Fastest check: Go to *status.heygen.com** right now. Active incident? It's them. All green? Keep reading — the fix is probably local.*
Your video's been "Processing" for 40 minutes. Or the avatar keeps generating with distorted audio. Or the whole editor just won't load.
HeyGen's failure modes are more nuanced than a simple "is it up or down" question. The platform has multiple distinct systems — avatar generation, video rendering, translation, the API — and they don't always fail together. Knowing which one has issues makes the difference between waiting patiently and filing a support ticket.
Step 1: Check HeyGen's Status Page
Go to status.heygen.com.
This is the real-time dashboard for HeyGen's infrastructure. It breaks out the major components:
- Video generation (avatar rendering, the core product)
- Video Translate (AI dubbing and translation)
- API (the developer API for programmatic access)
- Web application (the browser interface itself)
- Authentication (login and account access)
Green is operational. Yellow is degraded. Red is a confirmed outage. Active incidents get a banner at the top with updates as the team investigates.
The most important thing: check the specific component for your task, not just the overall status summary. HeyGen's architecture means you can be having a real problem with video generation while the overall status shows something vague like "degraded performance." Look at the rows, not just the top banner.
If everything's green and HeyGen still isn't working for you — that's a local or account issue, not a platform outage. Different problem, different fix.
Third-Party Status Sources
HeyGen's official status page is the most accurate source, but two secondary options for cross-referencing:
Downdetector.com/status/heygen tracks user-reported problems. A spike in reports often surfaces before the official status page is updated — useful when you suspect something's wrong but the status page hasn't acknowledged it yet.
Searching "HeyGen down" on X/Twitter turns up real-time user reports. The AI video community is active and vocal — production issues tend to get flagged quickly. If you're seeing the same problem as dozens of other users, that's a meaningful signal.
Avatar Generation Failure vs. Full Outage
This distinction matters a lot with HeyGen specifically.
A full platform outage — where nobody can log in or do anything — is relatively rare. More common is a partial failure where one specific system is struggling.
Avatar generation-specific failures look like this:
- Videos submit successfully but get stuck in "Processing"
- Generated avatars have distorted audio, wrong lip sync, or visual artifacts
- Specific avatar models fail while others work
- Longer-than-normal generation times (a 2-minute video taking 20+ minutes)
Full platform issues look like this:
- Can't log in at all
- The dashboard won't load
- All video types fail regardless of which avatar or template you use
- API returning 5xx errors for all endpoints
The status page breaks these out, which is why it's worth looking at individual component rows rather than just asking "is HeyGen up or down."
HeyGen API Status
If you're using HeyGen programmatically — through the REST API for automated video generation or integrations — the status page's API component is your specific thing to watch.
Common API failure patterns:
- HTTP 503 responses (service temporarily unavailable — infrastructure under stress)
- HTTP 429 responses (rate limiting — you've hit your quota, not an outage)
- Timeouts on video submission endpoints (often maps to generation infrastructure being degraded)
- Successful submission but videos never completing (generation queue backed up)
The 503 vs. 429 distinction is important: a 429 means your code needs to back off, a 503 means you need to wait for the platform. Check the status page to know which one you're dealing with.
HeyGen Outage Patterns
A few patterns that come up regularly:
The processing queue backup
This is the most common and least obvious failure mode. You submit a video, it shows as "Processing" with a seemingly reasonable queue position, and then it just... doesn't move. This usually means the rendering infrastructure is under load or degraded — jobs are queued but not being processed at normal speed.
What to try: check the status page for any generation infrastructure incident. If there's one active, the fix is to wait (or use an alternative for urgent work). If the status page is clean, try canceling and resubmitting — sometimes a job gets into a stuck state that a fresh submission bypasses.
Avatar-specific degradation
HeyGen has a large library of avatar models. Sometimes one or a few specific avatars start producing bad output — distorted facial movements, wrong voice sync, inconsistent lip movement — while other avatars generate fine. This can happen during a partial model update or rollout issue.
If you're seeing weird output quality from one specific avatar, try switching to a different one before assuming a full outage. If multiple avatars all look wrong, that's a broader inference infrastructure problem — check the status page.
Video Translate issues
HeyGen's Video Translate feature runs on separate infrastructure from the core avatar generation. Translation and dubbing can be down or degraded while regular avatar videos work fine. The status page breaks these out separately — look at the Video Translate component specifically if that's what you're using.
What to Do While HeyGen Is Down
If it's a real outage and you need to get work done:
Synthesia is the closest direct substitute for AI avatar video generation. Similar workflow, similar output quality, similar pricing range. If you have a Synthesia account or can start a trial, it covers most of what HeyGen does.
For Video Translate specifically: Kapwing offers AI dubbing and translation as an alternative. The output is different but it's a functional substitute for urgent translation work.
HeyGen outages — particularly the processing queue backup variety — often resolve within a few hours as the team scales up capacity or rolls back a problematic update. Full platform outages where nothing works are genuinely uncommon.
Staying Ahead of Future Outages
- Go to status.heygen.com
- Click "Subscribe to Updates"
- Add your email and select the components relevant to your workflow
If you're using HeyGen for client deliverables or anything with a real deadline, status alerts are worth setting up. You'll get notified when an incident opens and when it resolves — no more wondering if you should keep waiting or pivot to something else.
For issues that aren't outage-related — specific feature failures, quality problems, account configuration — the HeyGen not working guide covers the most common fixes in detail. If you're evaluating HeyGen's plans and pricing, the HeyGen pricing breakdown covers what you actually get at each tier.
