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Blog/Is GitHub Down?

Is GitHub Down? How to Check GitHub Status Right Now

GitHub hosts over 100 million repositories. When it goes down, development teams worldwide grind to a halt. Here's how to check GitHub's status, what to do during an outage, and how to stay ahead of disruptions.

โšก Quick GitHub Status Check

How to Check if GitHub is Down

1. githubstatus.com (Official)

GitHub's official status page shows real-time status for all services: git operations, API requests, GitHub Actions, GitHub Pages, GitHub Packages, and GitHub Codespaces. Subscribe to email/SMS/webhook notifications directly from this page.

2. APIStatusCheck

APIStatusCheck monitors GitHub continuously with real-time health checks. Faster to scan than the official status page, with user-reported incident overlays.

3. Twitter/X Search

Search "GitHub down" or "git push not working" for real-time engineer reports. Follow @githubstatus for official incident updates. Developer communities report issues faster than official channels.

4. GitHub CLI / API Test

Run curl -s https://api.github.com | head -5 to test API connectivity, or ssh -T git@github.com to test SSH access directly.

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GitHub Services That Commonly Go Down

Git Operations

push, pull, clone, fetch fail โ€” most impactful for devs

GitHub Actions

CI/CD pipelines queue or fail to start

GitHub Pages

Static sites become unreachable

GitHub API

Third-party integrations and apps break

GitHub Packages

Package publishing and downloading fails

Codespaces

Cloud dev environments unavailable

What to Do When GitHub is Down

1

Work locally

Continue coding locally. Use git commit to track changes โ€” push when GitHub recovers. Local git history is never lost.

2

Use a backup remote

Mirror critical repos to GitLab or Bitbucket as a secondary remote: git remote add backup git@gitlab.com:user/repo.git

3

Communicate with your team

Post a Slack/Teams message about the outage so nobody wastes time troubleshooting locally. Share the GitHub Status link.

4

Pause deployments

If your CI/CD depends on GitHub Actions, hold off on deployments until GitHub stabilizes to avoid partial releases.

5

Subscribe to status alerts

Visit githubstatus.com and click Subscribe to get email notifications for future incidents automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I check if GitHub is down right now?

Check githubstatus.com for official status, or APIStatusCheck for a real-time consolidated view. Twitter search "GitHub down" surfaces engineer reports fast.

Why is git push not working if GitHub shows as operational?

GitHub may show "operational" during partial degradation. Also check your SSH keys, HTTPS credentials, and firewall. Run git push --verbose for detailed error output.

How often does GitHub go down?

Minor incidents 1-2 times per month. Full outages affecting git push/pull are rare โ€” roughly 2-4 times per year. GitHub Actions has the most frequent partial degradations.

What services are affected during a GitHub outage?

Potentially: git operations, GitHub Actions CI/CD, GitHub Pages static sites, GitHub Packages, REST/GraphQL API, and Codespaces. Partial outages affecting only one service are most common.

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Related Status Pages

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๐ŸŒ Can't Access GitHub?

If GitHub is working for others but not for you, it might be an ISP or regional issue. A VPN can help bypass network-level blocks and routing problems.

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Troubleshoot with a VPN

Connect from a different region to test if the issue is local to your network. Also protects your connection on public Wi-Fi.

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Secure Your GitHub Account

Service outages are a common time for phishing attacks. Use a password manager to keep unique, strong passwords for every account.

Try NordPass โ€” Free Password Manager
Quick ISP test: Try accessing GitHub on mobile data (Wi-Fi off). If it works, the issue is with your ISP or local network.

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