Is Jira Down? How to Check and What to Do

by API Status Check

TLDR: Check if Jira is down at apistatuscheck.com/api/jira. This guide covers how to verify Atlassian Cloud outages, access cached tickets, and keep your team's workflow moving during Jira downtime.

TLDR: Check if Jira is down at status.atlassian.com and apistatuscheck.com/api/jira. Keep your team productive during outages with Linear, GitHub Issues, or Google Sheets as temporary fallbacks, and export critical tickets regularly so you're not completely locked out during Atlassian incidents.

Is Jira Down? How to Check and What to Do

Jira is the project management backbone for over 250,000 organizations worldwide — from startups running sprints to Fortune 500 enterprises tracking compliance. When Jira goes down, standups turn into guessing games, sprint planning stalls, and entire engineering organizations lose visibility into what's happening.

With 1,000+ monthly searches for "is Jira down," you're far from the only one refreshing the page.

Here's everything you need to know when Jira stops responding.

How to Check if Jira is Actually Down

Step 1: Check Atlassian's Official Status

Atlassian Status Page: status.atlassian.com

This covers all Atlassian products, not just Jira:

  • Jira Software (Cloud)
  • Jira Service Management
  • Jira Work Management
  • Confluence
  • Bitbucket
  • Trello
  • Atlassian Access (SSO/identity)
  • Atlassian Admin

⚠️ Jira Cloud vs. Data Center: The status page only covers Jira Cloud. If you're on Jira Data Center (self-hosted), the outage is on your infrastructure, not Atlassian's.

Step 2: Check API Status Check

Real-time monitoring: apistatuscheck.com/api/jira

Independent monitoring gives you a second opinion when Atlassian's status page hasn't caught up yet.

Step 3: Check Community Reports

  • Twitter/X: Search "Jira down" — real-time crowd reports
  • Atlassian Community: community.atlassian.com — official forums, often has admin responses
  • Reddit: r/jira for user reports and workarounds
  • Hacker News: Atlassian outages often make the front page

Step 4: Test Atlassian's APIs Directly

# Check if Jira Cloud is responding
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://your-instance.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/serverInfo

# Check Atlassian's status API
curl -s https://status.atlassian.com/api/v2/status.json | python3 -m json.tool

# Check specific components
curl -s https://status.atlassian.com/api/v2/components.json | python3 -c "
import json, sys
data = json.load(sys.stdin)
for c in data['components']:
    if 'jira' in c['name'].lower():
        print(f\"{c['name']}: {c['status']}\")
"

Common Jira Issues (That Aren't Full Outages)

Before assuming Jira is down globally, check these common culprits:

Instance-Specific Issues

Your instance is slow but Jira isn't down:

  • Too many custom fields (>500 slows everything)
  • Large boards with 1,000+ issues visible
  • Complex JQL filters running on every page load
  • Marketplace apps with performance issues

Fix: Ask your Jira admin to check Administration → System → Troubleshooting & Support → Instance Health.

Login and SSO Issues

  • "Can't log in" ≠ "Jira is down": Usually an SSO/identity provider issue
  • Check: Can you access id.atlassian.com directly?
  • Try: Incognito window (clears stale cookies/sessions)
  • SAML/SSO: If your company uses Okta, Azure AD, or OneLogin for SSO, the issue might be with your identity provider

Browser and Cache Issues

  • Clear cache: Old JavaScript bundles cause blank pages
  • Try another browser: Rules out extension conflicts
  • Disable browser extensions: Adblockers and privacy extensions can break Jira
  • Check console: F12 → Console tab for JavaScript errors

Network and VPN

  • VPN required? Many companies restrict Jira to VPN-connected users
  • Corporate firewall: New Atlassian IP ranges might be blocked
  • DNS: Try nslookup your-instance.atlassian.net to verify DNS resolution

Jira Mobile App

  • Update the app: Old versions lose compatibility
  • Clear app data: Settings → Apps → Jira → Clear Cache
  • Re-login: Sign out completely and sign back in
  • API token: If using a personal access token, it may have expired

What to Do When Jira is Actually Down

Immediate Response (First 5 Minutes)

  1. Don't panic: Jira outages are almost always resolved within 1-2 hours
  2. Confirm scope: Is it all of Atlassian or just Jira? Check if Confluence/Bitbucket work
  3. Notify your team: Post in Slack/Teams/Discord so people stop trying to load it
  4. Check ETA: Atlassian usually posts estimated resolution times on their status page

Keep the Team Moving

Sprint work doesn't stop because the tool is down. Here's how to stay productive:

Quick Standup Alternatives

  • Slack thread: "Post your standup: yesterday / today / blockers"
  • Shared Google Doc: Quick table with columns for each person
  • Just... talk: Novel concept, but a 10-minute Zoom call works

Temporary Issue Tracking

  • Notion: Create a quick board with "To Do / In Progress / Done" columns
  • Google Sheets: Simple sprint tracker template
  • GitHub Issues: If your code is on GitHub, use issues temporarily
  • Linear: Free for small teams, excellent Jira alternative
  • Sticky notes: Yes, physical ones. They've survived every outage since 1977.

For Developers

  • Keep coding: You know what you're working on. The ticket will still be there.
  • Git commits: Reference the Jira ticket ID in commits even during outages — they'll link up later
  • Local notes: TODO.md in your repo with what you did during the outage

For Jira Admins

If you're responsible for a Jira Cloud instance:

  1. Subscribe to Atlassian status: status.atlassian.com → Subscribe to Updates
  2. Check Admin announcements: admin.atlassian.com for org-specific issues
  3. File a support ticket: If your instance is affected but the status page is green, open a ticket at support.atlassian.com
  4. Enable access logs: Helps distinguish between outages and configuration issues post-incident

For Jira Data Center (Self-Hosted)

If you run Jira on your own infrastructure:

  1. Check your nodes: Are all cluster nodes healthy?
  2. Database connection: Most Jira Data Center issues are database-related
  3. Thread dump: kill -3 <jira_pid> for thread analysis
  4. Logs: $JIRA_HOME/log/atlassian-jira.log for stack traces
  5. Restart order: Database → Jira application → Load balancer
  6. Heap space: Check if JVM is running out of memory (-Xmx settings)

Jira's Reliability Track Record

Atlassian publishes their SLA commitments:

  • Jira Cloud Premium/Enterprise: 99.9% uptime SLA
  • Jira Cloud Free/Standard: No formal SLA (best effort)

Notable Jira/Atlassian Outages

April 2022 — The Big One (2 Weeks)

Atlassian accidentally deleted approximately 775 customer instances during a maintenance script. Some customers were down for up to 2 weeks. Root cause: A script intended to disable a Marketplace app instead deleted entire cloud sites. This remains one of the most significant SaaS outages in history.

Lessons:

  • Atlassian had no automated recovery process for site deletions
  • Manual restoration was required for each affected instance
  • Backups existed but restoration was painstakingly slow

November 2023 — Degraded Performance (8 Hours)

Multiple Atlassian Cloud products experienced slow performance and intermittent errors. Affected Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket simultaneously.

Ongoing — Regional Latency

Users in Asia-Pacific and Europe periodically report higher latency than US users, as Atlassian's infrastructure is primarily US-based (though they've been expanding).

Preventing Jira Downtime Impact

For Teams

  1. Export critical views weekly: JQL → Export → CSV for your sprint board
  2. Document processes outside Jira: Runbooks, incident playbooks, and deployment checklists should live in multiple places
  3. Async standups: Use Slack/Teams bots for daily updates — doesn't depend on Jira
  4. Multi-tool strategy: Don't put 100% of project management in one SaaS product

For Admins

  1. Monitor independently: Use apistatuscheck.com for alerts outside Atlassian's ecosystem
  2. Atlassian Guard (formerly Access): Better visibility into instance health
  3. Regular exports: Atlassian Cloud backups are limited — export your data regularly
  4. Incident communication plan: Know how you'll notify your org before the outage happens

API and Integration Resilience

If your CI/CD or automation depends on Jira's API:

// Resilient Jira API client with retry + fallback
async function updateJiraIssue(issueKey, data, retries = 3) {
  for (let i = 0; i < retries; i++) {
    try {
      const res = await fetch(
        `https://${JIRA_INSTANCE}.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/${issueKey}`,
        {
          method: 'PUT',
          headers: {
            'Authorization': `Basic ${btoa(`${EMAIL}:${API_TOKEN}`)}`,
            'Content-Type': 'application/json',
          },
          body: JSON.stringify(data),
          signal: AbortSignal.timeout(10000), // 10s timeout
        }
      );
      if (res.ok) return await res.json();
      if (res.status >= 500) throw new Error(`Server error: ${res.status}`);
      return null; // Client error, don't retry
    } catch (err) {
      console.warn(`Jira API attempt ${i + 1} failed:`, err.message);
      if (i < retries - 1) await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 2000 * (i + 1)));
    }
  }
  // Fallback: queue the update for later
  await queueForRetry({ issueKey, data, timestamp: Date.now() });
  console.log(`Queued Jira update for ${issueKey} — will retry when service recovers`);
}

Jira Alternatives Worth Knowing

Not as replacements — but as fallbacks or complements:

Tool Best For Jira Migration? Pricing
Linear Fast-moving engineering teams Import available Free for small teams
GitHub Issues/Projects Open source, GitHub-centric teams Manual Free with GitHub
Shortcut Balanced features + speed Import available $8.50/user/mo
Asana Cross-functional teams Import available Free tier available
ClickUp All-in-one (PM + docs) Import available Free tier available
Notion Flexible, document-first teams Manual Free tier available
Azure DevOps Microsoft ecosystem teams Import available Free for small teams

Stay Updated

Last updated: February 2, 2026. We monitor Jira and 50+ APIs 24/7 at API Status Check.

Monitor Your APIs

Check the real-time status of 100+ popular APIs used by developers.

View API Status →