ChatGPT is down – Everything we know about the latest AI outage affecting OpenAI

ChatGPT is back online

CloudFlare seems to have fixed the issue that plagued OpenAI’s products, and ChatGPT and Sora are back online.

The problems may persist, but give your app or web browser an update and see if you can now access ChatGPT again.

Editions from the East Coast

Mary, a reader from the east coast, just wrote me and said, “I’ve been up since 4am EST working on a project using ChatGPT as always and poof, just like that it went down. Cloudflare or something.”

“All I want to know is when ChatGPT will be up and running again. Mine went out around 9:11. This shows me that we don’t have to depend on technology even though we love it. At least I hope it’s back before the day or week is out.”

Unfortunately, we don’t have a time estimate for when ChatGPT will be back online, but thanks for contacting Mary, I hope it’s back soon!

A ChatGPT fallout to coincide with AI Week

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

Whether you’re 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 you wait for ChatGPT to come back online, be sure to check out all of our great 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 contact us with information on how to access it and which subscription level you are using.

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

In short, OpenAI is in a bit of a holding pattern until the Cloudflare issue is resolved.

An official statement from CloudFlare

We’ve also received an official statement from Cloudflare to go along with the updates 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. This caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare’s network to experience errors. We do not yet know the reason for the increase in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to ensure that all traffic is served without fail. We will then turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual increase in traffic. We will send updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis when ready blog.cloudflare.com.”

Could Google capitalize?

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

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

Could Google take advantage and surprise drop a massive upgrade to Gemini? If so, what might it include?

How is the ChatGPT outage affecting you?

While we wait for further updates, I want to know how this AI fallout affects your life today.

Whether you’re just waking up or already halfway through your work day, let me know how no ChatGPT is impacting your life by emailing me at [email protected]

And while you’re waiting for OpenAI products to come back online, check out TechRadar AI Week, which started yesterday and has lots of great articles on the best ways to use AI.

Down detector outage reports

While not specifically ChatGPT, the image above shows the Cloudflare fallout and how large it actually is.

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

When I try to log into ChatGPT on the web or in the app, I’m greeted with “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to continue.”

Sora too

OpenAI’s Sora video generation software is also down for millions of users. TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff was greeted with the same image I shared in the previous post when trying to log into the service.

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

The American company provides, among other things, cyber security for some of the world’s most popular websites.

Not only is ChatGPT affected, but we are seeing issues with X.com as well as many other popular sites.

ChatGPT is the world’s most popular AI chatbot, and over 700 million users depend 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 happening.

OpenAI services are down

ChatGPT, Sora, and other OpenAI products are currently experiencing issues that appear to be related to the Cloudflare 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 was caused by an issue with one of our third-party service providers. We will provide updates as they become available.”

Unfortunately, since this issue isn’t caused by OpenAI’s servers, we’ll have to hope that Cloudflare gets things fixed sooner rather than later.

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