GitHub Is Down: Major Outage Affects GitHub, API, Actions and More

GitHub is experiencing a major outage today, August 17, 2026, affecting developers and teams around the world.

Users are reporting problems accessing repositories, pull requests, issues, GitHub Actions, APIs, and other GitHub services. GitHub has acknowledged the incident and is investigating elevated error rates across the platform.

Is GitHub Down Right Now?

Yes. GitHub is currently experiencing a widespread service disruption.

According to GitHub’s status information, web experiences and API traffic are seeing error rates of approximately 20%. Repository archive downloads and raw content downloads have been affected even more severely, with error rates of approximately 50%.

The outage is affecting more than simply the GitHub website. Several services that developers depend on as part of their daily development workflows are also experiencing problems.

What Is Affected by the GitHub Outage?

The disruption is affecting multiple GitHub services, including:

• GitHub website
• GitHub API
• Pull Requests
• Issues
• GitHub Actions
• Webhooks
• Repository and raw content downloads
• Authentication services
• GitHub Copilot and related services

The exact impact can vary between users and services. Some developers may still be able to access certain GitHub features while other functions fail.

GitHub API Is Also Experiencing Problems

The GitHub API is particularly important for developers and applications that depend on GitHub programmatically.

Applications using the API may experience:

• Failed API requests
• Increased response times
• Authentication problems
• Missing repository information
• Failed automated workflows
• Errors when retrieving GitHub data

If your application relies on GitHub’s API, a temporary failure does not necessarily mean there is a problem with your own application.

GitHub Actions Are Affected

GitHub Actions is another important service affected by the incident.

GitHub Actions is commonly used for:

• Continuous integration
• Automated testing
• Deployments
• Building applications
• Running scheduled tasks
• Publishing packages

When GitHub Actions experiences an outage, automated development and deployment pipelines can stop working or become delayed.

For teams using GitHub Actions to deploy applications automatically, this can mean that new commits are pushed successfully but the corresponding deployment does not happen immediately.

Are GitHub Repositories Down?

Some users are experiencing problems loading repositories, commits, and repository content.

Repository archive downloads and raw content downloads have reportedly experienced error rates of approximately 50%, making this one of the more heavily affected areas of the outage.

However, GitHub is not necessarily completely inaccessible to every user.

The outage is affecting different services and users differently.

Is GitHub Copilot Down?

GitHub Copilot has also been affected by the broader disruption, with reports indicating degraded availability.

Developers using Copilot may therefore experience failed requests, delays, or interruptions while the GitHub incident continues.

What Caused the GitHub Outage?

At the time of writing, GitHub has not publicly identified a definitive root cause for today’s outage.

GitHub has confirmed that it is investigating the performance problems and working to restore affected services.

It is important not to assume that the outage was caused by a cyberattack or another specific event until GitHub provides confirmed information.

How Long Will GitHub Be Down?

There is currently no reliable way to predict exactly how long the incident will last.

GitHub is actively working on the problem and publishing updates through its official status page.

For developers waiting for a service to recover, the best source for real-time information is the official GitHub Status page.

Check GitHub Status

What Should Developers Do During the GitHub Outage?

If GitHub is preventing you from completing your work, there are several things you can do.

1. Check GitHub Status

Before changing your code or configuration, check whether GitHub has acknowledged an incident.

This can help determine whether the problem is on your side or with GitHub’s infrastructure.

2. Avoid Repeatedly Retrying Failed Operations

If GitHub is experiencing elevated error rates, repeatedly retrying API requests or automated operations may not solve the problem.

Wait for the service to recover and try again later.

3. Continue Working Locally

If you already have your repository cloned locally, you can continue many development tasks without GitHub.

You can still:

git status
git add .
git commit -m "Update application"

Local Git functionality does not depend on the GitHub website being available.

However, operations that require communication with GitHub, such as pushing to GitHub or fetching from GitHub, may fail during the outage.

4. Check Your Deployment Pipeline

If your application normally deploys through GitHub Actions or another GitHub-integrated service, check whether the deployment is waiting for GitHub to recover.

Avoid making unnecessary changes to your deployment configuration simply because a GitHub service is temporarily unavailable.

Why a GitHub Outage Is a Big Problem for Developers

GitHub has become a central part of modern software development.

Developers use it for much more than storing source code.

A typical project may depend on GitHub for:

Source Code
     ↓
GitHub Repository
     ↓
Pull Request
     ↓
GitHub Actions
     ↓
Testing
     ↓
Deployment
     ↓
Production

An outage affecting several parts of this chain can therefore disrupt development teams, CI/CD pipelines, open-source projects, and businesses.

GitHub Outage Highlights the Importance of Backups

Today’s incident is also a reminder that important repositories should not exist in only one location.

For critical projects, organizations can consider:

• Regular repository backups
• Git mirrors
• Secondary Git hosting
• Local repository copies
• Backup CI/CD strategies
• Documented disaster recovery procedures

Services such as GitLab and Bitbucket can provide alternative Git hosting, although switching providers during an active outage is not always practical.

GitHub Down or Just You?

If you cannot access GitHub today, it is probably not just your internet connection.

Multiple reports from developers indicate widespread problems, while GitHub has acknowledged the ongoing service disruption.

You can quickly test whether the problem is likely local by checking:

1. GitHub in another browser.
2. GitHub from another network.
3. The GitHub Status page.
4. Your Git command-line operations.
5. GitHub API responses.

If multiple GitHub services are failing while other websites work normally, the problem is likely related to the ongoing GitHub incident.

Latest GitHub Outage Status

As of August 17, 2026, GitHub is investigating elevated error rates affecting its web experience and API traffic.

Some of the most heavily affected services include repository content downloads, while Pull Requests, Issues, Actions, Webhooks, and authentication-related services are also experiencing problems.

The situation can change quickly as GitHub engineers deploy fixes and restore individual services.

For the latest information, check the official status page rather than relying on older reports.

Conclusion

GitHub is experiencing a significant outage on August 17, 2026, affecting several services used by developers worldwide.

The incident goes beyond the GitHub website, with API traffic, repository content downloads, Pull Requests, Issues, Actions, Webhooks, authentication, and GitHub Copilot among the affected areas.

If you’re currently unable to access GitHub, there may be nothing wrong with your computer, internet connection, or repository. The best approach is to continue working locally where possible and monitor GitHub’s official status page for recovery updates.