Quick check: Go to *status.runwayml.com** right now. Active incident? That's your answer. Green? Keep reading.*
Generation stuck at 0%. API throwing 503s. The queue shows your job but it hasn't moved in 10 minutes.
Runway's infrastructure is GPU-intensive in a way that makes it more sensitive to capacity issues than most AI tools. When Runway has problems, they tend to look specific — a frozen queue or a particular model acting up — rather than the whole site just going dark.
Here's how to figure out what's actually happening.
Step 1: Check Runway's Status Page
Go to status.runwayml.com.
Runway's status page breaks out the major infrastructure components:
- Web application (the browser-based generation interface)
- API (the developer API for Gen-3 and other models)
- Generation infrastructure (the GPU compute layer — this is the one to watch)
- Storage (input/output file access)
Green is operational. Yellow is degraded. Red is a confirmed outage. Active incidents get a banner at the top with a running timeline of updates.
The generation infrastructure component is the most relevant one for most users. That's where frozen queues and slow processing get reported. If the web app is green but generation infrastructure is yellow, you'll be able to log in and submit jobs — they just won't process at normal speed, or at all.
If everything's green and you're still having problems, it's almost certainly a local or account-level issue, not a platform outage. Skip to the troubleshooting section.
Third-Party Status Sources
Runway's own status page is the authoritative source, but a couple of second-opinion options:
Downdetector.com/status/runway-ml aggregates user reports. A sudden spike in reported problems often precedes the official status page acknowledgment by 10-20 minutes. Useful if you suspect something's wrong and want to know if others are seeing it too.
Searching "Runway ML down" or "Runway outage" on X/Twitter will also surface real-time user reports. The Runway developer and creative communities are active there — when something breaks, you'll see it within minutes.
Runway Outage Patterns
Runway's failure modes are more varied than simpler tools. A few patterns worth recognizing:
Frozen generation queue
This is the most common. You submit a generation job, it shows up in your queue, and then... nothing. The progress bar sits at 0% or 1% indefinitely. This almost always means the generation infrastructure is under stress — either too many concurrent jobs or a partial failure in the GPU cluster.
What to try: check the status page for a generation infrastructure incident. If there's an active one, wait it out. If the status page is clean, try canceling and resubmitting with lower settings (shorter clip, lower resolution, simpler prompt). Sometimes a job gets stuck in a corrupted state that a fresh submission clears.
API 503 errors
If you're using Runway programmatically and you're getting HTTP 503 responses, the API layer is either rate-limiting you or actively degraded. Check the status page's API component. If it shows degraded, add exponential backoff to your retry logic and reduce your request rate. A 503 during a known incident means "wait" — don't hammer the endpoint, you'll just make the problem worse.
Model-specific failures
Runway runs multiple AI models (Gen-3 Alpha, Gen-3 Turbo, and others). Sometimes one model has issues while others continue working. The status page will usually call out which model is affected if it's model-specific. Worth trying a different model version if one particular one is broken.
Output file access errors
Generated content shows as complete but you can't download it — or the output appears corrupted. This usually means the storage layer has issues. Less common than generation problems, but annoying. Check the storage component on the status page.
Is Runway Down — or Is It Just You?
Signs it's a Runway platform outage:
- status.runwayml.com shows an active incident
- Downdetector shows a spike in reports
- Your colleagues can't generate either
- All your jobs are sitting frozen regardless of model or settings
- API is returning 503s consistently (not intermittently)
Signs it's a local or account issue:
- Status page shows all green
- Your colleagues are generating fine
- Problem started after you changed your API key or billing settings
- Only some of your jobs fail, others complete normally
- You're on a free plan and hitting generation limits
The distinction matters because the fix is completely different. Platform outage? Wait it out or use an alternative. Account or local issue? There's usually something concrete to address.
What to Do While Runway Is Down
If you need to generate video content and Runway's infrastructure is genuinely down:
Pika Labs is the most natural substitute for short-form video generation. Similar prompt-to-video workflow, similar output style. If you have a Pika account, it's a fast fallback.
Kling (from Kuaishou) handles longer video outputs and is worth having in your toolkit for exactly these situations.
For image generation tasks: If you were using Runway for still image work, Midjourney and Ideogram are solid alternatives with their own strengths.
Real talk: Runway's outages tend to be shorter than you'd expect given how compute-intensive the work is. Most incidents resolve within a couple of hours. If you have a hard deadline, route the immediate job to an alternative. If the deadline can flex, the wait is usually worth it.
Staying Ahead of Future Outages
- Go to status.runwayml.com
- Click "Subscribe to Updates"
- Add your email and select the components you care about (at minimum: generation infrastructure and API)
Email alerts give you advance notice of scheduled maintenance and immediate notice when an incident opens. If Runway is part of a production workflow — client deliverables, video pipeline, anything with real deadlines — this is just basic operational hygiene.
For issues that aren't related to platform outages — generation quality problems, prompt failures, specific feature bugs — the Runway AI not working guide has detailed fixes for the most common problems. And for a broader look at whether Runway is the right tool for your workflow, the Runway ML review covers the full picture.
