Just a day after a serious Microsoft Azure outage, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was having some issues. According to Down Detector, issues with ChatGPT began spiking just before 3PM ET, and it spiked to over 2,600 reported issues.
ChatGPT eventually confirmed issues for free users via the official status and said that it was working to identify the cause, and a little over an hour after issues began, ChatGPT shared that it had deployed a fix.
When it wasn’t working, I couldn’t get ChatGPT on the desktop or the iOS app to work, and I was met with an “Error in message stream” message. One of my colleagues in the UK – TechRadar’s Global Editor in Chief, Marc McLaren – encountered similar issues. It’s been all but entirely resolved since then.
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Down Detector reports are spiking
As you can see just before 3PM ET, reports for issues on ChatGPT began spiking and I’ve been getting an error in my attempts to use the AI chatbot on the dekstop and via the iOS app.
As someone with a free ChatGPT account, here’s what responses currently look like from the chatbot. ChatGPT isn’t saying much, if anything, just returning an error.
Down Detector reports are starting to drop
While reports on Down Detector spiked to over 2,600, they have started to dip slightly, but remain elevated. As of 3:40 PM ET – the last update on the service – reports were over 1,100, suggesting that OpenAI is making good progress in mitigating the issue.
As is typically the case with outages – including Starbucks and Xbox Network just yesterday – impacted folks are taking to social platforms, with some even asking OpenAI’s Sam Altman what’s going on?
Is chatgpt down or is it me only #chatgpt down # chatgpt pic.twitter.com/D9wt34mhNvOctober 30, 2025
OpenAI’s deployed a fix for the issue
We have deployed a fix to restore functionality and are monitoring to confirm resolution.
It’s certainly promising and does line up with reported issues dropping on Down Detector. I’ve just given ChatGPT a go again on the desktop and got a response, albeit after a longer processing time, but it’s still showing an error on mobile.
Hopefully, we’ll all be back to normal shortl,y and free users will be able to use ChatGPT again.
In line with OpenAI rolling out a fix for a bug causing errors in ChatGPT responses, Down Detector reports are now under 1,00, currently showing 463 reports as of 4:01 PM ET.
Reported issues with ChatGPT have dropped to 94 on Down Detector with the last update, and OpenAI is still monitoring the fix that’s been deployed. So I decided to ask ChatGPT itself if its outage is over.
A pretty happy response came back quickly, “Hey! 👋 Yep — everything’s back up and running smoothly now” before asking how my day is. It seems things are closer to normal with ChatGPT now, and it might be that the outage was only a little over an hour long, with a quick fix deployed by OpenAI.
