ChatGPT went down — full timeline as major outage hit users worldwide

How many people are affected?

ChatGPT's current outage is no doubt affecting thousands if not millions of users around the world. The chatbot is available to use for free but OpenAI charges up to $200 per month for its top tier that gives users (among other things) unlimited slow video generations, 500 fast generations per month and access to higher resolution and longer clips in Sora.

According to OpenAI boss Sam Altman, ChatGPT is used weekly by more than 300 million people worldwide.

"Continuing to work on a fix for this issue"

OpenAI has just updated the ChatGPT status page at 6.34am PT/ 9:39am ET/ 2:39pm GMT to acknowledge it is "continuing to work on a fix for this issue."

Earlier, the company added that it had "identified the root cause of this issue" and is currently "working to implement a fix".

Bad gateway

Users attempting to access ChatGPT at the moment are being met with a bad gateway error, indicating the server-based issues affecting the service.

A 502 bad gateway error occurs when one server receives an invalid response from another server.

Charting the outage

As you can see from the DownDetector graph pictured above, reports spiked early and reached nearly 4,400 reports before falling back down again to around 1,500 continuously. DownDetector relies on user-generated reports of outages and typically sees strong spikes right into an outage as devoted users of any service provide their reports.

Many reporters are citing that ChatGPT's app version is working but the web version is still down. This is what many of the Tom's Guide team is seeing itself, with the app version loading on iOS and Android but the desktop site — on both macOS and Windows — failing to load.

What is OpenAI currently working on?

This outage comes at a time when OpenAI is gearing up to release its latest reasoning AI model, o3 mini. According to CEO Sam Altman, the o3 mini model is slated to launch within the next two weeks and will be “the beginning of the next phase of AI.”

Where the o3 mini model will excel is in incorporating advanced reasoning skills that allow for step-by-step logical analysis.

This progression enables the model to perform a series of intermediate reasoning steps, by taking a moment to “think,” as it considers various prompts prior to responding. Enhanced problem-solving abilities can serve users in areas like coding, science, and mathematics.

Fix implemented

The latest information from the OpenAI status page indicates a fix has been implemented and the company is monitoring its progress.

In an entry posted at 7:11am PT/ 10:11am ET / 3.11pm GMT, OpenAI confirmed: "We are continuing to monitor for any further issues."

Users are still posting their frustration on social media, though...

Best ChatGPT alternatives

While we wait for ChatGPT to return to its usual self, you may be wondering what to use instead. Luckily, we have a list here of the best ChatGPT alternatives.

Last time ChatGPT had an outage, enquiries into these other services shot up and, as a result, those services struggled with the increased load. However, neither Claude from Anthropic or Perplexity seem to be affected by this current ChatGPT outage and are functioning as normal.

Outage is over — according to ChatGPT

The fix issued by OpenAI roughly an hour ago appears to have worked as ChatGPT is now largely back up and running.

As you can see from the screengrab above, I was able to log into the desktop version and ask the chatbot outright if all was well. It told me (citing the New York Post), that "ChatGPT experienced elevated error rates, leading to access issues for users.

"OpenAI began investigating the problem around 4:00 a.m. Pacific Time and implemented a fix within half an hour, restoring normal service by 4:43 a.m. Pacific Time."

My Texas-based colleague Anthony Spadafora also confirmed the service is back up and running for him, too.