ChatGPT Is Down or Not Responding: Here’s What to Do Right Now

Is It ChatGPT, or Is It You?

We’ve tested this scenario dozens of times: the page loads, you send a message, and then… nothing. The cursor blinks indefinitely. Before you clear your cache or reinstall your browser, it’s worth spending 60 seconds figuring out where the problem actually lives.

Step 1: Check OpenAI’s Status Page

1. Go to status.openai.com — OpenAI updates this in real time during incidents.
2. Look for “ChatGPT” specifically (the API and ChatGPT sometimes have separate incidents).
3. If there’s a yellow “Degraded Performance” or red “Outage” badge, wait. There’s nothing on your end to fix.

Alternative: Check Third-Party Trackers

Downdetector and IsItDownRightNow often catch outages before OpenAI posts them. Search “ChatGPT downdetector” and look at the spike chart.

Step 2: Try a Hard Refresh

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + R (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + R (Mac).
2. This forces the browser to re-fetch all assets and re-establish the WebSocket connection ChatGPT uses for streaming responses.

Step 3: Start a New Conversation

1. Click New Chat in the left sidebar.
2. Sometimes a specific conversation’s context window becomes corrupted server-side, causing hang-ups only in that thread.
3. If the new chat works, your old thread had an issue — you can safely continue in the new one.

Step 4: Clear ChatGPT Cookies

1. In Chrome: click the lock icon in the address bar → Cookies → remove all cookies for chat.openai.com.
2. Reload and log in again.
3. This fixes the “ChatGPT keeps logging me out” variant of this bug as well.

Step 5: Switch to GPT-3.5 Temporarily

1. GPT-4 and GPT-4o often experience higher load during peak hours (12 PM–3 PM EST on weekdays).
2. Click the model selector at the top of the chat window and switch to GPT-3.5.
3. If that responds normally, the GPT-4 endpoint is under load — wait 15–30 minutes and switch back.

ChatGPT Alternatives While You Wait

If you need an AI right now, try these: Claude by Anthropic (claude.ai) handles most tasks ChatGPT does. Google Gemini (gemini.google.com) is another solid backup. Both are free with no login wait.