OpenAI outage on May 4 8h 10m disruption
May 4, 04:23 AM → May 4, 12:34 PM · 8h 10m · medium
On May 4, 2026, OpenAI experienced a service disruption that was detected through user reports. The incident began at approximately 04:23 UTC and was resolved by 12:34 UTC on the same day, resulting in an 8-hour and 10-minute period of impact.
Impact
User reports indicated a disruption to OpenAI services. The most frequently reported issues included slow or unresponsive service, website downtime, and API issues. Specifically, 160 reports cited slow/unresponsive service, 28 reported website downtime, and 3 mentioned API issues. No specific regional impact was recorded during this incident.
Top reported issues
- Slow / unresponsive160
- Website down28
- API issues3
Incident timeline
- May 4, 04:23 AM
PulseWatch detected elevated report volume (medium severity)
- May 4, 04:45 AM
Peak of 8 reports in 15 minutes (baseline 4.0)
- May 4, 04:53 AM
Status updated: major issue
- May 4, 04:58 AM
Status updated: major issue
- May 4, 12:23 PM
Status updated: possible issue
- May 4, 12:28 PM
Status updated: possible issue
- May 4, 12:34 PM
Report volume returned to baseline — incident resolved
Official updates
- May 4, 04:23 AM
OpenAI status page acknowledged the incident.
View official source