GitHub is experiencing a widespread outage on Monday, August 17, disrupting services used by developers, businesses and open-source projects worldwide. Problems have affected GitHub’s website and API traffic as well as Actions, Pull Requests, Issues, Webhooks, Copilot, repository downloads and enterprise authentication services.
The incident began at around 13:40 UTC, or 9:40 a.m. EDT, when GitHub said it was investigating degraded performance. The disruption subsequently expanded across several parts of the platform, meaning users may experience different problems depending on which GitHub service they are trying to access.
Some users may encounter server errors or trouble loading repositories, commits and Pull Request pages. Others can still reach GitHub.com but experience failures involving APIs, automated workflows, downloads or authentication.
GitHub reports 20% error rate as downloads reach 50%
GitHub reported error rates of approximately 20% across its web experiences and API traffic. Repository downloads were hit considerably harder, with archive downloads and raw repository content downloads experiencing an approximate 50% error rate.
The official GitHub Status page shows the incident affecting multiple components as engineers investigate, apply mitigations and monitor the platform for improvement.
The high download error rate means developers may encounter failures when downloading repository archives or retrieving raw files. API disruption can have a wider impact because third-party applications, developer tools, bots and automated systems frequently communicate with GitHub without using its website directly.
GitHub Actions disruption can affect builds and deployments
GitHub Actions is among the affected services. Actions is widely used to automate software testing, builds, releases and deployments, so degraded availability can interrupt CI/CD workflows even when developers still have their project files locally.
Webhooks have also experienced disruption. These allow events on GitHub to trigger processes in external systems, meaning delays or failures can interfere with integrations connected to repositories.
Pull Requests and Issues have also been affected. Development teams rely on these tools to review code, track bugs, discuss changes and coordinate releases, making this more significant than a simple website-access problem.
GitHub Copilot and authentication services are affected
At around 14:31 UTC, GitHub reported degraded availability for Copilot, extending the incident to its AI-assisted coding service. The disruption is particularly relevant as developers increasingly incorporate AI coding tools into everyday workflows. The growing importance of these tools was also evident when Claude AI experienced an outage affecting its chatbot, API and Claude Code earlier this year.
Enterprise users may face additional difficulties because SAML and OIDC authentication, SCIM and Team Sync have also been impacted. These services are commonly used by organisations to manage employee identities, access and synchronisation with GitHub.
Users experiencing authentication failures should therefore consider the ongoing outage before resetting passwords or making unnecessary account changes. A platform-level authentication problem cannot necessarily be fixed by changing otherwise valid credentials.
Similar operational problems can emerge when businesses depend on several connected cloud tools. A Microsoft 365 disruption involving Azure, Outlook and Teams demonstrated how failures across cloud and authentication infrastructure can interfere with everyday workplace services.
Is GitHub completely down?
No. The incident is a multi-service disruption rather than a complete shutdown of every GitHub product. Some components have remained operational while others have experienced degraded performance or availability.
This explains why one developer may be unable to download repository content while another can still open GitHub. A successfully loaded homepage also does not necessarily mean the outage has ended, because API requests, Actions jobs, authentication or downloads can remain affected separately.
Git Operations and Pages were also reported as experiencing degraded performance as the incident developed, adding to the number of GitHub services affected.
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What can developers do during the GitHub outage?
Developers with existing local repositories can generally continue writing code and making local Git commits without GitHub connectivity. Operations requiring communication with GitHub’s remote infrastructure, however, may fail until the relevant services recover.
Teams using GitHub Actions should check the status of failed builds or deployments before repeatedly restarting them, particularly when a workflow may have partially completed. Users experiencing archive or raw-file download failures may need to retry later given the elevated error rate reported by GitHub.
Developers should also avoid assuming that an error with their repository, application or internet connection is necessarily local while the wider incident remains active.
When will GitHub be back up?
GitHub has not announced a confirmed time for full recovery. Engineers have been investigating the incident, performing mitigations and monitoring the platform for improvement.
There is also no publicly confirmed root cause at the time of writing. Claims attributing the outage to a cyberattack, software update or specific infrastructure failure should therefore be treated as speculation unless GitHub provides further details.
Users should monitor GitHub’s official status page for service-by-service updates. Recovery from a multi-service outage can happen gradually, so individual components may return to normal at different times.
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