ChatGPT is down - Everything we know about the latest AI outage impacting OpenAI

ChatGPT is back online

It looks like CloudFlare has fixed the issue that was plaguing OpenAI's products and ChatGPT and Sora are back online.

Issues might persist but give your app or web browser a refresh and see if you can now access ChatGPT again.

Issues from the East Coast

Mary, a reader from the East Coast, just wrote to me saying, "I've been up since 4:00 AM Eastern time working on a project using ChatGPT as always, and poof, just like that, it went down. Cloudflare or something like that."

"All I want to know is when ChatGPT will be back up and running. Mine went out around 9:11 AM. This shows me that we do not need to depend on technology, even though we love it. Anyway, I hope it's back up before the day or week is out."

Unfortunately we have no time estimate on when ChatGPT will be back online, but thanks for reaching out Mary, I hope it's back soon!

A ChatGPT outage to coincide with AI Week

Just a reminder it's currently TechRadar’s AI Week 2025. Over the next seven days we are breaking down the world of artificial intelligence into clear, practical guides that anyone can follow.

Whether you are opening ChatGPT for the first time, curious about Gemini or Claude, or just want to understand how these tools can help at work and at home, this is the place to start.

So if you're twiddling your thumbs while waiting for ChatGPT to come back online make sure to check out all of our fantastic AI content.

ChatGPT down for over an hour

I've been trying to access ChatGPT for over an hour, and the world's most popular chatbot is still down due to Cloudflare's server issues.

Does anyone have access to ChatGPT? If so please reach out with information on how you're accessing it and what subscription tier you are using.

OpenAI reposted its previous statement again as a fresh update on its official status page as of 9:08 AM ET, again noting "We have confirmed that the incident is caused by an issue with one of our third-party service providers. We will provide updates as they become available."

Simply put, OpenAI is in a bit of a holding pattern until the Cloudflare issue is resolved.

An official statement from CloudFlare

We've also had an official statement from Cloudflare, to go along with the updates being posted on the company's status page.

"We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors. We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic. We will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis when it is ready to blog.cloudflare.com."

Could Google capitalize?

It's been a few months since we last had a ChatGPT outage, but the issues today come at a very interesting time in the AI landscape.

Google is rumored to launch Gemini 3 today or later this week, and OpenAI just launched ChatGPT 5.1.

Could Google capitalize and surprise drop a massive upgrade to Gemini? If so what could it include?

How is the ChatGPT outage affecting you?

While we wait for further updates, I'd like to know how this AI outage is impacting your life today.

Whether you're just waking up or are already half way through your work day, let me know how no ChatGPT is impacting your life by emailing me at john-anthony.disotto@futurenet.com

And, while you wait for OpenAI products to come back online, check out TechRadar AI Week which started yesterday and includes loads of excellent articles about the best ways to use AI.

Downdetector outage reports

While it's not specifically ChatGPT, the image above showcases the Cloudflare outage and just how big it actually is.

According to Downdetector websites such as ChatGPT, IKEA, Spotify, and even games like League of Legends are all experiencing issues due to Cloudflare's reported outage.

When I try to login to ChatGPT on web or on the app I'm met with "Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed."

Sora too

OpenAI's Sora video generation software is also down for millions of users. TechRadar's Lance Ulanoff was met with the same image as I shared in the previous post when attempting to login to the service.

Cloudflare.com issues

So what exactly is Cloudflare? And why are there multiple outages across the internet, not just ChatGPT?

Well the American company provides cybersecurity amongst other services to some of the world's most popular websites.

Not only is ChatGPT affected, but we're seeing issues with X.com, as well as many other popular websites.

ChatGPT is the world's most popular AI chatbot, and over 700 million users rely on the software every single week. We'll be updating live throughout this outage, so stay tuned to TechRadar to make sure you know exactly what's going on.

OpenAI services are down

ChatGPT, Sora, and other OpenAI products are currently experiencing issues which appear to be linked to Cloudflare's outage.

According to OpenAI's service page, the company is aware of the issues and will keep users updated. "We have confirmed that the incident is caused by an issue with one of our third-party service providers. We will provide updates as they become available."

Unfortunately, as this issue isn't caused by OpenAI's servers, we'll need to hope Cloudflare gets things sorted sooner rather than later.

ChatGPT is down. We'll be reporting live during the outage, so stay tuned for updates.