Is CircleCI Down Right Now?
Pipelines queuing, webhooks not triggering, self-hosted runners offline — CI outages hit at the worst time. This guide separates CircleCI Cloud outages from runner and config issues, and tells you exactly what to do while waiting.
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Check CircleCI Status Now
CircleCI's official status page shows component-level health for pipelines, builds, VCS integration, and runners:
CircleCI Service Components
CircleCI Cloud is composed of multiple independent services. A VCS integration outage doesn't mean builds are broken — identify which component is affected before escalating or switching tools.
Core CI/CD pipeline execution engine
Webhook ingestion and OAuth authentication
Hosted executor compute resources
Runner token validation and job dispatch
REST API v2 for triggering pipelines and fetching artifacts
Build artifact and dependency cache persistence
Build metrics, flaky test detection, trends
Secret injection into pipeline steps
Know before your engineers do — monitor CircleCI externally
When CircleCI goes down, your team loses 30+ minutes debugging 'why isn't my push triggering builds?' before checking the status page. Better Stack pings CircleCI from multiple regions and alerts your Slack channel the moment it degrades.
Try Better Stack Free →Diagnostic Playbook
Work through these steps in order to isolate whether the problem is CircleCI Cloud, your VCS webhook, or your self-hosted runner.
Check status.circleci.com
Look for incidents affecting Pipelines, VCS integration, or your region's compute. Subscribe to status updates to avoid checking manually.
→ CircleCI Status PageCheck VCS webhook delivery
Go to GitHub/Bitbucket repo → Settings → Webhooks → your CircleCI webhook. Look for failed deliveries (red X). Click "Redeliver" to retry without pushing a new commit.
Validate .circleci/config.yml
A broken YAML file silently blocks pipelines. Run `circleci config validate` locally (install CircleCI CLI: `brew install circleci`). The CLI catches syntax errors before you push.
Check self-hosted runner health
Run `systemctl status circleci-launch-agent` on Linux. Check runner logs: `journalctl -u circleci-launch-agent -n 100`. Verify the runner shows "Online" in CircleCI UI → Self-Hosted Runners.
Test the CircleCI API directly
Verify CircleCI API is reachable: `curl -H "Circle-Token: $CIRCLECI_TOKEN" https://circleci.com/api/v2/me`. A 200 response confirms API is up even if the UI is degraded.
Common Failure Modes vs Root Cause
What to Do During a CircleCI Outage
🔄 Short Outage (<30 min)
- • Subscribe to status.circleci.com updates
- • Run test suites locally with
npm testorpytest - • Use CircleCI CLI to validate config locally
- • Pause non-critical deploys — wait for recovery
⚡ Extended Outage (>1 hour)
- • Trigger GitHub Actions workflows manually via GitHub UI
- • Use
actto run GitHub Actions locally - • Run Docker build + push manually for critical services
- • Communicate ETA to stakeholders via status page
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is CircleCI down right now?
Check the official CircleCI status page at status.circleci.com. It shows health for the CircleCI application, builds/pipelines, VCS integrations (GitHub, Bitbucket), API, and self-hosted runner registration. If the status page shows green but your pipelines are blocked, the issue is likely account-specific, a runner problem, or a VCS webhook failure — not a platform-wide outage.
Why are my CircleCI pipelines not triggering?
CircleCI pipelines fail to trigger for several reasons: (1) CircleCI Cloud outage — check status.circleci.com, (2) GitHub/Bitbucket webhook failure — go to your VCS repo settings → Webhooks and look for failed delivery attempts (usually shows a red X), (3) .circleci/config.yml syntax error — a broken config prevents pipeline creation entirely, (4) Branch filtering — your pipeline's branch filter may exclude the branch you pushed to, (5) CircleCI GitHub App permissions revoked — check your GitHub org → Installed GitHub Apps. Fixing the webhook re-delivers the payload in GitHub under "Recent Deliveries."
Why is my CircleCI self-hosted runner offline?
Self-hosted runners go offline for these reasons: (1) circleci-runner service stopped — run `systemctl status circleci-launch-agent` on Linux, (2) Runner token expired or revoked — check CircleCI → Self-Hosted Runners → your resource class, (3) Network connectivity — runner must reach runner.circleci.com on port 443, (4) Runner version too old — CircleCI deprecates older runner versions; check runner release notes, (5) Docker socket permission issue (for Docker runners) — the runner user must be in the docker group. Re-register the runner with a fresh token if authentication fails.
How long do CircleCI outages usually last?
Most CircleCI outages resolve within 30–90 minutes. Major incidents (like the January 2023 security incident) can last longer. Pipeline queue backlog after an outage typically clears within 15–30 minutes of service restoration as CircleCI processes queued jobs. During extended outages, most teams switch to running tests locally or pushing to GitHub Actions as a fallback pipeline.
How do I get notified when CircleCI is down?
Set up multiple alert channels: (1) Subscribe to CircleCI status page emails at status.circleci.com → "Subscribe to Updates", (2) Use Better Stack to monitor your CircleCI dashboard URL from multiple regions — you'll get an SMS/Slack alert before CircleCI's own status page updates, (3) Set a webhook notification in your CircleCI org settings for failed pipelines, (4) Add a pipeline health check to your monitoring dashboard. External monitoring is critical because CircleCI's status page sometimes lags behind actual incidents.