GitHub’s Global Outage Leaves Developers Reeling
A massive disruption is affecting developers worldwide as GitHub, a popular platform for collaboration and version control, has gone dark. The outage, which began early on August 17th, has crippled various services, including API Requests, Actions, Webhooks, Issues, and Pull Requests, leaving many users unable to access their projects.
The issue seems to be widespread, with error rates reaching as high as 20% across GitHub’s web experience and API traffic. Repository downloads are also severely impacted, with archive and raw repository content experiencing error rates of approximately 50%. Authentication-related services, such as SAML and OIDC authentication, SCIM, and Team Sync, have also been affected by the outage.
GitHub Actions, a crucial service for automated builds, tests, deployments, and other workflows, is experiencing degraded performance. This means that developers relying on GitHub’s Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) platform are likely to face significant disruptions. Furthermore, Copilot, GitHub’s AI-powered coding assistant, has also been impacted by the outage.
The cause of the disruption remains unknown as GitHub continues its investigation. The company has not provided any information about the underlying reasons for the outage, leaving users and developers in the dark. However, it is clear that the issue affects a significant portion of GitHub’s services, causing inconvenience to thousands of users worldwide.
Despite efforts by GitHub to mitigate the situation, error rates remain high, with web experiences and API traffic still experiencing 20% error rates. Repository downloads continue to be severely impacted, with archive and raw repository content downloads showing approximately 50% error rates.
As a community that relies heavily on online collaboration tools like GitHub, it’s essential for developers to be prepared for outages and disruptions. By staying informed about the status of their favorite platforms and services, users can minimize the impact of such events. In this case, it’s crucial for developers to explore alternative solutions or workflows while GitHub works to resolve the issue.
For now, it remains a waiting game as GitHub continues its investigation and attempts to restore full functionality to its services.
Source: Bleeping Computer — 2026-08-17