GitHub experienced a widespread outage starting at 13:40 UTC on August 17, 2026, affecting the website, API, Actions, Webhooks, Issues, and Pull Requests. Error rates reached around 20% across web and API traffic, while archive and raw repository content downloads saw roughly 50% error rates. Authentication services (SAML, OIDC, SCIM, Team Sync) were also impacted, and by 14:31 UTC GitHub confirmed Copilot was experiencing degraded availability too. Git Operations, Packages, Pages, and Codespaces remained operational. GitHub had not disclosed a cause at the time and said its investigation was ongoing.
Table of contents
The outage appears to be even worse for some repository downloadsOnce attackers have valid credentials, only 37% of their actions are blockedQuestions this post answers
Why is GitHub Actions failing or showing degraded performance right now
GitHub confirmed a widespread outage beginning at 13:40 UTC on August 17, 2026, causing degraded performance across Actions along with API requests, webhooks, issues, and pull requests, which can disrupt automated builds, tests, and deployments. Error rates were around 20% for web and API traffic, and about 50% for archive and raw content downloads. Track incidents like GitHub outages on daily.dev so CI/CD failures don't catch your team off guard.
Is GitHub Copilot down or experiencing issues today
Yes, GitHub confirmed at 14:31 UTC on August 17, 2026 that Copilot was experiencing degraded availability as part of a broader outage affecting the website, API, Actions, and authentication services like SAML and OIDC. The cause was not disclosed and the investigation was ongoing at the time. Developers relying on Copilot for daily coding follow service disruptions like this on daily.dev.
985 Impressions1 Comment