Is GitHub Copilot Down? Check Real-Time Status [2026]

TL;DR: Check githubstatus.com for real-time GitHub Copilot status. Copilot outages are typically brief — here's how to confirm and what to do in the meantime.

Copilot went dark on you. Ghost text stopped appearing, chat is spinning, or you're getting a vague connection error in the VS Code status bar. First question: is this GitHub's problem or yours?

That's what this article answers. Quickly.

How to Check If GitHub Copilot Is Down

Start at githubstatus.com. That's GitHub's official status page, and it's where real incidents get logged.

Scroll down to find the GitHub Copilot component. It's listed separately from other GitHub services — which matters, because Copilot's API infrastructure runs somewhat independently from the git hosting side. GitHub Actions being slow doesn't mean Copilot is broken, and vice versa.

What the colors mean:

• Green (Operational): Everything's fine. Your problem is local.
• Yellow (Degraded Performance): Copilot is up but slower or partially broken. Suggestions may be inconsistent.
• Orange (Partial Outage): Some users are affected. Could be you, might not be.
• Red (Major Outage): It's down. Not your fault.

If there's an active incident, you'll see a timestamp, a description, and ongoing updates as GitHub's team works through it. Subscribe to email alerts from that page if you want to stop manually checking.

Want a second opinion?

Downdetector.com aggregates user-reported problems and graphs them in real time. A sudden spike on the chart is often a reliable leading indicator — sometimes faster than the official page, since GitHub's status updates can lag behind the actual incident by 10-15 minutes.

GitHub's official X/Twitter account (@GitHub) also posts during major incidents. Searching github copilot down on X surfaces developer complaints fast — this community is loud when tools break.

Copilot Down vs. Local Config Issue: How to Tell the Difference

This is where most of the debugging time goes. And honestly? Nine times out of ten, when Copilot "goes down," it's a local issue.

Signs you're dealing with an actual outage:

• githubstatus.com shows an active incident for Copilot
• Downdetector shows a sudden spike in reports
• Your teammates are experiencing the same thing simultaneously
• VS Code's Output panel (View → Output → "GitHub Copilot") shows connection errors or server-side 500/503 responses

Signs it's a local issue:

• githubstatus.com is all green
• Your colleagues' Copilot is working fine
• The problem started right after a VS Code update, new extension install, or network change
• You're seeing auth errors or "sign in required" prompts rather than connection failures

The clearest diagnostic: open VS Code's Output panel, switch to the "GitHub Copilot" channel in the dropdown, and look at what's actually happening. Auth failures, SSL errors, and timeout messages all tell you different things.

Troubleshooting Local Issues That Mimic Downtime

If githubstatus.com is green and it's just you — these are the things to check.

Restart VS Code completely. Not "Reload Window." Actually close and reopen. I know this sounds too simple, but Copilot can get into a broken state after updates where a full restart is the only fix. Takes 30 seconds.

Refresh your auth token. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and run "GitHub Copilot: Sign Out," then sign back in. Stale tokens are a surprisingly common cause of Copilot silently failing — it shows as "connected" but suggestions never fire.

Check your subscription. Go to github.com/settings/copilot. Copilot Free gives you 2,000 completions and 50 chat messages per month. When you hit that limit, Copilot stops — no dramatic error, it just quits. Paid Individual plan is $10/month; Business is $19/user/month. If your trial lapsed or billing lapsed, you'd drop to no access.

VPN and firewall. Copilot routes requests through copilot-proxy.githubusercontent.com. Corporate VPNs and aggressive network filters block this more often than you'd think. Temporarily disable your VPN and test on a clean network — mobile hotspot works great for this. If Copilot comes back, your network config is the problem.

Extension conflicts. Other AI coding extensions — Tabnine, Codeium, IntelliCode — can conflict with Copilot's inline completion API. If you've got multiple AI assistants installed, try disabling the others and see if Copilot recovers.

The GitHub Copilot troubleshooting guide covers all ten common local issues in detail if you need to dig deeper.

Fallback Options While Copilot Is Down

Genuine outage and you've got work to ship. A few options.

Cursor AI. If you're not already using Cursor as a backup, this is the moment to set it up. It's built on VS Code, so your keybindings, themes, and extensions largely carry over. The AI features are built into the editor rather than bolted on as an extension — in some ways it's more reliable than Copilot's extension-based approach. Free tier available. Our Cursor AI review has the full breakdown if you're evaluating whether to switch entirely.

Windsurf. Another VS Code fork with deep AI integration. Solid fallback if Cursor isn't your style — similar setup story, free tier, launches in under a minute if you already have it installed.

Just use GitHub directly. If the outage is Copilot-specific and not a full GitHub platform incident, your git workflow still works fine. Push, pull, review PRs — all normal. Copilot's IDE features are separate from the core GitHub infrastructure.

For short outages — and most are short — writing code manually for an hour is survivable. The editor still works. It's just slower.

If Copilot is consistently unreliable rather than having occasional outages, that's worth diagnosing properly. The GitHub Copilot not working guide covers recurring issues including extension conflicts, language-specific disabling, and corporate network configurations that cause chronic problems rather than one-off failures.