ChatGPT is down for many – here's everything we know about the outage so far

ChatGPT is currently down for many users, or at least behaving very erratically – and it isn't yet clear what's causing it or how long it'll last.

The website Downdetector is showing a large spike in reports in both the US and UK, with the issues starting at around 9amET / 2pm BST. Most users are reporting either laggy performance or error messages like "something went wrong" on the desktop version and "upstream connect error" on the mobile app.

We've also noticed some intermittent issues on the TechRadar team on both ChatGPT's mobile app and browser versions. So what's going on? Have too many Studio Ghibli image requests pushed OpenAI's over the edge, or is this (hopefully) just a short-term blip?

Here's everything we know about the latest ChatGPT outage so far...

The latest news

• ChatGPT is down for many users on both desktop and mobile
• The issues started at around 9am ET / 2pm BST
• The problems include error messages and laggy performance

2025-03-31T14:23:28.018Z

You may be seeing this a lot today...

It isn't yet clear what's causing today's ChatGPT problems, but OpenAI's status page says it's investigating a live incident.

The problems seem to be intermittent and producing a variety of lovely symptoms, including the "something went wrong" message above and the classic "upstream connect error" (always a favorite) on the mobile app.

While it's a bit too soon to blame the Studio Ghibli image craze, it's hard to ignore the timing of Sam Altman's increasingly panicked X posts telling us to stop making so many...

2025-03-31T14:12:07.135Z

When did the problems start?

According to Downdetector, the latest ChatGPT outage started at around 9am ET / 2pm BST, when we saw a big spike in reports in both the US and UK.

The issues are seemingly intermittent, with the main problems including "something went wrong" error messages in ChatGPT's browser version and "upstream connect errors" in the mobile app.

We've seen both issues on the TechRadar team, though it doesn't appear to be a complete outage that's affecting everyone equally...