Is Twitter/X Down? Complete Guide to Checking Twitter Status in Real-Time
Learn how to instantly verify if Twitter (X) is down, understand what causes outages, and discover the best tools for monitoring Twitter's status in real-time.
🚨 Quick Answer: Is Twitter Down Right Now?
To check if Twitter/X is down right now, visit status.x.com for official updates, or use API Status Check's Twitter monitor for real-time API status and historical uptime data.
How to Check if Twitter/X is Down
When you can't access Twitter (now called X), the frustration is immediate—especially if you rely on the platform for business, news, or social connection. But before assuming Twitter is down globally, it's important to verify whether you're experiencing a widespread outage or a local issue.
Here's a systematic approach to determining if Twitter is actually down:
Step-by-Step Twitter Outage Verification
- 1
Check the Official Status Page First
Visit status.x.com (formerly status.twitter.com). This is X's official status dashboard where the company posts real-time updates about service disruptions, degraded performance, and scheduled maintenance.
- 2
Use Third-Party Monitoring Services
Services like API Status Check, DownDetector, and IsItDownRightNow provide independent monitoring and crowdsourced outage reports. These tools often detect issues before official acknowledgment.
- 3
Search "Twitter Down" or "X Down"
A simple Google search for "is Twitter down" or "is X down" will show recent news articles and real-time reports. Google Trends can also reveal sudden spikes in searches, indicating a widespread issue.
- 4
Check Alternative Social Platforms
When Twitter goes down, users flock to Reddit (r/Twitter, r/technews), Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, or Discord to share outage reports. These platforms become real-time discussion hubs during major incidents.
- 5
Test from Different Devices and Networks
Try accessing Twitter from your phone (switching between WiFi and cellular data), a different browser, or an incognito/private window. This helps rule out local cache issues, browser extensions, or network problems.
- 6
Check Your Internet Connection
Verify that other websites load properly. Run a speed test at fast.com or speedtest.net. Sometimes what appears to be a Twitter outage is actually a local connectivity issue.
Pro tip: If you're a developer or business relying on Twitter's API, you'll want to monitor API-specific status separately from the main website. The Twitter API can experience outages independently from the consumer-facing platform. Tools like API Status Check provide endpoint-level monitoring to track API uptime and performance.
Official Twitter/X Status Sources
When verifying a Twitter outage, always start with official sources. X (formerly Twitter) maintains several channels for communicating service status and incidents:
1. X Status Page (status.x.com)
The X Status page is the official source of truth for platform health. It displays:
- Real-time incident reports: When X identifies an issue, it posts updates with timestamps and status indicators (investigating, identified, monitoring, resolved)
- Historical incident timeline: A log of past outages and how they were resolved
- Component status: Individual system health for API, website, mobile apps, media uploads, and more
- Scheduled maintenance notifications: Advanced warning of planned downtime
- Subscribe to updates: Email, SMS, Slack, and webhook notifications for status changes
Limitation: The status page is manually updated by X's engineering team, which means there can be a 5-15 minute delay between when users first report issues and when X officially acknowledges them.
2. @XEng Twitter/X Account
The @XEng account (formerly @TwitterEng) is X's engineering team's official communication channel. During major outages, they post:
- Acknowledgment of widespread issues
- Progress updates during incident resolution
- Post-mortem explanations after major incidents
- Technical details about what went wrong
Catch-22: If Twitter is completely down, you won't be able to access @XEng tweets. That's why having backup monitoring tools is essential.
3. Twitter API Status (Separate from Main Platform)
Twitter's API can experience outages independently from the consumer website and mobile apps. Developers should monitor:
- API Status page: Integrated into status.x.com with dedicated API component indicators
- Developer forums: Twitter Community forums where developers report API issues
- Third-party API monitors: API Status Check continuously pings Twitter API endpoints to detect failures before official announcements
4. Elon Musk's Personal Account
Since acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Elon Musk (@elonmusk) has occasionally commented on outages and technical issues directly. While not an official status channel, his tweets sometimes provide context during major incidents.
However, relying on personal accounts is unreliable—official status pages and monitoring tools remain the most dependable sources.
⚠️ Why Official Sources Aren't Always Enough
During the July 2023 rate limiting incident, Twitter's status page initially showed "All Systems Operational" while thousands of users couldn't access their feeds. Official acknowledgment came over an hour after widespread user reports. This is why supplementing official sources with third-party monitors and community reports is crucial for accurate real-time status.
Best Third-Party Tools for Monitoring Twitter Status
Third-party monitoring services provide independent verification of Twitter's status, often detecting issues before official announcements. Here are the most reliable tools:
API Status Check
API Status Check's Twitter monitor provides the most comprehensive API-level monitoring available. Unlike crowdsourced tools, API Status Check actively pings Twitter's API endpoints every minute to detect:
- API uptime and response times: Track exact latency for endpoints like tweets, timeline, search, and DMs
- Historical uptime data: View 30-day, 90-day, and annual uptime percentages
- Incident timeline: Complete history of outages with duration and impact
- Real-time alerts: Instant notifications via email, Slack, Discord, or webhook when Twitter goes down
- API vs. website status: Separate monitoring for consumer-facing platform and developer API
Best for: Developers, businesses with Twitter integrations, social media managers, and anyone who needs reliable real-time monitoring with historical data and instant alerts.
DownDetector
DownDetector is the most popular crowdsourced outage monitoring platform. It aggregates user reports through:
- User-submitted outage reports (anyone can submit)
- Social media sentiment analysis
- Heat maps showing geographic distribution of outages
- Real-time outage graphs showing report volume over time
Pros: Fast community-driven detection, geographic insights, free to use
Cons: Susceptible to false positives from spam reports, no API-level monitoring, relies on user reports rather than technical pings
IsItDownRightNow
IsItDownRightNow performs simple HTTP checks to verify if a website is accessible. For Twitter:
- Checks if twitter.com or x.com loads successfully
- Displays response time
- Shows last checked timestamp
- Provides DNS lookup and server location
Pros: Simple, fast, real-time technical verification
Cons: Only checks homepage accessibility, doesn't detect partial outages (e.g., login working but timeline broken), no historical data
Uptime Robot
While primarily a monitoring tool for your own websites, Uptime Robot can be configured to monitor Twitter's public endpoints. You can create monitors for:
- Twitter homepage availability
- Specific API endpoints (if you have API access)
- Custom Twitter URLs
Best for: Users who want to set up their own Twitter monitoring with custom alert thresholds
StatusGator
StatusGator aggregates status pages from hundreds of services, including Twitter/X. It provides:
- Unified dashboard of multiple service status pages
- Historical uptime tracking
- Consolidated alerts for multiple services
Best for: Teams monitoring multiple platforms (Twitter, AWS, Stripe, etc.) in one dashboard
💡 Recommendation: Use Multiple Tools
For the most reliable Twitter status monitoring, combine:
- Official source: status.x.com for verified incident reports
- Technical monitoring: API Status Check for API uptime and alerts
- Community validation: DownDetector for real-time user reports
This three-layer approach ensures you have the fastest, most accurate picture of Twitter's status.
Finding Real-Time Community Reports
When Twitter goes down, millions of users immediately try to verify if others are experiencing the same issue. Community reports provide the fastest detection of outages, often surfacing problems 10-30 minutes before official acknowledgment. Here's where to find them:
Reddit Communities
Reddit is the go-to platform when Twitter goes down. Key subreddits include:
- r/Twitter: Dedicated to Twitter news and discussions, becomes extremely active during outages
- r/TwitterX: Focused on X (Twitter) updates and issues
- r/technews: Tech-focused subreddit where major Twitter outages are discussed
- r/outages: General outage reports for all services
During a Twitter outage, sort by "New" to see real-time reports. Users typically share screenshots, error messages, and geographic locations, helping identify if the outage is global or regional.
Alternative Social Platforms
When Twitter is inaccessible, users migrate to alternative platforms to discuss the outage:
- Mastodon: Decentralized Twitter alternative where #TwitterDown and #TwitterOutage trend during incidents
- Bluesky: Jack Dorsey's Twitter alternative, increasingly popular during Twitter outages
- Threads (by Instagram/Meta): Users search "Twitter down" or post about accessibility issues
- Discord servers: Tech communities and Twitter power user servers discuss outages in real-time
Google Search Trends
A sudden spike in Google searches for "Twitter down," "X down," or "Twitter not working" is a strong indicator of an outage. Use:
- Google Trends: Check real-time search volume for "is Twitter down"
- Google News: Tech news sites like TechCrunch, The Verge, and Engadget quickly publish outage reports
- Google Search (recency filter): Search "Twitter down" and filter results by "Past hour" to see fresh reports
Tech News Sites & Blogs
Major Twitter outages are immediately covered by tech journalism outlets:
- TechCrunch: Fast reporting on major tech service disruptions
- The Verge: Detailed analysis of Twitter/X technical issues
- Engadget: Quick outage confirmation and user impact reporting
- 9to5Mac/9to5Google: Platform-specific Twitter outage reports (iOS/Android)
Twitter/X Itself (When Partially Working)
Ironically, when Twitter experiences a partial outage (e.g., timeline broken but search working), users flood the platform with reports:
- Search "#TwitterDown" or "#XDown" directly on X
- Check trending topics—outage-related hashtags spike immediately
- Follow tech journalists and developers who quickly tweet about issues
Note: This only works during partial outages. Complete platform failures require checking external sources.
🔍 How to Verify Community Reports
Not all community reports are accurate. Follow these verification steps:
- Check multiple sources: Don't rely on a single Reddit comment—look for patterns across Reddit, Discord, and news sites
- Look for specifics: Credible reports include error messages, screenshots, timestamps, and geographic locations
- Cross-reference with monitoring tools: Validate community reports against API Status Check or DownDetector data
- Check official sources: After seeing community reports, verify with status.x.com
- Be wary of trolls: Some users falsely report outages as jokes—multiple independent reports = more credible
Common Causes of Twitter/X Outages
Understanding why Twitter goes down helps you predict outage likelihood and duration. Here are the most common causes of Twitter outages, based on historical incidents and official post-mortems:
1. Server Overload During Major Events
Twitter's infrastructure can buckle under extreme traffic spikes during:
- Breaking news events: Natural disasters, political events, celebrity deaths
- Sporting events: World Cup finals, Super Bowl, Olympics
- Award shows: Oscars, Grammys, major premieres
- Viral moments: Unexpected cultural phenomena that drive millions to Twitter simultaneously
Example: During the 2014 World Cup, Twitter experienced multiple slowdowns as billions of tweets flooded the platform during key matches.
Why it happens: Even with auto-scaling infrastructure, Twitter's recommendation algorithms, timeline generation, and real-time search require massive computational resources. Sudden 10-100x traffic spikes can overwhelm even the most robust systems.
2. Software Deployment Bugs
Twitter pushes code updates constantly. Sometimes, new deployments introduce critical bugs that cause outages:
- Breaking changes: API updates that break backward compatibility
- Database migration issues: Schema changes that cause query failures
- Frontend bugs: JavaScript errors preventing page loads
- Backend crashes: Uncaught exceptions in server code
Example: In December 2022, Twitter experienced multiple outages attributed to aggressive code changes and reduced engineering staff following mass layoffs.
Since Elon Musk's acquisition: Twitter has experienced more frequent outages due to rapid feature development, reduced code review processes, and significant engineering staff reductions (from ~7,500 to ~1,500 employees).
3. Infrastructure & Cloud Provider Issues
Twitter relies on third-party infrastructure that can fail:
- AWS outages: Twitter uses Amazon Web Services; AWS regional outages impact Twitter
- Google Cloud issues: Twitter uses GCP for some services
- CDN failures: Content delivery network issues prevent media loading
- DNS problems: Domain name resolution failures make Twitter unreachable
Example: The December 2021 AWS us-east-1 outage affected Twitter alongside thousands of other services.
4. DDoS Attacks & Security Incidents
While rare, Twitter has been targeted by distributed denial-of-service attacks:
- Coordinated bot attacks: Massive automated traffic overwhelming servers
- State-sponsored attacks: Government-backed cyber operations
- Hacktivist campaigns: Groups like Anonymous targeting Twitter infrastructure
Twitter typically doesn't publicly confirm DDoS attacks, citing security concerns. However, traffic patterns and rapid outage/recovery cycles often suggest DDoS.
5. Rate Limiting & API Restrictions
In July 2023, Twitter introduced aggressive rate limiting that appeared like an outage to many users:
- Unverified users: Limited to 600 tweet views per day
- Verified users: Limited to 6,000 tweet views per day
- New unverified accounts: Limited to 300 views per day
Official reasoning: Elon Musk claimed the limits were to combat data scraping and AI training. Critics suggested it was due to unpaid cloud bills or infrastructure cost-cutting.
User impact: Millions of users hitting rate limits experienced blank timelines and "rate limit exceeded" errors, functionally equivalent to an outage.
6. Scheduled Maintenance (Rare)
Twitter occasionally performs scheduled maintenance, though this is increasingly rare:
- Database upgrades: Backend infrastructure improvements
- Security patches: Critical vulnerability fixes
- Data center migration: Moving services between regions
Scheduled maintenance is typically announced 24-48 hours in advance via the status page and @XEng account.
7. Third-Party Service Failures
Twitter depends on numerous third-party services that can cause partial outages:
- Image hosting issues: Problems uploading or displaying photos/videos
- Link preview services: Failure to generate URL cards
- Analytics providers: Issues tracking tweet performance
- Authentication services: Login problems due to OAuth provider issues
📊 Outage Frequency Trends
Twitter's outage frequency has increased significantly since Elon Musk's acquisition in October 2022:
- Pre-acquisition (2020-2022): 3-5 major outages per year
- Post-acquisition (2023-2024): 15-20 significant incidents per year
Factors include reduced engineering staff, aggressive feature development, cost-cutting infrastructure changes, and experimental features like rate limiting. Monitor real-time status at API Status Check.
What to Do When Twitter is Down
Discovering that Twitter is down can be frustrating, especially if you depend on it for work, news, or social connection. Here's a comprehensive action plan for handling Twitter outages:
Immediate Actions (First 5 Minutes)
- Verify it's actually an outage
- Check status.x.com
- Visit API Status Check for real-time status
- Search "Twitter down" on Google
- Rule out local issues
- Test your internet connection on other websites
- Clear your browser cache and cookies
- Try accessing Twitter in an incognito/private window
- Test on a different device (phone vs. computer)
- Switch between WiFi and cellular data
- Determine outage scope
- Is it a complete blackout or partial functionality?
- Can you access the website but not the app (or vice versa)?
- Are specific features broken (e.g., DMs work but timeline doesn't)?
For Personal Users
Stay Informed About the Outage
- Subscribe to status updates at status.x.com (email/SMS notifications)
- Check tech news sites like TechCrunch, The Verge
- Join Reddit discussions in r/Twitter or r/technews
Use Alternative Platforms Temporarily
- Mastodon: Decentralized Twitter alternative
- Bluesky: Invite-only Twitter competitor (by Jack Dorsey)
- Threads: Meta's Twitter alternative (Instagram integration)
- Reddit: Community discussions and news
- Discord: Real-time chat communities
Be Patient
Most Twitter outages resolve within 15-60 minutes. Avoid repeatedly refreshing the page or app, as this can contribute to server load and prolong the outage.
For Businesses & Social Media Managers
Communicate with Your Audience
- Post updates on backup channels (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, your website)
- Inform customers that your Twitter support is temporarily unavailable
- Provide alternative contact methods (email, phone, live chat)
Monitor Real-Time Status
- Set up alerts with API Status Check to receive instant notifications
- Track outage duration to inform your crisis communication strategy
- Document the outage for internal reports and SLA tracking
Reschedule Planned Content
- Pause scheduled tweets to avoid posting during the outage
- Adjust marketing campaigns if Twitter is a critical channel
- Reallocate ad spend to unaffected platforms temporarily
Prepare for Future Outages
- Diversify your social media presence (don't rely solely on Twitter)
- Build an email list as a backup communication channel
- Create an outage response playbook for your team
For Developers & API Users
Check API-Specific Status
- The Twitter API can fail independently from the consumer platform
- Monitor API Status Check's Twitter API monitor for endpoint-specific status
- Check developer forums at twittercommunity.com for API issue reports
Implement Graceful Degradation
- Use retry logic with exponential backoff for API requests
- Cache Twitter data locally to serve during outages
- Display user-friendly error messages instead of crashing
- Queue tweets/actions to retry once service is restored
Set Up Monitoring & Alerts
Don't wait for users to report issues. Proactive monitoring detects API failures instantly:
- API Status Check: Configure Twitter API alerts for instant notifications via email, Slack, Discord, or webhook
- Custom monitoring: Build health check endpoints that ping Twitter API regularly
- Error rate tracking: Monitor your app's Twitter API error rates in real-time
Communicate with Users
- Display a status banner when Twitter API is unavailable
- Send push notifications or emails about service disruptions
- Update your status page to reflect Twitter-dependent features
Have a Backup Plan
- Consider supporting alternative platforms (Mastodon, Bluesky) as fallbacks
- Don't build critical business logic that's 100% dependent on Twitter
- Document Twitter API outage procedures for your team
⚠️ What NOT to Do During an Outage
- ❌ Don't repeatedly refresh or retry: Excessive requests worsen server load and prolong outages
- ❌ Don't panic-post on other platforms: Wait for confirmation before declaring Twitter "dead"
- ❌ Don't fall for scam links: Phishers exploit outages with fake "fix" links—only trust official sources
- ❌ Don't uninstall/reinstall the app: This won't help and may cause you to lose cached data
- ❌ Don't spam customer support: During outages, support teams are overwhelmed—check status pages first
🔔 Get Instant Outage Alerts
Stop manually checking if Twitter is down. API Status Check monitors Twitter 24/7 and sends instant alerts when outages occur.
- ✅ Real-time Twitter API monitoring
- ✅ Instant notifications via email, Slack, Discord, webhook
- ✅ Historical uptime data and incident timeline
- ✅ Separate website vs. API status tracking
Notable Historical Twitter Outages
Twitter has experienced numerous outages since its launch in 2006. Understanding historical incidents provides context for current and future outages. Here are the most significant Twitter outages and what caused them:
Mass Layoffs & Multiple Outages
Duration: Multiple incidents throughout December (ranging from 30 min to 3 hours)
Following Elon Musk's acquisition and the layoff of ~50% of Twitter's workforce (including critical infrastructure teams), Twitter experienced a series of outages:
- Login failures and authentication errors
- Timeline loading issues
- Direct message delivery problems
- Tweet posting failures
Significance: Marked the beginning of increased outage frequency under new ownership. Many attributed issues to reduced engineering support and aggressive feature development.
Rate Limiting Crisis
Duration: ~6 hours of severe disruption, rate limits continued for weeks
Twitter suddenly imposed aggressive rate limits that caused millions of users to see blank timelines:
- Unverified users: Limited to 600 tweet views per day
- Verified users: Limited to 6,000 views per day
- New unverified accounts: 300 views per day
Official explanation: Elon Musk claimed the limits were to combat "extreme levels of data scraping" and AI training. Critics speculated it was due to unpaid cloud infrastructure bills or cost-cutting measures.
Impact: This wasn't a traditional outage, but functionally equivalent for millions of users who hit rate limits within minutes. It sparked the most significant user migration to alternative platforms (Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads) in Twitter's history.
Global Outage During Musk Acquisition
Duration: ~4 hours (longest outage in recent years)
Shortly after Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition was finalized, Twitter experienced a major global outage affecting:
- Website and mobile app completely inaccessible
- API returning 503 errors
- Affects users worldwide across all platforms
Timing: The outage occurred during a period of massive internal changes, including leadership restructuring and the beginning of layoffs.
Significance: Longest Twitter outage in recent memory, raising concerns about platform stability under new ownership.
AWS us-east-1 Outage Impact
Duration: ~2 hours of degraded service
When AWS's us-east-1 region experienced a major outage, Twitter was among thousands of affected services:
- Timeline loading delays
- Image and video upload failures
- Intermittent API availability
- Tweet posting delays
Lesson: Even tech giants like Twitter are vulnerable to third-party infrastructure failures. This incident highlighted Twitter's dependency on AWS infrastructure.
API Service Disruption
Duration: ~1.5 hours
Twitter's API experienced a significant outage while the main website remained accessible:
- Third-party apps (TweetDeck, Buffer, Hootsuite) unable to connect
- Developer integrations returning 500 errors
- OAuth authentication failures
- Scheduled tweet posting failed
Impact: Demonstrated that Twitter's API can fail independently from the consumer platform. Businesses relying on Twitter API for scheduling and automation were severely affected.
Global Outage During Peak Hours
Duration: ~45 minutes
Twitter went completely dark for users worldwide during US evening hours:
- Website showed error pages
- Mobile apps unable to load content
- API completely unavailable
Cause: Internal infrastructure issue (not publicly detailed). Twitter was still under original leadership with larger engineering teams.
The "Fail Whale" Era
Frequency: Extremely common (sometimes multiple times per week)
In Twitter's early years, outages were so frequent that the "Fail Whale" error page became iconic internet culture:
- Infrastructure couldn't handle rapid user growth
- Ruby on Rails performance limitations
- Database scaling challenges
- Outages during every major event (elections, disasters, celebrity news)
Legacy: Twitter's early instability led to massive infrastructure investments in the 2010s, reducing outage frequency significantly until recent years.
📊 Outage Trends Over Time
2006-2010: The Unstable Years
Frequent outages, "Fail Whale" era, infrastructure growing pains
2011-2019: Increased Stability
Major infrastructure investments, 3-5 significant outages per year
2020-2022: Mature Platform
Most stable period in Twitter's history, rare major outages
2023-Present: Post-Acquisition Volatility
Increased outage frequency due to staff reductions, rapid changes, infrastructure cost-cutting
Track current Twitter uptime and historical incidents at API Status Check.
How API Status Check Monitors Twitter/X
API Status Check provides the most comprehensive Twitter/X monitoring available, combining real-time API health checks, historical uptime tracking, and instant outage alerts. Here's how it works:
🎯 What We Monitor
1. Twitter API Endpoints
We continuously ping critical Twitter API endpoints every 60 seconds:
- Tweet API: Posting, retrieving, and searching tweets
- Timeline API: User timelines, home timeline, mentions
- User API: Profile lookups, follower lists, user search
- Direct Messages API: DM sending and retrieval
- Media API: Image and video upload endpoints
- Streaming API: Real-time tweet streams
- Authentication: OAuth endpoints for login and authorization
2. Response Time Tracking
We measure API response times to detect performance degradation before complete failures. Slow response times often precede full outages.
3. Error Rate Monitoring
We track HTTP status codes (5xx server errors, 4xx client errors, rate limiting responses) to identify issues early.
4. Website Availability
Separate monitoring for twitter.com and x.com to detect consumer-facing platform issues independent from API status.
✅ Key Features
📊 Real-Time Status Dashboard
View Twitter's current status at a glance: operational, degraded performance, partial outage, or major outage.
📈 Historical Uptime Data
See 30-day, 90-day, and annual uptime percentages. Compare current reliability to historical trends.
🔔 Instant Outage Alerts
Receive notifications via email, Slack, Discord, or webhook the moment Twitter goes down—faster than official announcements.
📅 Incident Timeline
Complete log of past Twitter outages with duration, impact, and resolution details.
🌍 Geographic Monitoring
Monitor Twitter from multiple global locations to detect regional outages.
🔧 Separate API vs. Website Status
Know if the API is down while the website works (or vice versa)—critical for developers.
🚀 Why Choose API Status Check for Twitter Monitoring?
Fastest Detection
Our automated monitoring detects outages in under 60 seconds—often 10-30 minutes before official acknowledgment.
API-Level Granularity
Unlike crowdsourced tools, we test actual API endpoints. Know exactly which Twitter features are affected.
Comprehensive Historical Data
Track Twitter's uptime trends over time. Essential for SLA compliance, vendor evaluation, and strategic planning.
Multi-Channel Alerts
Get notified how you want: email, Slack, Discord, webhook. Configure alert thresholds to match your needs.
Developer-Friendly
Integrate Twitter status checks into your own applications via our API. Automate incident response workflows.
🎓 Use Cases for Twitter Monitoring
For Businesses & Brands
- Know immediately if your Twitter marketing campaigns are affected by outages
- Prepare alternative communication channels when Twitter is down
- Track Twitter reliability for vendor/platform evaluation
- Communicate transparently with customers about service disruptions
For Developers
- Monitor Twitter API health before users report issues
- Implement graceful degradation based on real-time status
- Debug your integration vs. Twitter-side problems
- Track API uptime for SLA compliance
For Social Media Managers
- Get alerted before your scheduled tweets fail to post
- Know when to pause campaigns or reschedule content
- Track third-party tool outages (TweetDeck, Buffer, Hootsuite) caused by Twitter API issues
For News & Media Organizations
- Verify Twitter outages for news coverage
- Access historical outage data for reporting
- Monitor real-time status during major events
Start Monitoring Twitter/X Status Now
Don't wait for users to report issues. Get instant Twitter outage alerts and comprehensive uptime tracking.
Free plan available • No credit card required • 2-minute setup
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is Twitter down right now?
To check if Twitter is currently down, visit status.x.com for official status updates, or check API Status Check's Twitter monitor for real-time API health and uptime data. You can also search "Twitter down" on Google or check DownDetector for crowdsourced reports.
How long do Twitter outages usually last?
Most Twitter outages are resolved within 15-60 minutes. Minor issues may be fixed in under 15 minutes, while major incidents can last 2-4 hours. The longest recent Twitter outage was approximately 4 hours in October 2022. Historical data shows that Twitter's engineering team typically resolves critical issues quickly, though outage frequency has increased since the 2022 acquisition.
Why does Twitter keep going down?
Twitter outages have multiple causes:
- Infrastructure strain: Traffic spikes during major events
- Software bugs: Deployment issues and code errors
- Staffing reductions: Since Elon Musk's acquisition, engineering staff was reduced by ~50%, leading to increased outage frequency
- Rapid changes: Aggressive feature development and infrastructure modifications
- Third-party failures: AWS, CDN, or DNS provider issues
- Cost-cutting: Infrastructure optimization that may reduce redundancy
What's the difference between Twitter and X down?
"Twitter" and "X" refer to the same platform. Twitter was rebranded to X in July 2023 under Elon Musk's ownership. When people search "is Twitter down" or "is X down," they're checking the same service. The official domain is now x.com (though twitter.com still redirects). The official status page is status.x.com.
Can I get alerts when Twitter goes down?
Yes! API Status Check provides instant Twitter outage alerts via email, Slack, Discord, or webhook. You can also subscribe to updates on Twitter's official status page (status.x.com) for email/SMS notifications. Third-party tools like DownDetector also offer alert options, though they rely on crowdsourced data rather than active monitoring.
Is the Twitter API down separately from the website?
Yes, Twitter's API can experience outages independently from the consumer-facing website and mobile apps. Developers and businesses using Twitter's API should monitor API-specific status. API outages affect:
- Third-party apps (TweetDeck, Buffer, Hootsuite)
- Developer integrations and bots
- Scheduled tweet posting tools
- Analytics and monitoring services
API Status Check monitors Twitter API endpoints separately from the main platform, providing granular status visibility.
What should I do if Twitter is down?
When Twitter is down:
- Verify the outage: Check status.x.com and third-party monitors
- Rule out local issues: Test your internet, clear cache, try different devices
- Be patient: Most outages resolve within 15-60 minutes
- Use alternative platforms: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Reddit
- For businesses: Communicate with customers on backup channels, reschedule content
- For developers: Implement graceful degradation, queue retries
See the complete guide above for detailed actions.
Has Twitter gotten less reliable since Elon Musk bought it?
Data shows increased outage frequency since Elon Musk's acquisition in October 2022. Contributing factors include:
- ~50% reduction in engineering staff (from ~7,500 to ~1,500 employees)
- Aggressive feature development and code changes
- Infrastructure cost-cutting measures
- Rate limiting incidents (July 2023)
- Multiple major outages in late 2022 and throughout 2023-2024
Pre-acquisition (2020-2022), Twitter averaged 3-5 major outages per year. Post-acquisition (2023-2024), this increased to 15-20 significant incidents annually. However, it's important to note that Twitter experienced frequent outages in its early years (2006-2010) before stabilizing.
Are there alternatives to Twitter I can use during outages?
Yes, several platforms serve as Twitter alternatives:
- Mastodon: Decentralized, open-source Twitter alternative with similar features
- Bluesky: Jack Dorsey's Twitter alternative (currently invite-only)
- Threads: Meta's Twitter competitor, integrated with Instagram
- Reddit: Community discussions and news aggregation
- Discord: Real-time chat communities
- LinkedIn: Professional networking with Twitter-like posts
During major Twitter outages, users often flock to these platforms to discuss the outage and stay connected.
Where can I find historical Twitter uptime data?
API Status Check's Twitter monitor provides comprehensive historical uptime data, including:
- 30-day, 90-day, and annual uptime percentages
- Complete incident timeline with duration and impact
- Response time trends over time
- API vs. website uptime comparison
You can also check status.x.com for Twitter's official incident history, though it doesn't provide uptime percentage calculations.
Never Miss a Twitter Outage Again
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