OpenAI Outage History

OpenAI's API platforms experienced a multi-day outage beginning at 1:11 AM UTC and not fully resolved until 4:51 AM UTC. Early in the incident, OpenAI flagged impact to file_search retrieval quality across Assistants API, Responses API, and Retrieval API, with users reporting degraded behavior and intermittent errors across related endpoints.

The OpenAI status page issued multiple updates and mitigations over the course of the incident. A mitigation was applied around 1:06 AM UTC and recovery was monitored thereafter. Reports of elevated errors and rate‑limit issues, including GPT-4o and agent-related tasks, followed as the outage expanded to a broader set of services, culminating in elevated error rates across the API Platform on 11:46 AM UTC affecting Embeddings, Batch, Files, Images, Audio, Realtime, Login, Fine-tuning, Completions (legacy), Chat, Compliance, Moderations, and Uploads. Recovery progressed in the days that followed and components returned to normal by 4:51 AM UTC.

The incident affected a broad set of OpenAI APIs and services, with a noticeable volume of user reports indicating widespread impact across Embeddings, Batch, Files, Images, Audio, Realtime, Login, Fine-tuning, Completions (legacy), Chat, Compliance, Moderations, Uploads, and related assistant and research interfaces. The outage lasted roughly four days before full recovery.

OpenAI Batch API experienced a brief degradation as calls to the Batch API returned elevated error rates. The incident began at Sep 11, 2025 12:46 AM UTC and was resolved by Sep 11, 2025 12:51 AM UTC. OpenAI issued two status updates during the window, noted elevated errors and a mitigation, and the Batch API returned to normal after the incident. The impact was isolated to the Batch API component.

OpenAI reported a brief incident during which ChatGPT / Agent services experienced an elevated error rate, which could cause some user requests to fail or respond with errors. The OpenAI status page indicated that users were experiencing elevated errors for the impacted services and that a mitigation was being implemented to restore normal operation.

The Web Search tools within the OpenAI Responses API experienced elevated errors, impacting users attempting to fetch web results via the API. The incident started at Sep 5, 2025 9:37 AM UTC and lasted about 14 minutes, with services returning to normal by Sep 5, 2025 9:51 AM UTC.

OpenAI issued 2 status updates during the incident, confirming the issue and later the mitigation and restoration of normal operations. Because the disruption was brief, the overall user impact was limited to a short period of degraded performance.

OpenAI's File API endpoints experienced elevated errors, causing a brief degradation in file-related operations within the APIs / Files component. The incident affected users attempting file uploads, downloads, or other File API workflows, lasting about 45 minutes. The outage began at Sep 4, 2025 9:36 PM UTC and was resolved by Sep 4, 2025 10:21 PM UTC. OpenAI issued two status updates during the incident, acknowledging the elevated errors and outlining mitigation steps, before the service returned to normal. The impact appeared limited to the File API area with a small number of user reports.

The outage began at 8:11 AM UTC when OpenAI flagged a ChatGPT-wide issue with responses not displaying. Affected components spanned dozens of ChatGPT services, including File uploads, Search, DALL·E, Memory, Conversations, Login, Web, and more, impacting how users interact with ChatGPT across web, mobile, and desktop interfaces. Users reported prompts not returning results, blank messages, or responses not appearing in chats, indicating a broad disruption to typical chat experiences. The outage lasted approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, with multiple status updates issued during the incident.

The OpenAI API experienced a brief outage affecting API requests for a short window. A user in Guildford, United Kingdom reported issues around 7:30 PM UTC, and the service appeared to recover by 7:36 PM UTC. StatusGator logged an Early Warning Signal at Sep 2, 2025 7:36 PM UTC, indicating the outage was detected before any provider acknowledgment. The outage lasted roughly 6 minutes, with no public OpenAI status updates during the incident. The API endpoints were affected, but the impact was localized.

OpenAI reported a brief degradation affecting ChatGPT Conversations, with elevated errors impacting user interactions starting at 3:27 PM UTC. The issue caused a degraded experience for users engaging with ChatGPT Conversations. OpenAI issued 2 status updates during the incident, first noting elevated errors and later confirming the service had returned to normal. The outage lasted about 19 minutes and was resolved by 3:46 PM UTC, with ChatGPT Conversations returning to full functionality. There were no broader impacts reported beyond this component.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Conversations component experienced elevated errors and degraded chat performance for about 35 minutes. The incident began on 12:26 AM UTC and was resolved by 1:01 AM UTC.

OpenAI acknowledged the issue via the status page and issued two updates while mitigation was implemented. The incident appeared to be limited to the ChatGPT Conversations component.

The outage began at Aug 28, 2025 2:16 PM UTC and was resolved by Aug 28, 2025 3:26 PM UTC. OpenAI reported degraded login and signup functionality, with two components affected: ChatGPT / Login and APIs / Login. Users across regions experienced login timeouts and invalid session errors when signing in or authorizing sessions.