LaunchDarkly / Feature Flags

LaunchDarkly Status: How to Check If LaunchDarkly Is Down (2026)

Updated June 2026 · 7 min read · API Status Check

Quick Answer

Check LaunchDarkly status at status.launchdarkly.com (official) or apistatuscheck.com/is-launchdarkly-down for independent real-time monitoring.

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The Official LaunchDarkly Status Page

LaunchDarkly maintains an official status page at status.launchdarkly.com. This page tracks real-time status for all LaunchDarkly services:

Flag Evaluation (SDK Streaming): The real-time streaming connection SDKs use to receive flag updates — the core LaunchDarkly service
SDK Polling API: The REST endpoint SDKs use in polling mode (alternative to streaming for restricted environments)
LaunchDarkly Dashboard: The web UI at app.launchdarkly.com for creating, managing, and targeting feature flags
Events API (Analytics): Ingestion of evaluation events used for Experimentation, analytics, and feature flag usage data
Experimentation: A/B testing infrastructure for measuring flag variation impact on key metrics
Segments & Big Segments: User targeting segment management, especially large segments backed by data imports

What Each LaunchDarkly Status Means

Operational: All LaunchDarkly systems are working normally. If flag changes aren't propagating to your application, check your SDK initialization, connection mode (streaming vs. polling), and SDK key validity.
Degraded Performance: LaunchDarkly is up but slower than normal. Flag updates may take longer to propagate, streaming reconnects may have higher latency, or the dashboard may be slow to load. SDKs continue serving cached values.
Partial Outage: A specific LaunchDarkly service is down — often the dashboard while SDK streaming continues. This is good news: flag evaluation typically continues even when the dashboard is inaccessible.
Major Outage: LaunchDarkly streaming is broadly unavailable. SDKs will serve cached flag values if they connected previously. New SDK instances won't receive any flags — they'll use the fallback values defined in your code.
Under Maintenance: Planned maintenance. LaunchDarkly typically maintains SDK streaming availability during maintenance windows, so flag evaluation continues while administrative features may be briefly unavailable.
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How LaunchDarkly SDKs Handle Outages

LaunchDarkly's SDK architecture is intentionally designed to degrade gracefully. Understanding this helps you design resilient feature flag usage:

In-Memory Cache (All SDKs)

Every LaunchDarkly SDK maintains an in-memory cache of the last known flag state. If the streaming connection drops, the SDK continues serving the cached values — no interruption to flag evaluation.

✅ Transparent to your application for existing SDK instances

Bootstrap / Initialization Fallback

If an SDK instance starts up while LaunchDarkly is unreachable, it can't populate its cache from LaunchDarkly. Your code's fallback values (the default passed to variation() calls) are used instead.

⚠️ Requires careful fallback value design in your code

Relay Proxy (Self-hosted)

LaunchDarkly's Relay Proxy is a self-hosted component that caches all flag state locally. Your SDKs connect to Relay Proxy, not directly to LaunchDarkly. Proxy continues serving flags even if LaunchDarkly SaaS is unreachable.

✅ Recommended for production workloads with strict availability requirements

Local File Store

Server-side SDKs can be configured to read flags from a local YAML/JSON file. Useful for testing and as a last-resort fallback if LaunchDarkly and Relay Proxy are both unavailable.

✅ Full fallback — works with no LaunchDarkly connection at all

5 Ways to Check LaunchDarkly Status Right Now

1.

Official LaunchDarkly Status Page

Visit status.launchdarkly.com for real-time component status. Subscribe to email notifications to get alerted when incidents are created, updated, or resolved.

status.launchdarkly.com →
2.

API Status Check (Independent Monitor)

APIStatusCheck independently monitors LaunchDarkly's streaming and API endpoints — unbiased monitoring that LaunchDarkly doesn't control.

Check live LaunchDarkly status →
3.

X/Twitter Search

Search 'LaunchDarkly down' or 'feature flags not updating' on X. Engineering teams often surface LaunchDarkly issues on social media before official status updates.

Search X for 'LaunchDarkly down' →
4.

SDK Connection Diagnostics

LaunchDarkly SDKs expose connection status. Check your SDK's isInitialized() or flagsChanged() state to determine if the SDK is connected or falling back to cached values.

LaunchDarkly SDK Docs →
5.

Test the LaunchDarkly Streaming Endpoint

Ping LaunchDarkly's streaming endpoint to verify connectivity from your environment.

curl -I https://stream.launchdarkly.com/all

Common LaunchDarkly Issues During Outages

These are the errors and symptoms you'll see when LaunchDarkly is experiencing issues:

"LaunchDarkly SDK not initialized / initialization timeout"SDK can't reach LaunchDarkly to fetch initial flag state. New SDK instances will use fallback values. Existing instances continue with cached values. Check status.launchdarkly.com and your network's ability to reach stream.launchdarkly.com.
"Feature flags not updating / stale flag values"SDK streaming connection may have dropped and not reconnected. Check SDK logs for connection errors. Most SDKs auto-reconnect with exponential backoff — recent changes may appear once connection restores.
"401 Unauthorized from LaunchDarkly"Invalid or expired SDK key — not an outage. Verify your SDK key in the LaunchDarkly Dashboard under Account Settings → Projects → (your project) → SDK Keys.
"LaunchDarkly Dashboard loading slowly or returning 503"Dashboard service may be degraded. Check status.launchdarkly.com. Critical note: dashboard issues rarely affect SDK flag evaluation — your application feature flags likely still work even when the dashboard is inaccessible.
"Experimentation / A/B test data not appearing"LaunchDarkly Events API may be degraded. Flag evaluation continues but experiment event data isn't being ingested. Check status.launchdarkly.com for Events API status specifically.
"Big Segment evaluation timeouts"Large user segments (backed by data imports) have additional backend infrastructure. Big Segment timeouts often occur before other issues appear. Consider switching large targeting rules to smaller rule-based segments as a fallback.

LaunchDarkly Uptime and Historical Incidents

99.99%
Target uptime SLA
Enterprise plans include uptime SLA for the flag evaluation service
1-2/month
Reported incidents
Typically dashboard or events issues — SDK evaluation rarely affected
Seconds
SDK failover time
Cached flag values take effect immediately when streaming drops

LaunchDarkly's architecture separates flag evaluation (SDK streaming) from the dashboard and analytics. Most LaunchDarkly incidents affect the dashboard or event pipeline without impacting live flag evaluation. Also see: feature flags guide for more on building resilient feature flag systems.

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What to Do When LaunchDarkly Is Down

Immediate Response

  • Confirm at status.launchdarkly.com — check which service is affected
  • Check if SDK streaming is affected (most important) or just dashboard
  • Verify existing SDK instances are serving cached values correctly
  • Don't restart services — that would lose SDK cache and trigger fallback values
  • Notify your team so engineers don't waste time debugging application code

Long-Term Resilience

  • Deploy LaunchDarkly Relay Proxy for self-hosted flag caching
  • Define meaningful fallback values for every flag variation() call
  • Consider what your app does if a flag defaults to false vs. true
  • Test SDK initialization failure scenarios in staging
  • Monitor SDK connection health as part of your application health checks

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the official LaunchDarkly status page?

LaunchDarkly's official status page is at status.launchdarkly.com. It shows real-time status for SDK streaming (flag evaluation), the LaunchDarkly dashboard, Events API, and Experimentation. You can subscribe to email notifications for incident updates.

Will my feature flags break if LaunchDarkly goes down?

For already-initialized SDKs: no. LaunchDarkly SDKs cache flag state in memory and serve cached values when the streaming connection drops. For new SDK instances starting during a full LaunchDarkly outage: they'll use the fallback values defined in your variation() calls, which could affect behavior if not carefully designed.

What is the LaunchDarkly Relay Proxy and should I use it?

The Relay Proxy is a self-hosted component that sits between your SDKs and LaunchDarkly. All SDKs connect to your Relay Proxy, which caches all flag state. If LaunchDarkly SaaS is unreachable, Relay Proxy continues serving the last known flag state to all your SDKs. It's recommended for production environments with many SDK instances or strict availability requirements.

Does LaunchDarkly have a free tier?

Yes — LaunchDarkly has a Starter plan with limited seats and flags. The Starter plan still uses the same infrastructure as paid plans. If you're on Starter and experience issues, check status.launchdarkly.com — incidents affect all tiers.

How do I monitor LaunchDarkly status automatically?

Subscribe to email alerts at status.launchdarkly.com, follow @LaunchDarkly on X, or use an independent monitoring tool. For the most reliable monitoring, instrument your SDK's connection state directly and emit a metric when it enters 'offline' mode — this catches cases where LaunchDarkly is degraded in ways that don't trigger an official status update.

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🌐 Can't Access LaunchDarkly?

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

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Quick ISP test: Try accessing LaunchDarkly on mobile data (Wi-Fi off). If it works, the issue is with your ISP or local network.

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