SLO (Service Level Objective)
A Service Level Objective (SLO) is an internal target for a reliability metric — for example "99.95% of requests succeed" — that a team commits to.
An SLO sits between the customer-facing SLA and the raw measurement (SLI). It is usually set tighter than the SLA so the team has a safety margin before contractual penalties apply.
SLOs make trade-offs explicit: the gap between your SLO and 100% is your error budget, which teams spend on shipping changes versus protecting stability.
Related terms
SLA (Service Level Agreement)A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contractual commitment to a level of service — most commonly a guaranteed uptime percentage — with consequences if it is missed.SLI (Service Level Indicator)A Service Level Indicator (SLI) is the actual measured value of a reliability metric — the number you compare against your SLO and SLA.Error BudgetAn error budget is the amount of unreliability you are allowed before breaching your SLO — the gap between your target and 100%.
Start monitoring in minutes
EU-hosted uptime monitoring with multi-location confirmation that kills false alarms — white-label for agencies.