# Polling
Polling is executing a periodic action checking for a state change. Examples are pinging a host, calling a REST API, or listing an Amazon S3 bucket for newly uploaded files.
Cadence support for long running activities and unlimited retries makes it a good fit.
Some real-world use cases:
- Network, host and service monitoring
- Processing files uploaded to FTP or S3
- Cadence Polling Cookbook by Instaclustr: Polling an external API for a specific resource to become available: (opens new window)