Is ChatGPT Down Right Now? Live Status Tracker & Outage History (2026)

Last Updated: April 26, 2026 · Reviewed by the ChatGPT Disaster Editorial Desk · Outage data sourced from OpenAI's official status page, the OpenAI Developer Community forum, Downdetector public reports, and r/ChatGPT incident threads.

ChatGPT Status (as of April 26, 2026): Check Official Status Page

OpenAI reports 71 incidents in the last 90 days (2 major outages, 69 minor incidents). The most recent major incident was the April 20, 2026 mysterious error event, the largest disruption of the month and the highest-traffic day on this tracker since launch.

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71
Incidents (Last 90 Days)
2
Major Outages
1h 34m
Median Incident Duration
99.08%
Reported Uptime

April 2026 Outage History (Most Recent)

April 23, 2026 — GPT-5.5 Launch Day
Lag, Error Spikes, and Routing Confusion on the GPT-5.5 Rollout
OpenAI shipped GPT-5.5 on April 23, 2026, doubling API pricing and changing default model routing. Within hours, paying users on r/ChatGPT, r/ChatGPTPro, and the OpenAI Developer Community reported elevated latency, intermittent errors, and confusion over which model their requests were actually being routed to. The official status page registered the launch as a service change rather than an incident, which was itself a complaint — users argued the routing-layer churn met the bar for an incident notification. Downstream, the launch is documented as the inflection point on this site's quality-decline tracker and the AI Models Getting Dumber 2026 hub.
Duration: launch-day disruption; lingering routing reports through April 24-26.
April 20, 2026 — Single Biggest Disruption of the Month
"Mysterious Error" Event: ChatGPT and API Both Returning Failures
On April 20, 2026, ChatGPT and the OpenAI API both began returning errors with no clear initial cause communicated by OpenAI. Reddit, Downdetector, and the OpenAI Developer Community lit up within minutes. The event was the highest-traffic day on this tracker since launch and is documented in the dedicated case file ChatGPT Down April 20, 2026: The Mysterious Error. The incident was eventually resolved, but the absence of a real-time root-cause statement during the disruption is a recurring user complaint on this tracker.
Duration: Major disruption, multiple hours.
April 18, 2026
Sora Deepfake-Detection Reliability Reports
Reports surfaced that ChatGPT's Sora-related detection was failing on roughly 92 percent of submitted deepfake content tests, prompting questions about the underlying detection pipeline. Documented in ChatGPT Fails 92% Sora Deepfake Detection.
Duration: Reliability incident; not a hard outage.
Throughout April 2026
Plus Tier 200-Message Weekly Cap Triggering Visible Disruptions
Plus subscribers ($20/month) hitting the 200-message-per-week limit on the GPT-5 Thinking model in single working sessions. Not a service outage in the traditional sense, but logged here because the user-side experience is identical: the product stops responding mid-task with no clear reset clock. Documented across r/ChatGPT and r/ChatGPTPro April 2026 threads.
Duration: Recurring throughout the month.

January 2026 Outage History

January 14, 2026 - 12:06 AM
Elevated Error Rates for ChatGPT Users
Users experienced increased error rates when using ChatGPT. Service was degraded for approximately 20 minutes.
Duration: ~20 minutes
January 12, 2026 - 7:37 PM
Connectors/Apps Unselectable in ChatGPT Input Menu
Users were unable to select connectors and apps from the ChatGPT input menu. Issue affected productivity features.
Duration: ~10 minutes
January 8, 2026 - Evening
Image Prompts Failing - ChatGPT and API
Partial outage affecting image-based prompts. "ChatGPT and API responses are failing when images are sent to the model." Service restored by 9:12 PM.
Duration: Several hours
January 8, 2026 - 2:16 AM
Codex Cloud Tasks Failing
Some Codex cloud tasks were failing for users utilizing the code generation features.
Duration: ~15 minutes
January 6, 2026 - 7:36 PM to 9:00 PM
Workspace Member Retrieval Issues
Degraded performance affecting 13 ChatGPT components. Users experienced issues retrieving workspace members and team functionality.
Duration: ~1 hour 24 minutes

See full January 2026 outage report for more details.

What To Do When ChatGPT Is Down

1. Check Official Status

Verify it's not just you. Check OpenAI's official status page for confirmed outages.

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Why ChatGPT Goes Down So Often

ChatGPT experiences frequent outages for several reasons:

Learn more: Why ChatGPT Keeps Getting Worse

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