Possible Outage Resolved

ChatGPT possible outage on Aug 31, 2026 — 5 hours 20 minutes incident report

ChatGPT appeared to experience a possible outage for 5 hours 20 minutes on Aug 31, 2026.

See live ChatGPT status →
ServiceChatGPT
StartedAug 31, 2026 at 15:10 UTC
ResolvedAug 31, 2026 at 20:30 UTC
Total duration5 hours 20 minutes
Peak severityPossible Outage
DetectionOfficial OpenAI status feed

Timeline

  1. Possible issue detected
  2. Confirmed by re-check
  3. Service responding normally

What happened

On Aug 31, 2026, ChatGPT appeared to experience a possible outage lasting 5 hours 20 minutes, according to our automated monitoring. The incident was first detected by Are The Bots Down's monitoring system at Aug 31, 2026 at 15:10 UTC and our checks resumed normal results at Aug 31, 2026 at 20:30 UTC. OpenAI's public status feed reported the issue during this window. 33 status observations were recorded across the lifetime of this incident.

What to do when ChatGPT appears to be having issues

Most detected ChatGPT issues resolve within 15 minutes. While you wait, the API often stays available even when the consumer chat is having problems — check status.openai.com for the official picture, but expect that page to lag the actual incident by 20 to 40 minutes.

Most users find it faster to switch tools than to wait. The closest alternatives to ChatGPT for the same workflows are Claude or Gemini.

Status information on this page is based on automated monitoring of publicly accessible endpoints and user-submitted reports. Are The Bots Down? is an independent monitoring service not affiliated with any monitored service. Automated monitoring can produce false positives; the source of record for any service's actual operational status is the service operator itself.

This report was generated automatically by Are The Bots Down's real-time monitoring system. Methodology ›