Status check: Go to *status.cursor.com*. Active incident? That's your answer. Green? Keep reading.
Cursor's AI features just went dark mid-session. No autocomplete, no chat response, or the little model indicator in the status bar is showing an error. I've been there — usually right before a deadline, which seems to be when these things happen.
Let me walk through how to actually figure out what's going on and what to do about it.
Step 1: Check Cursor's Official Status Page
Go to status.cursor.com.
Cursor maintains a real-time status dashboard that tracks their infrastructure. Look for:
- API — The AI model endpoints that power completions and chat
- Web App — Cursor's website and account management
- Authentication — Login and licensing systems
Green means operational, yellow means degraded, red means there's an active incident. If there's a problem, you'll see a banner with details and updates as the team works through it.
Important distinction: Cursor being "down" usually means the AI features are unavailable, not the editor itself. The VS Code base runs locally on your machine. You can still edit code, run terminals, use extensions — you just lose the AI-assisted features until the issue resolves.
Third-Party Status Checks
If the official page seems unreliable or you want a second opinion:
Downdetector.com aggregates user reports. A spike in the chart is a reliable signal that something's wrong, especially if the official page hasn't caught up yet.
GitHub Issues — searching the Cursor GitHub repo for recent issues can surface developer-reported problems quickly. Cursor's developer community is active and vocal about outages.
Cursor's Discord — Cursor has an active community Discord where outages get reported fast. Searching for "down" or "outage" in the general channels will surface current issues quickly.
Searching "Cursor AI down" on X/Twitter also works — developers complain publicly and immediately when tools they depend on break.
Is It Cursor's Servers — or Something on Your End?
This is where most of the troubleshooting lives. When Cursor AI stops working, the actual cause is often local rather than a platform outage.
Signs it's a Cursor server issue:
- status.cursor.com shows an active incident
- Multiple developers in your team are affected simultaneously
- Downdetector shows a spike
- You're getting server error codes (500, 503) rather than timeout or auth errors
Signs it's a local or account issue:
- Status page is green
- Your colleagues' Cursor is working fine
- The error appeared after you changed API key settings or updated Cursor
- You're getting auth errors (401) or "API key invalid" messages
- Your completions ran out (check your billing dashboard)
The most common reason Cursor AI stops working when the service is healthy: expired or misconfigured API key in Settings > Models. Second most common: hitting the free plan's monthly completion limit.
Cursor AI vs. Editor Base Functionality
This distinction is worth understanding clearly.
Cursor is VS Code with an AI layer on top. The AI layer communicates with Cursor's servers to generate completions and handle chat. The editor layer is local.
What still works during a Cursor AI outage:
- File editing, navigation, search and replace
- All VS Code extensions (including non-AI ones)
- Terminal, debugger, git integration
- Manual coding — everything except AI-assisted features
What breaks:
- Tab completions (Copilot++ / Cursor autocomplete)
- Chat responses
-
/edit,/generate, and other AI commands - Codebase indexing updates
If the editor won't launch at all, that's a different problem — likely a local installation issue rather than a server outage. Try reinstalling Cursor from cursor.com.
Common Cursor Error Messages
"Failed to connect to server" — Classic connectivity issue. Could be the Cursor API being down, your network blocking outbound requests, or VPN routing problems. Check the status page first, then your network.
"Model is currently unavailable" — The specific AI model you've selected (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, etc.) might have issues even when the Cursor API itself is operational. Try switching to a different model in the chat model dropdown.
"API key is invalid" — Your API key in Settings > Models is wrong, expired, or has been revoked. Not an outage — an account config issue. Regenerate the key in your provider's dashboard.
"You've reached your monthly limit" — Free plan limit hit. Not an outage. Upgrade or wait until the next billing cycle.
Chat just spins indefinitely — Could be the model under high load, a network timeout, or a prompt that's too long. Try a shorter message first. If that also hangs, check the status page.
What Developers Do While Cursor Is Down
The practical answer: fall back to VS Code + Copilot.
Since Cursor is literally built on VS Code, the transition is nearly seamless. Open VS Code (or install GitHub Copilot in your existing Cursor-as-VS-Code setup), and you've got:
- GitHub Copilot inline completions
- Copilot Chat in the sidebar
- All your VS Code keybindings and settings
For developers with a GitHub Copilot subscription already, this is the fastest path. For those without — Copilot offers a free tier now.
Alternative option: The Continue extension for VS Code lets you route AI completions through whatever provider you want (Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, local models). It's worth setting up as a backup regardless of Cursor reliability.
Some developers just... write code manually for an hour. Bold strategy. Occasionally a good reminder that it's still possible.
Cursor's Reliability Track Record
Cursor has scaled fast — faster than most developer tools in this space. Infrastructure has generally kept up, but there have been periods of degraded AI feature performance, particularly around major model updates and peak usage times.
The editor base being VS Code provides a reliability floor: you're never totally stuck because the editor itself works. That's a genuine architectural advantage over tools that are more deeply coupled to their AI backends.
For teams running Cursor in a professional context, it's worth knowing that Cursor doesn't offer a formal SLA outside of enterprise agreements. You're depending on a startup's infrastructure. It's been stable enough for most use cases, but if you're running a development shop where AI-assisted coding is deeply embedded in your workflow, having a fallback plan (VS Code + Copilot or Continue) is just reasonable risk management.
Getting Notified of Cursor Outages
- Go to status.cursor.com
- Click "Subscribe to Updates"
- Enter your email
- Choose which components to watch (the API component is the key one for most users)
For specific Cursor AI problems that aren't outage-related — autocomplete not showing up, chat giving wrong responses, codebase indexing broken — the Cursor AI troubleshooting guide goes deep on those individual issues. And if you're evaluating whether Cursor is the right tool for your workflow, see the Cursor AI review.
