Executive Insights
- ChatGPT experienced a major global outage on Feb 3, 2026, lasting ~3.5 hours.
- Downdetector logs reported a peak of over 13,000 concurrent outage reports.
- The disruption is linked to high traffic from the new Codex app for macOS.
- Critical dependencies on AI for coding and research were highlighted by the downtime.
Incident Timeline: From Spike to Stability
The disruption began abruptly at approximately 3:00 PM EST (20:00 UTC), coinciding with peak business hours in the United States and late evening usage in Europe. Users immediately began reporting connectivity issues, with symptoms ranging from login failures to the generic “Hmm… something seems to have gone wrong” error message.
| Time (EST) | Event Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2:55 PM | Initial reports of high latency and timeout errors. | Degraded |
| 3:20 PM | Downdetector logs show a massive spike, peaking at over 13,000 simultaneous reports. | Outage |
| 3:45 PM | OpenAI Status Page updates to “Investigating elevated error rates.” | Investigating |
| 5:15 PM | Mitigation strategies implemented; error rates begin to subside. | Mitigating |
| 6:30 PM | All systems, including the new Codex macOS app, confirmed operational. | Resolved |
Root Cause Analysis: The “Codex” Surge
While OpenAI has not released a formal post-mortem, industry analysts point to the recent launch of the native Codex app for macOS as a primary catalyst. Released just 24 hours prior on February 2, the app reportedly saw over 200,000 downloads in its first day. This surge, combined with new deep integrations into Apple’s Xcode environment, likely created an unprecedented volume of API calls that overwhelmed the inference infrastructure.
Network engineers speculate that the API gateway failed to autoscale fast enough to handle the concurrent connections from these new developer tools, resulting in a cascade of 502 Bad Gateway errors across the broader platform.
Global Impact: The “Dependency Crisis”
The February 3 outage served as a stark reminder of the world’s deepening reliance on AI availability. Unlike previous disruptions, this event halted more than just casual chat.
- Enterprise Workflows: Developers relying on the Codex API for real-time code generation were left with broken builds.
- Academic Disruption: With midterms approaching, students in the US and UK reported inability to access research logs and saved citations.
- Platform Stability: The outage affected not just ChatGPT, but also DALL-E 3 image generation and the enterprise “Scale Tier” infrastructure.
Social media erupted with the hashtag #ChatGPTDown, with many users questioning the viability of integrating cloud-based AI into mission-critical software if server status cannot be guaranteed.
Restoration and Future Outlook
As of 8:00 AM UTC on February 4, all services are green. OpenAI has implemented stricter rate limits on the new Codex endpoints to prevent a recurrence. However, as AI models become “utility-grade” infrastructure, the demand for 99.999% uptime is no longer optional—it is a requirement for the professional world.
In-Depth Q&A
Q: Is ChatGPT currently down?
No, ChatGPT services were fully restored as of 6:30 PM EST on February 3, 2026. All systems are currently operational.
Q: What caused the ChatGPT outage on February 3, 2026?
The outage was likely caused by a massive surge in API traffic following the release of the native Codex app for macOS and new Xcode integrations, which overwhelmed OpenAI’s infrastructure.
Q: How long was ChatGPT down during the February 2026 outage?
The service disruption lasted approximately 3.5 hours, from 3:00 PM EST to 6:30 PM EST.
Q: Were paid ChatGPT Plus users affected by the outage?
Yes, the outage impacted both free and ChatGPT Plus users, as well as Enterprise API clients, indicating a core infrastructure failure.
