GitHub suffers widespread outage affecting API, pull requests and Copilot

GitHub experienced a widespread outage on Monday morning, disrupting developers and organisations that rely on the platform to build, manage and deploy software. The problems affected several core services, including API requests, pull requests, and webhooks, and also impacted GitHub Copilot users.

The disruption began at around 9:40 am ET, according to information published on GitHub’s status page. The incident left developers facing errors across the service, with the impact extending beyond the main GitHub website to several systems used to access repositories and manage software development workflows.

GitHub reports high error rates across its services

GitHub’s status updates indicated that the company was investigating elevated error rates across multiple parts of the platform. Developers using web-based features or interacting with GitHub through its APIs could encounter failures, potentially preventing them from accessing projects or carrying out routine development tasks.

In an update posted shortly before 11 am ET, GitHub said: “We are experiencing high error rates around 20% for web experiences and API traffic. Archive downloads and raw repository content downloads are experiencing an approximate 50% error rate.” The company added that it was working to reduce the impact while continuing to monitor the situation.

The reported problems also affected pull requests and webhooks. Pull requests are central to collaborative software development on GitHub, allowing developers to propose and review changes before they are merged into a project. Webhooks, meanwhile, allow GitHub events to trigger actions in other services and development systems.

The disruption could therefore affect more than users simply browsing GitHub repositories. Development teams with automated workflows connected to GitHub could also experience interruptions if those integrations depended on services affected by the outage.

GitHub Copilot users also affected by the disruption

GitHub Copilot was among the services affected by the incident. The AI-powered coding assistant is integrated into developers’ workflows and is designed to help generate and complete code inside supported development environments. Problems with GitHub’s wider infrastructure could therefore create additional difficulties for developers relying on Copilot while working on applications and websites.

The outage highlighted how closely modern software development tools are connected to cloud-based platforms. Developers may use GitHub not only to store source code but also to collaborate with colleagues, review changes, download repository content and connect projects to automated services.

For teams working on active software projects, an outage affecting these functions can slow development even when the underlying code and local development environments remain available. Developers may still be able to work on code stored locally, but activities that depend on GitHub’s online services can be delayed until the platform recovers.

GitHub said it was already taking steps to address the problem. “We are currently performing mitigations based on our investigation thus far and are monitoring for improvement,” the company said in its status update. At the time of the reported incident, however, the company had not provided a clear explanation of what had caused the disruption.

Cause remains unclear as Microsoft services face another major outage

GitHub had not publicly identified the cause of the outage in the available updates. The company’s investigation was continuing as engineers worked on mitigation measures and monitored whether error rates were falling.

The incident comes after another significant disruption involving a Microsoft-owned service in recent weeks. Xbox services were knocked offline for several hours late last month, affecting users of Microsoft’s gaming platform. While there was no indication that the GitHub and Xbox incidents were connected, the latest outage adds to a series of service disruptions affecting Microsoft’s broad ecosystem.

GitHub is widely used by individual developers, open-source projects, businesses and large software teams, making reliability particularly important. An extended interruption can affect development work across multiple organisations when teams depend on GitHub for source-code management, collaboration and automated integrations.

As the investigation continued, developers were advised to monitor GitHub’s service status for further updates. The company had not given a firm estimate for when all affected services would return to normal, leaving users to wait for improvements as its mitigation efforts continued.