Last updated: November 18, 2025 – ~20:00 IST
The widespread outage affecting ChatGPT, the OpenAI API**, and Sora that began earlier today continues, with no resolution announced yet by OpenAI.
Latest Official Status
OpenAI’s status page confirms the incident remains active:
- Caused by an issue with a third-party service provider
- Affects: ChatGPT, APIs, Sora, and platform websites
- Status: Identified and ongoing (now for several hours)
- Many users are stuck on Cloudflare challenge screens (“Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed”)
No estimated time to resolution has been provided.
DownDetector Trends (Real-Time)
- Current indicator: User reports indicate problems at OpenAI Breakdown of reports:
- 85% related to ChatGPT
- 12% website access
- 3% API issues
The massive spike in reports that peaked above 190 earlier this afternoon/evening has not fully subsided, confirming the outage is still impacting a large number of users globally.
Community Confirmation on Reddit
The outage has sparked immediate discussion across social platforms. One rapidly growing thread in r/ChatGPT titled “is chatgpt down?” (posted by me at ~18:56 IST) perfectly captures the user frustration:
“chatgpt is not working from my end…I’m getting this error…same from your end as well?”
The post included the now-familiar Cloudflare challenge screenshot and quickly gathered confirmations from users worldwide. Key comments include:
- Multiple users reporting the exact same Cloudflare loop
- One user attributing the root cause to “Cloudflare being down”, noting it is also taking down other AI services like Perplexity
- Attempts at workarounds (disabling VPN, different browsers, mobile data) → no success
- Consensus that the outage appears global, not limited to specific regions or ISPs
This aligns perfectly with OpenAI’s statement blaming a third-party provider — strong evidence points to Cloudflare or a related networking/CDN partner.
Current Impact Summary
| Service | Status | Most Common Symptom |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Web/App | Partial/global downtime | Stuck on Cloudflare challenge or infinite loading |
| OpenAI API | Errors & timeouts | 5xx responses, connection failures |
| Sora | Unavailable | Generation requests failing |
| platform.openai.com | Intermittent access | Login/dashboard issues |
What You Can Do
- Keep checking https://status.openai.com/ for official updates (this is the single source of truth).
- Follow @OpenAI on X/Twitter for any breaking announcements.
- Monitor DownDetector for when report volume starts dropping sharply — usually the first sign of recovery.
- Avoid repeatedly refreshing or retrying — it only adds load during recovery.
We’ll continue monitoring and will post a new update the moment OpenAI declares the incident resolved or shares more details about the third-party provider issue.
Stay tuned — and in the meantime, maybe take this as a sign to touch some grass.
