Claude Not Working or Not Responding? How to Check Status and Fix It

If Claude AI is not responding for you right now, you are far from alone. On June 23, 2026, outage reports for Claude peaked above 7,000 in the United States on Downdetector, and Anthropic later confirmed an “elevated error rate” across its models. That single incident was widely described as the tenth Claude disruption in just over three weeks, so a Claude outage is no longer a rare event you can shrug off.

This guide shows you how to tell whether Claude AI is down for everyone or just for you, why Claude keeps going offline in 2026, and exactly what to do to keep working when it does. We also cover the fastest backup plan, because if Claude isn’t working, a multi-model assistant like Fello AI lets you swap to ChatGPT, Gemini, or another model in seconds without losing your momentum.

The Key Takeaways

• The official place to check is the Claude status page at status.claude.com, which moved from the old status.anthropic.com address.
• Claude logged its tenth disruption in just over three weeks by late June 2026, with the June 23 outage peaking above 7,000 reports.
• Anthropic’s own status page showed a 90-day uptime of 99.46% for claude.ai, 99.47% for Claude Code, and 99.54% for the API on October 10, 2026.
• Anthropic says demand is growing faster than its infrastructure can keep up, so peak-hour slowdowns are the main cause.
• The simplest insurance against downtime is a multi-model tool like Fello AI, where one subscription covers several AI models you can switch between instantly.
• When Claude is up but still not working for you, the cause is usually sign-in, a file limit, Claude Code setup, your network or your country, and each has its own fix below.

Is Claude AI Down Right Now?

When Claude isn’t working, your first job is to find out whether the outage hits everyone or just you. The answer changes everything, because a global outage means you wait or switch tools, while a local issue usually has a quick fix. Here is how to check in under a minute.

Check the Official Claude Status Page

Head to the official Claude status page for real-time service updates. Anthropic moved this page from the old status.anthropic.com address, so update your bookmark if you saved the previous one. During a widespread outage you will usually see a banner reading “elevated error rate” or “major outage,” along with a live incident timeline and recovery updates.

Use Downdetector and Outage Trackers

If you want a fast gut check, a Claude down detector like Downdetector aggregates user-reported problems in real time. A sudden spike in reports, like the 7,000-plus seen on June 23, 2026, is a strong sign the problem is on Anthropic’s side and not yours. These trackers won’t tell you the root cause, but they confirm in seconds whether others are affected too.

Check Social Media and Reddit

Anthropic posts about significant issues on X (formerly Twitter), and user communities react even faster. Subreddits like r/AnthropicAI and AI-focused Discord and Slack groups tend to light up the moment Claude AI is not working. If dozens of people are reporting the same failed responses you are seeing, you have your answer.

Where to Check Claude’s Status

Why Is Claude AI Not Working?

“Why is Claude AI not working?” is the question that floods search and social every time the service stutters. The cause sits on one of two sides, either Anthropic’s servers or your own setup. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you whether to wait it out or start troubleshooting.

Server-Side Causes on Anthropic’s End

Most large outages are not your fault at all. Anthropic has openly acknowledged that demand for Claude is growing faster than its infrastructure can sustain, especially during peak hours, fueled by the rapid rise of Claude Code. The usual suspects behind a server-side outage are below.

• Server overload: Sudden traffic spikes overwhelm capacity, producing the “elevated error rate” and “service unavailable” messages seen in recent incidents.
• Maintenance and updates: Anthropic schedules updates around quiet periods, but a tricky deployment can still trigger unplanned downtime.
• Software bugs: A small error shipped in an update can cascade through core features until a patch goes out.
• Security incidents (unconfirmed): Large AI providers are occasional targets for DDoS attempts, though Anthropic rarely confirms specifics.

Fixes You Can Try on Your Own End

If the status page shows everything operational but Claude still isn’t responding, the problem is probably local. Work through these Claude AI troubleshooting steps in order, since the first two solve the majority of cases. If the web app in particular is the flaky part, the native Claude desktop client for macOS is worth keeping installed as a second way in. If Claude does answer but takes ages, that is usually a settings problem rather than an outage, and our guide to why Claude is slow even when it is up covers those fixes.

1. Refresh or clear your cache: A simple reload or cache clear fixes most minor glitches and stuck sessions.
2. Switch networks: Move from Wi-Fi to mobile data or back. Local network issues often look exactly like an outage.
3. Restart your device: Power-cycling your computer, phone, or router clears unexpected connectivity faults.
4. Try another device: If Claude works on your phone but not your laptop, the issue is specific to that one device.
5. Test the API directly: Developers can hit the endpoint with cURL or Postman to see whether the backend or just the web app is failing.

Claude Not Working? Fixes by Symptom

When the status page is green, the error you see usually points to one of five problems. Find the one that matches below.

Claude won’t log in or the login email never arrives

Claude has no password. You sign in with Continue with Google or with an emailed login link, according to Anthropic’s login help page. If the email never arrives, Anthropic’s own checklist is short.

• Check spam and junk: look for mail from @mail.anthropic.com.
• Check quarantine: a work or school mail server may be holding the email. Business, government and .edu addresses may need IT to adjust email security settings.
• Allowlist the sender: add @mail.anthropic.com to your safe senders, then wait a few minutes and try again.
• Opened the link on another device: Claude then shows a verification code instead of signing you in. Type that code on the device where you started.
• Google sign-in failing: remove Claude by Anthropic at myaccount.google.com/connections, then choose Continue with Google again.

Claude can’t upload your file or read a PDF

An upload error usually means the file breaks a limit, not that Claude is down. Anthropic’s upload rules allow up to 20 files per chat at up to 500MB each, but a file added to a project’s Files section is capped at 30MB. PDFs stop at 1,000 pages, and a longer one returns “Uploaded file is too large”. Above 100 pages, Claude reads the text only and skips charts and images.

Two more limits catch people out. An Excel (XLSX) file uploads only after you turn on code execution and file creation in your settings. Images must be JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP and no larger than 8000 by 8000 pixels.

Claude Code not working in the terminal or VS Code

Start with the built-in check from Anthropic’s Claude Code troubleshooting guide. Run /doctor inside Claude Code, or claude doctor in your shell if Claude Code will not start, and it checks your installation, settings and extensions and proposes fixes. Then read the error text, because it tells you whose problem it is.

• API Error: 500 or repeated 529 Overloaded: the problem is on Anthropic’s side. Its docs say a server error “is not caused by your prompt, settings, or account”, so check the status page and wait.
• Request rejected (429): you have hit a usage limit, which is not an outage.
• VS Code extension missing or silent: it needs VS Code 1.94.0 or later and does not run in Restricted Mode. On macOS Tahoe and later, Cmd+Esc opens the system Game Overlay instead, so clear that shortcut in System Settings.
• Stuck at sign-in: our Claude Code login fix covers the paste-code loop.

Claude not working in your country or on a VPN

Claude works only in the countries on Anthropic’s supported countries list, 185 of them on October 10, 2026. India, Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, the UAE, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea are on it. China, Hong Kong and Russia are not. Anthropic’s rules count where you are physically located, so a VPN does not make an unsupported region supported.

If you are in a supported country and Claude fails only on a VPN, an office network or a campus network, switch to another connection first. A network that filters traffic often looks exactly like an outage.

Claude not working on Mac, iPhone or in the desktop app

Test the same account in a browser at claude.ai. If the browser works and the app does not, the problem is the app, so quit it fully, install any update and reopen it. Our guide to the Claude desktop app for Mac covers setup. If both fail while the status page is green, sign-in or your network is the likelier cause, so go back to those steps. A real outage hits every app at once. Anthropic’s September 29, 2026 incident covered claude.ai, the desktop and mobile apps, Claude Code and Cowork together.

Claude AI Outages in 2026: A Recent History

Search interest in terms like “Claude AI down March 2026” and “Claude AI not working today” exploded this year for good reason. Claude went through a rough stretch of instability across the spring and into summer, with several incidents lasting hours. The table below rounds up the notable disruptions reported in 2026.

Despite the run of incidents, Anthropic’s status page showed a 90-day uptime of 99.46% for claude.ai and 99.54% for the API on October 10, 2026, up from about 99.12% and 99.41% in June. The most recent broad outage, on September 29, 2026, lasted about an hour. The takeaway is not that Claude is unreliable overall, but that outages now cluster during peak demand. If your work can’t pause for three hours, you need a backup ready before the next one hits.

How Long Will Claude Be Down?

There is no fixed answer to when Claude will be back, but recent incidents give a realistic range. Short interruptions from minor glitches or routine maintenance usually clear within minutes to an hour. The 2026 outages have leaned longer, with the June 2 incident running about six hours and the June 23 event lasting roughly three.

Longer downtime tends to follow harder problems, such as severe bugs, capacity overloads, or staggered model-by-model recovery. To track progress in real time, keep the Claude status page and Anthropic’s X feed open in a tab. They are the only sources that post confirmed recovery times.

What to Do When Claude AI Is Down

When Claude goes dark mid-task, the goal is to keep moving rather than stare at an error screen. The single most effective fix is having another capable model already at your fingertips, so you don’t lose the thread of your work. Here is how to stay productive.

Switch to Fello AI and Keep Working

This is where a multi-model assistant earns its place. Fello AI gives you Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other leading models inside one app for a single price, so the moment Claude isn’t working you switch to another model and finish the task. There is no second subscription to manage and no broken workflow, because the conversation and your prompts stay in one place.

That flexibility turns a Claude outage from a hard stop into a minor detour. You can also use Fello AI to generate images, build documents, and create slides or PDFs in the same chat, which means a single tool covers far more than just a chatbot backup. For teams that can’t afford downtime, it is the simplest failover plan there is.

Try a Standalone Alternative

If you prefer separate tools, the obvious choices are ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, both fully live and capable of handling most coding and writing tasks. Just note that ChatGPT has its own desktop reliability quirks; our guide on fixing the ChatGPT Mac app when it won’t open covers the recent certificate issues. Our Grok vs ChatGPT comparison can help you decide which standalone assistant fits your workflow. Just remember that each one is a separate login and bill, which is exactly the friction a multi-model app removes.

Run a Self-Hosted Model

If you have the hardware and the technical skills, a self-hosted open model guarantees access no matter what happens to a provider. Our roundup of the best open-source AI models covers strong options you can run locally from Hugging Face. This is overkill for casual users, but it is a serious continuity plan for developers and enterprises.

How to Back Up Your Work

One of the biggest fears during an outage is losing an important conversation or unsaved output. A few simple habits protect you from that panic. Build them into your routine before the next incident, not during it.

• Take screenshots: Capturing key responses gives you a reference even if your session disappears.
• Export conversations: If you use the API, store chat logs in a local file or database on a schedule.
• Use third-party tools: Some browser extensions and AI platforms auto-save your sessions or sync them to Notion and Google Docs.

Final Thoughts

A run of ten disruptions in three weeks is a clear reminder of how dependent our work has become on a single AI service. Claude remains one of the most capable assistants available, but capacity is straining against its own popularity, and the next outage is a matter of when, not if.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Keep the Claude status page bookmarked, back up your important conversations, and have a backup model ready to go. The cleanest option is a multi-model assistant like Fello AI, where one price covers Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and more, so a Claude outage never has to stop your work again.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)