GitHub suffers major worldwide outage, disrupting millions of developers

GitHub, the world's largest code-hosting platform, went down on Monday morning, leaving developers across the globe unable to access repositories, merge pull requests, or run automated workflows as error rates spiked across the platform's core services.

The outage began around 9:40 AM EDT on August 17, 2026, with GitHub confirming it was investigating reports of degraded performance. Within the hour, the disruption had spread to multiple services developers rely on daily, including API Requests, Actions, Webhooks, Issues, and Pull Requests. GitHub's AI coding assistant Copilot was also affected, with degraded availability confirmed by 10:31 AM EDT.bleepingcomputer

"We are experiencing high error rates around 20 percent for web experiences and API traffic. Archive downloads and raw repository content downloads are experiencing an approximate 50 percent error rate," GitHub said in a status update posted to its official account on X. The company added that SAML and OIDC authentication, SCIM provisioning, and Team Sync were also impacted, threatening single sign-on access for enterprise customers.sqmagazine+1

Global Impact

Downdetector recorded thousands of user reports, with peaks of 2,100 in the United States and 849 in India. Approximately 79 percent of complaints in India related to website access, while others reported issues with the app and login services. Microsoft ↘ 0.79%, GitHub's parent company, publicly confirmed the platform was experiencing worldwide issues.moneycontrol+3

The disruption affected not only individual developers but entire software delivery pipelines. Teams relying on GitHub Actions for continuous integration and deployment saw automated builds, tests, and deployments stall or error out. Webhook-dependent automation, including deployment triggers and chat notifications, faced delayed or dropped events.bleepingcomputer+1

Root Cause Unknown

As of midday Monday, GitHub had not disclosed what caused the outage. The company said it was "currently performing mitigations based on our investigation thus far and are monitoring for improvement." Git Operations, Packages, Pages, and Codespaces remained operational, but several core services continued in a degraded state.engadget+1

The incident marks at least the second major outage to hit a Microsoft platform in recent weeks, following an Xbox services disruption late last month. GitHub had also experienced a separate outage on August 6 affecting Actions, during which 71 percent of workflow runs experienced infrastructure failures.ibtimes+1