL and look for the keyword "up" in the returned data. * Shields.io: returns the badge label and the current status as a Shields.io-compatible JSON document. See [Shields.io documentation](https://shields.io/endpoint) on how to use it. The main benefit of using Shields.io to generate badges is the extra visual styles and customization options that Shields.io supports. ## Badge for a Single Check If you need a status badge for a specific check, assign the check a unique tag. Then use that tag's badge.