Is GitHub Down? How to Check GitHub Status in Real-Time

Quick Answer: If you're wondering "is GitHub down right now?", the fastest way to check is through API Status Check's GitHub monitor or the official GitHub Status page. Both provide real-time status updates for GitHub.com, the GitHub API, Actions, Packages, and other services.

When GitHub goes down, millions of developers worldwide feel the impact immediately. Git push and pull operations fail, CI/CD pipelines freeze, pull requests won't load, and entire development workflows grind to a halt. Whether you're deploying production code or contributing to open source, knowing how to quickly verify GitHub's status can save valuable troubleshooting time.

How to Check GitHub Status Right Now

1. API Status Check (Fastest Method)

API Status Check's GitHub monitor provides instant status verification for:

• GitHub.com (main website and git operations)
• GitHub API (REST and GraphQL endpoints)
• GitHub Actions (CI/CD workflows)
• GitHub Packages (npm, Docker, Maven registries)
• GitHub Pages (static site hosting)
• Copilot (AI pair programming)

The dashboard shows current operational status, recent incidents, and historical uptime data. You can also subscribe to receive instant alerts via email, Slack, or webhook when GitHub experiences issues.

2. Official GitHub Status Page

GitHub maintains githubstatus.com as their official status page. It displays:

• Current system status for all services
• Scheduled maintenance windows
• Incident history and postmortems
• RSS feed and email/SMS subscription options

The official page is authoritative but sometimes updates slower than third-party monitors during active incidents.

3. GitHub Down Detector Methods

Beyond dedicated status pages, developers use several "GitHub down detector" approaches:

Social Media Monitoring:

• Search Twitter/X for "GitHub down" or "#GitHubDown"
• Check GitHub's official @githubstatus account
• Monitor developer communities on Reddit (r/github, r/devops)

Command Line Testing:

# Test git operations
git ls-remote https://github.com/github/docs.git

# Test API connectivity
curl -I https://api.github.com

# Check specific service endpoints
curl -I https://github.com

Browser Developer Tools: Check your browser console for failed API calls or 500/503 error responses when GitHub pages won't load.

Common GitHub Issues and Outages

Git Push/Pull Failures

Symptoms:

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/user/repo.git/': 
Could not resolve host: github.com

Causes:

• GitHub.com infrastructure issues
• DNS resolution problems
• DDoS attacks targeting GitHub
• Network connectivity between your location and GitHub data centers

GitHub Actions CI Pipeline Breakdowns

When GitHub Actions goes down:

• Workflow runs get stuck in "Queued" status indefinitely
• Running jobs freeze mid-execution
• Deployment pipelines halt, blocking releases
• Scheduled workflows don't trigger

This particularly impacts teams practicing continuous deployment, where every merged PR triggers automated deployments.

GitHub Pages Deployment Failures

GitHub Pages outages prevent:

• New site deployments from completing
• Custom domain DNS resolution
• Static site serving (your-username.github.io returns 502/503)

API Rate Limit vs. Service Outage

It's crucial to distinguish between GitHub API rate limiting (your fault) and actual API outages (GitHub's fault):

Rate Limit (Not Down):

{
  "message": "API rate limit exceeded",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/overview/resources-in-the-rest-api#rate-limiting"
}

Service Outage (Actually Down):

502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
Connection timeout

Check your rate limit status: curl -H "Authorization: token YOUR_TOKEN" https://api.github.com/rate_limit

GitHub Copilot Outages

When Copilot services fail:

• Autocomplete suggestions stop appearing in your IDE
• Chat features become unresponsive
• "Copilot is currently unavailable" errors appear
• Authentication to Copilot services times out

The Impact When GitHub Goes Down

GitHub's central role in modern software development means outages have cascading effects:

CI/CD Pipelines Halt

Most development teams host their source code on GitHub and use GitHub Actions (or third-party CI tools that pull from GitHub). When GitHub is down:

• Automated tests can't run on new commits
• Deployments to staging/production freeze
• Release pipelines block, preventing hotfix deployments
• Code review processes stall

Real-world example: During a 2-hour GitHub outage in 2024, one SaaS company couldn't deploy an urgent security patch, extending their vulnerability window.

Pull Requests and Code Review Blocked

Code review workflows completely depend on GitHub's web interface:

• Can't view diff changes in PRs
• Comments and discussions inaccessible
• Merge operations fail
• Status checks don't update

Distributed teams across time zones lose critical review cycles.

Open Source Collaboration Stalls

GitHub hosts over 100 million repositories. Outages impact:

• Issue tracking and bug reports
• Release downloads (via GitHub Releases)
• Documentation hosted on GitHub Pages
• Dependency resolution for projects hosted on GitHub

Package managers like npm, pip, and bundler pulling dependencies from GitHub repositories may fail if they can't clone repos during dependency resolution.

Deployment and Infrastructure Freeze

Many infrastructure-as-code workflows pull Terraform modules, Kubernetes manifests, or configuration from GitHub repos. Outages prevent:

• Infrastructure updates and scaling
• Configuration changes deployment
• Disaster recovery procedures requiring repo access
• Automated rollbacks to previous versions

What to Do When GitHub Is Down

1. Continue Local Git Workflow

Git is distributed—you can work offline:

# Continue committing locally
git add .
git commit -m "Feature work during GitHub outage"

# Create branches
git checkout -b feature/new-work

# View history and diffs
git log
git diff main..feature/new-work

# When GitHub recovers, push everything
git push origin feature/new-work

Your work isn't blocked—only synchronization with remote is.

2. Use Repository Mirrors

Set up mirror remotes for critical repos:

# Add GitLab as backup remote
git remote add gitlab https://gitlab.com/username/repo.git

# Add Bitbucket
git remote add bitbucket https://bitbucket.org/username/repo.git

# Push to all remotes
git push origin main
git push gitlab main
git push bitbucket main

Tools like Gitea or GitLab self-hosted let you maintain on-premises mirrors.

3. Alternative CI Runners

If GitHub Actions is down but GitHub.com works:

• GitLab CI/CD can pull from GitHub repos
• CircleCI, Travis CI, Jenkins work independently
• Self-hosted runners (if GitHub API responds enough to trigger)

For critical deployments, maintain CI configuration for multiple platforms.

4. Communicate with Your Team

During outages:

• Use Slack/Discord to coordinate
• Document work completed locally to sync when service recovers
• Adjust sprint planning if outage extends beyond hours
• Notify stakeholders of delayed deployments

5. Monitor Recovery

Don't spam retry attempts—this worsens load during recovery:

• Check status pages every 15-30 minutes
• Subscribe to API Status Check alerts for automatic notifications
• Wait for "Operational" status before attempting operations
• Review GitHub's incident postmortem after resolution

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GitHub down right now?

Check API Status Check's GitHub monitor or githubstatus.com for current status. If both show operational but you're experiencing issues, the problem may be local to your network, ISP, or GitHub's CDN serving your region.

How can I check GitHub API status?

The GitHub API has separate status from GitHub.com. Use API Status Check's dedicated GitHub API monitoring which tests actual API endpoints every 60 seconds. You can also manually test:

curl -i https://api.github.com/status

A 200 response with JSON data means the API is up. Any 5xx error or timeout indicates problems.

What is the best GitHub down detector?

The most reliable methods combine multiple signals:

1. API Status Check - Automated monitoring with historical data
2. GitHub Status - Official source of truth
3. Social media - Real-time reports from other developers
4. Your own monitoring - Synthetic tests from your infrastructure

No single detector is perfect, but API Status Check provides the fastest notifications through automated monitoring.

Why does GitHub go down?

Common causes from past incidents:

• Database failures - Replication lag or primary database issues
• Network incidents - BGP routing problems or DDoS attacks
• Deployment issues - Bad releases to production
• Infrastructure problems - Power, cooling, or hardware failures in data centers
• Third-party dependencies - Cloud provider (Azure) issues affecting GitHub

GitHub publishes detailed postmortems at github.blog/engineering after major incidents.

How do I get notified when GitHub is down?

Set up multi-channel alerting:

1. API Status Check - Subscribe at apistatuscheck.com/api/github for email, Slack, webhook, or Discord alerts
2. GitHub Status - Subscribe at githubstatus.com for email/SMS
3. RSS feeds - Add GitHub status RSS to your reader
4. Twitter alerts - Enable notifications for @githubstatus

API Status Check provides the fastest alerts because it actively polls GitHub services every minute rather than relying on GitHub's self-reporting.

Can I still use git when GitHub is down?

Yes! Git is fully functional offline. You can:

• Commit changes locally
• Create and switch branches
• View history and run diffs
• Merge branches
• Tag releases

The only operations that require GitHub:

• git push (pushing to GitHub remote)
• git pull / git fetch (downloading from GitHub)
• git clone (creating new local copy from GitHub)

Everything else works normally. When GitHub recovers, sync your local work with git push.

How long do GitHub outages usually last?

Based on historical data:

• Minor incidents: 10-30 minutes (degraded performance, partial service)
• Major incidents: 1-4 hours (complete service outage)
• Severe incidents: 4+ hours (rare, typically affect specific services)

GitHub's SLA targets 99.9% uptime monthly, allowing ~43 minutes of downtime per month. Most months see better uptime, but occasional incidents exceed this window.

What's the difference between GitHub.com and GitHub API being down?

They're separate systems:

• GitHub.com down: Website won't load, git operations fail, can't browse repos
• GitHub API down: API calls return errors, but website may still work, git SSH might work
• Both down: Complete GitHub outage affecting all services

Some tools and CI systems use the API exclusively, so API outages affect them even if the website loads fine in your browser.

Stay Ahead of GitHub Outages

Don't let GitHub downtime catch you off guard. Subscribe to API Status Check's GitHub monitoring for:

✅ Instant alerts when GitHub services degrade or go down
✅ Real-time monitoring of GitHub.com, API, Actions, Packages, and more
✅ Historical uptime data to track patterns and plan maintenance windows
✅ Multiple notification channels - Email, Slack, Discord, webhooks
✅ No configuration required - Start monitoring in 60 seconds

Whether you're a solo developer or managing infrastructure for a team, knowing about GitHub issues before they impact your workflow saves time and reduces stress.

Start monitoring GitHub status now →

---

Last updated: February 4, 2026 | View all API status monitors