GitHub Status: How to Check If GitHub Is Down Right Now (2026)
Updated June 2026 · 7 min read · By API Status Check
Quick Answer: Check GitHub Status Now
GitHub is the world's largest code hosting platform, serving over 100 million developers. When GitHub goes down — even for minutes — it can block deployments, break CI/CD pipelines, and halt entire development teams. Knowing how to quickly check GitHub status and interpret what you're seeing is an essential skill for any developer.
Understanding GitHub's Status Page (githubstatus.com)
GitHub operates githubstatus.com — its official status page powered by Atlassian Statuspage. Each component on the page maps to a different part of the platform, so you can pinpoint exactly what's broken.
Git Operations
Push, pull, clone, fetch — core git over HTTPS and SSH. This is the most critical component for developers.
API Requests
GitHub REST and GraphQL APIs. Affects GitHub Apps, OAuth integrations, and any tool using the GitHub API.
GitHub Actions
CI/CD pipeline runs. Issues here delay or fail workflow runs without affecting the main site.
GitHub Packages
npm, Docker, Maven, and other package registries. Separate from git operations.
GitHub Pages
Static site hosting. Outages mean sites may be slow or unreachable, but repos are unaffected.
GitHub Codespaces
Cloud dev environments. Can be down independently of everything else.
GitHub Copilot
AI coding assistant. Routes through GitHub's AI infrastructure, often affected separately.
Pull Requests
PR creation, reviews, and merges. Usually reliable but occasionally shows delays during incidents.
What GitHub Status Colors Mean
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githubstatus.com (Official)
GitHub's own status page. Updated by GitHub's engineering team during incidents. Reliable but can lag 10–20 minutes behind real outages.
Check githubstatus.com →API Status Check (Independent)
Third-party monitoring that continuously pings GitHub endpoints and reports independently. Shows issues even if GitHub hasn't updated their own status page yet.
Check independent GitHub status →X / Twitter (@githubstatus)
Search 'GitHub down' on X or follow @githubstatus. GitHub automatically posts to @githubstatus during incidents. Developer community often reports issues faster than official channels.
Search X for 'github down' →GitHub Community Discussions
GitHub's own community forum at github.community often has threads during outages. Developers report region-specific and tool-specific issues here.
GitHub Community →Test a git operation yourself
The fastest local check: try a git fetch or git push and look for the error message. The error text tells you exactly what's failing.
git fetch origin && echo "GitHub reachable" || echo "GitHub unreachable — check status"Common GitHub Error Messages and What They Mean
These are the error messages you'll see when GitHub is experiencing issues:
"Could not read from remote repository"SSH key rejection or GitHub SSH servers are down. Check SSH key config first; if fine, check githubstatus.com."error: RPC failed; HTTP 503 curl 22"GitHub's HTTPS git servers are temporarily unavailable. Not a local issue — wait and retry."remote: Repository not found"Usually a permissions/auth issue, not an outage. Verify your token has repo access. During incidents, this can also appear."fatal: unable to access — Could not resolve host"DNS resolution failure for github.com. Could be local DNS, a network problem, or GitHub infrastructure."GitHub Actions: Resource not accessible by integration"Actions workflow permissions issue. During Actions incidents, workflows may fail with generic auth errors."Error: Server Error (503)"GitHub API is returning 503. Likely a partial or major outage affecting API consumers. Check API component on githubstatus.com."remote: Too many requests"You've hit GitHub's rate limit. Not an outage. Authenticated API calls get 5,000 req/hour; unauthenticated get 60/hour.GitHub Outage History: What the Data Shows
GitHub has maintained strong uptime for core git operations, but with 100M+ developers depending on it, even brief incidents have massive impact:
GitHub Actions has historically been the most outage-prone component, particularly during high-traffic periods (Monday mornings UTC, major open source release cycles). Core git operations (push/pull/clone) are significantly more reliable. Check our GitHub monitoring for historical uptime data.
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If git push/pull Is Failing
- Confirm it's not just you: check githubstatus.com
- Try SSH if HTTPS is failing (or vice versa)
- Work locally — stage commits and push when service recovers
- Use git stash to save work in progress
- Follow @githubstatus on X for incident updates
If GitHub Actions Is Down
- Delay non-critical deployments until service recovers
- Re-run failed workflows manually once GitHub recovers
- Run tests locally with your test suite
- Consider self-hosted runners as a fallback for critical CI
- Check if you can deploy directly from your machine temporarily
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the official GitHub status page?
GitHub's official status page is githubstatus.com. It shows real-time status for all GitHub components including git operations, the API, Actions, Packages, Pages, Codespaces, and Copilot. You can subscribe to email or webhook notifications directly on the page.
Why is GitHub not working but githubstatus.com shows green?
GitHub's status page can lag 10–20 minutes behind real incidents. Engineers need to investigate before posting updates. For faster independent monitoring, check apistatuscheck.com/is-github-down. Also rule out local issues: SSH keys, Git credentials, network connectivity, and VPN interference are common culprits.
Is GitHub Actions down different from GitHub.com being down?
Yes — they're separate infrastructure. GitHub.com (the website and git operations) can be fully operational while GitHub Actions runners are queued or failing. Always check the specific 'Actions' component on githubstatus.com when CI/CD breaks. Actions is historically GitHub's most outage-prone component.
Does a GitHub outage affect GitLab or Bitbucket?
No. GitLab, Bitbucket, and GitHub are entirely separate platforms with their own infrastructure. A GitHub outage doesn't affect other hosting providers. If you have critical repositories mirrored to GitLab or Bitbucket, you can push there as a fallback during GitHub outages.
How do I get alerts when GitHub goes down?
Subscribe to email notifications at githubstatus.com, follow @githubstatus on X for automated incident tweets, or use Better Stack / API Status Check Alert Pro to set up automated monitoring with custom alert thresholds and notification channels.
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