Is GitHub Down? How to Check GitHub Status & Keep Shipping Code

Quick Answer: Check GitHub's real-time status on API Status Check's GitHub monitor or the official GitHub Status page. If git push fails, Actions queues are stuck, or pull requests won't load — you're probably not alone.

GitHub hosts over 200 million repositories and serves 100+ million developers worldwide. When it goes down, the blast radius is enormous: CI/CD pipelines freeze, deployments stall, code reviews halt, and entire engineering organizations lose velocity. A single GitHub outage can cost a mid-size company tens of thousands of dollars in lost developer productivity per hour.

This guide covers how to verify GitHub's status in real time, diagnose which specific service is affected, work around outages without losing code, and set up monitoring so you're never caught off guard again.

How to Check if GitHub Is Down Right Now

When GitHub feels slow or unresponsive, resist the urge to blame your internet connection first. Here's how to verify systematically:

1. API Status Check (Independent Monitoring)

API Status Check's GitHub monitor provides independent, third-party verification of GitHub's operational status. Unlike GitHub's own status page — which runs on GitHub's infrastructure and can go down with it — external monitors give you a reliable ground truth.

What you can check:

• GitHub.com — main website, repository browsing, pull requests
• GitHub API — REST v3 and GraphQL v4 endpoints
• GitHub Actions — CI/CD workflow execution
• GitHub Packages — npm, Docker, Maven, NuGet registries
• GitHub Pages — static site hosting
• GitHub Copilot — AI pair programming features

You can also set up Alert Pro notifications to get instant alerts via email, Slack, or webhook before your team even notices an issue.

2. GitHub's Official Status Page

GitHub maintains githubstatus.com, powered by Atlassian Statuspage. It shows per-component status, active incidents, and scheduled maintenance windows. The page also has an incident history log and offers email/webhook/RSS subscriptions.

Limitation: GitHub's status page is sometimes slow to acknowledge issues. During major outages, the status page has historically lagged 5-15 minutes behind what developers are already experiencing. Independent monitoring closes this gap.

3. Quick CLI Health Check

Developers can verify from the terminal:

# Test git connectivity
ssh -T git@github.com

# Test API endpoints
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://api.github.com

# Test with authentication (check rate limits too)
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GITHUB_TOKEN" \
  https://api.github.com/rate_limit | jq '.rate'

# Test Actions API specifically
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/actions/runs

If ssh -T git@github.com returns "Hi username!" but the web UI is down, you're likely dealing with a web-tier issue rather than a core git infrastructure problem.

4. Community Signals

• Downdetector — crowd-sourced outage reports
• X/Twitter — real-time developer chatter
• @githubstatus — GitHub's official status account
• Hacker News — major GitHub outages typically hit the front page within minutes

Understanding GitHub's Architecture (Why Different Parts Break)

GitHub isn't a single monolith — it's a collection of interconnected services, and they fail independently. Understanding the architecture helps you diagnose which part is actually down:

Core Services

Component	What It Does	Common Failure Modes
Git Operations	push, pull, clone, fetch	SSH/HTTPS timeouts, pack negotiation failures
Web Application	UI, PRs, Issues, Code browsing	500 errors, slow page loads, feature degradation
REST/GraphQL API	Programmatic access	Rate limiting, 502/503 errors, partial responses
Actions	CI/CD workflow execution	Queue delays, runner provisioning failures, artifact issues
Packages	Package registries (npm, Docker, etc.)	Registry timeouts, publish failures
Copilot	AI code suggestions	Model inference delays, completions not appearing
Pages	Static site hosting	Build failures, DNS propagation, CDN issues
Codespaces	Cloud development environments	VM provisioning failures, connection drops

The Dependency Chain

Many GitHub services depend on each other in non-obvious ways:

Git Operations (core)
  └── Used by: Actions, Pages, Codespaces, Packages
       └── Actions depends on: Git + Container Registry + Runners
            └── Runners depend on: Azure compute + network

This means a git infrastructure outage cascades into Actions failures, Pages not building, and Codespaces not initializing — even if those services' own code is fine. When you see multiple components failing simultaneously, look for a root cause in the shared infrastructure layer.

GitHub Outage Patterns: When & Why GitHub Goes Down

After analyzing years of GitHub incidents, clear patterns emerge:

Peak Failure Windows

• Tuesday-Thursday, 10 AM - 2 PM PT — highest developer activity period, most load-related issues
• Monday mornings — Actions queue backlogs from weekend-scheduled workflows
• Release days — GitHub's own deployments occasionally cause regressions
• First business day after holidays — sudden traffic spikes from returning developers

Most Common Outage Types

1. Actions Queue Delays (Most Frequent) GitHub Actions is the most outage-prone component. Runner provisioning depends on cloud compute availability, and demand regularly exceeds capacity during peak hours. Symptoms: workflows stuck in "Queued" state, run times 5-10x normal.

2. API Rate Limiting & Degradation GitHub's API has strict rate limits (5,000 requests/hour authenticated, 60 unauthenticated). During degraded performance, actual throughput drops below these limits. Heavy CI/CD usage can exhaust rate limits across an organization.

3. Git Push/Pull Failures Core git operations occasionally fail due to storage backend issues. Symptoms: "failed to push some refs," connection timeouts, pack-objects failures for large repos.

4. Web UI Performance Degradation The most visible type — pages load slowly, diffs don't render, search returns errors. Often precedes a full outage announcement.

5. Authentication/SSO Outages SAML SSO, OAuth app authentication, or personal access token validation failures. These can lock entire organizations out even when GitHub itself is technically operational.

Notable GitHub Outages

• October 2018 — 24-hour database incident caused by a network partition during routine maintenance. GitHub's longest outage in recent history.
• March 2020 — Pandemic-driven traffic spike caused sustained performance degradation as remote work surged.
• November 2021 — Database connectivity issue caused 2+ hours of degraded git operations and Actions failures.
• December 2023 — Actions experienced a 5-hour outage affecting CI/CD pipelines globally.
• June 2024 — Multiple service components degraded for 8+ hours, affecting git operations, APIs, and Actions.

What to Do When GitHub Is Down

Don't wait for GitHub to come back. Here's how to stay productive:

Immediate Actions (First 5 Minutes)

1. Verify the outage — Use API Status Check or curl https://api.github.com to confirm it's not your network
2. Check scope — Is it git operations, web UI, Actions, or everything? This determines your workaround strategy
3. Notify your team — Post in Slack/Teams so people stop debugging their own setups
4. Switch to local work — Git is distributed; you can keep committing locally

Keep Coding (Git Is Distributed)

The beauty of git is that it's a distributed version control system. Your local repository is a complete copy:

# Keep committing locally — nothing is lost
git add .
git commit -m "feat: new feature (will push when GitHub recovers)"

# Create a branch for your work
git checkout -b feature/github-outage-work

# If you need to share code with teammates during an outage:
# Option 1: Email patches
git format-patch -1 HEAD
# Sends last commit as a .patch file

# Option 2: Bundle and share
git bundle create my-changes.bundle main..feature/my-branch

# Option 3: Use a backup remote (GitLab, Bitbucket)
git remote add backup https://gitlab.com/org/repo.git
git push backup feature/my-branch

Unblock CI/CD

If Actions is down but git operations work:

# Run tests locally
npm test  # or your test command

# Use act to run Actions workflows locally
# https://github.com/nektos/act
act -j test

# Run linting/formatting checks
npm run lint && npm run format:check

# Build locally to catch issues
npm run build

For critical deployments, consider having a secondary CI/CD system ready:

• GitLab CI — can mirror GitHub repos and run pipelines
• CircleCI / Jenkins — can be configured as GitHub Actions fallback
• Local deployment scripts — direct scp or rsync to servers

Protect Credentials During Extended Outages

If the outage involves authentication systems, take precautions:

Pro tip: Use a password manager like 1Password to manage your GitHub personal access tokens, SSH keys, and OAuth credentials. During authentication outages, you may need to rotate tokens quickly — having them organized in a password manager makes this process fast and safe. {/* affiliate:1password */}

Setting Up GitHub Monitoring (Don't Get Caught Off Guard)

Instead of scrambling during the next outage, set up proactive monitoring:

1. Multi-Source Status Monitoring

Don't rely on a single source. Use at minimum:

• API Status Check — independent third-party monitoring with alerting
• GitHub Status RSS — https://www.githubstatus.com/history.rss
• GitHub Status API — https://www.githubstatus.com/api/v2/status.json

2. Custom Health Check Script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""GitHub health check — run on a cron to catch issues early."""
import requests
import time

CHECKS = {
    "api": "https://api.github.com",
    "web": "https://github.com",
    "raw": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com",
    "actions": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/actions/runs",
    "packages": "https://ghcr.io/v2/",
}

def check_github():
    results = {}
    for name, url in CHECKS.items():
        try:
            start = time.time()
            r = requests.get(url, timeout=10)
            latency = round((time.time() - start) * 1000)
            results[name] = {
                "status": r.status_code,
                "latency_ms": latency,
                "healthy": r.status_code < 500
            }
        except requests.RequestException as e:
            results[name] = {"status": 0, "error": str(e), "healthy": False}

    unhealthy = [k for k, v in results.items() if not v["healthy"]]
    if unhealthy:
        print(f"⚠️ GitHub issues detected: {', '.join(unhealthy)}")
        # Send alert via your preferred channel
    return results

if __name__ == "__main__":
    check_github()

3. Better Stack for Comprehensive Monitoring

For teams that need enterprise-grade uptime monitoring beyond just GitHub, Better Stack provides:

• Real-time monitoring with 30-second check intervals
• Multi-region verification to distinguish local vs. global outages
• Incident management with on-call scheduling
• Status pages for your own services that depend on GitHub
• Log aggregation to correlate your app errors with GitHub incidents

When GitHub goes down, Better Stack can detect the cascade effect on your services within seconds — before your users report issues. {/* affiliate:betterstack */}

4. Webhook Monitoring for Critical Integrations

If your application depends on GitHub webhooks (deployments, PR events, etc.), monitor webhook delivery separately:

# Check GitHub webhook delivery status
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GITHUB_TOKEN" \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/hooks/HOOK_ID/deliveries \
  | jq '.[0:5] | .[] | {id, status_code, delivered_at}'

Webhook failures during outages are often the last thing to recover. Plan for replay and idempotency.

GitHub Alternatives & Redundancy Options

No service has 100% uptime. Smart teams maintain redundancy:

Git Hosting Alternatives

Service	Best For	Git Mirror Support	CI/CD Built-In
GitLab	Full DevOps platform	✅ Automatic mirroring	✅ GitLab CI
Bitbucket	Atlassian ecosystem	✅ Smart mirroring	✅ Pipelines
Gitea	Self-hosted, lightweight	Manual	Via Actions (compat)
Azure DevOps	Microsoft enterprise	✅ Import/mirror	✅ Azure Pipelines
Codeberg	Open-source focused	Manual	Via Woodpecker CI

Mirror Strategy for Critical Repos

# Set up automatic mirroring to GitLab
# In GitLab: Settings > Repository > Mirroring repositories
# Add: https://github.com/org/repo.git (pull mirror)

# Or use a cron job for any git host:
#!/bin/bash
REPOS=("org/repo1" "org/repo2")
for repo in "${REPOS[@]}"; do
  cd "/mirrors/$repo"
  git fetch origin --prune
  git push backup --mirror
done

Protecting Your Identity Online

GitHub outages sometimes coincide with credential-stuffing attacks, as threat actors target services when security teams are focused on the outage. If your GitHub email has been exposed in data breaches, your account is at higher risk.

Use Optery to find and remove your personal information from data broker sites. Developers' email addresses are often exposed through public git commits — Optery helps clean up that exposure and reduce your attack surface. {/* affiliate:optery */}

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GitHub down right now?

Check API Status Check's GitHub monitor for real-time status. You can also test directly: curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://api.github.com — a 200 response means the API is operational.

Why is my git push failing?

Git push failures can be caused by GitHub outages, authentication issues (expired tokens, SSH key problems), network connectivity, or repository-specific issues (branch protection, large file limits). Check GitHub's status first, then verify your credentials and network.

Is GitHub Actions down?

Actions is GitHub's most outage-prone component. Check the Actions component status specifically. Common symptoms include workflows stuck in "Queued" state, runner provisioning failures, and elevated failure rates.

How long do GitHub outages typically last?

Most GitHub outages resolve within 30 minutes to 2 hours. Major infrastructure incidents (like the October 2018 database issue) can last 24+ hours. Actions queue delays are the most common issue and typically clear within 1-4 hours.

Can I still use git when GitHub is down?

Yes! Git is a distributed version control system. You can commit, branch, merge, rebase, and do all local operations without any connection to GitHub. You just can't push, pull, or fetch from remote until GitHub recovers.

Will I lose my code if GitHub goes down?

No. Your local git repository contains the complete history. As long as you've cloned or fetched recently, all your code is safe locally. Once GitHub recovers, a simple git push will sync everything.

How do I set up GitHub monitoring for my team?

Use API Status Check for independent monitoring with alerts via email, Slack, or webhook. Combine with GitHub's own status page RSS feed and a custom health check script for maximum coverage.

What's the difference between GitHub being down and being degraded?

"Down" means the service is completely unavailable. "Degraded" means it's partially functional — pages may load slowly, some API calls may fail, or Actions may have elevated queue times. Degraded performance is more common and can be harder to diagnose because it's intermittent.