Claude is down for many — here’s what we know about the outage

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The popular AI assistant Claude has gone down for many today, with Anthropic confirming that it’s working on fixing the issue.

The problems started at around 2.10am ET / 7.10am GMT, when a spike in reports appeared on Downdetector. At the time of writing, those reports are still climbing and have hit 216 reports in the UK. There are also currently 139 reports in the US.

The Claude Status page has confirmed a “partial outage”, but says “a fix is being implemented”. Here’s the latest news on Claude’s issues today…

A slow start to the day

Reports of issues on Claude have been steadily climbing on Downdetector over the past 90 minutes in the UK. Most people are having issues with Claude Chat, with other services like Claude Cowork and Claude for Government seemingly unaffected.

However, there are signs that reports are dropping slightly, which could be related to the fix that Anthropic says is “being implemented”.

An update from Anthropic

The Claude Status page has just posted an update suggesting this isn’t going to be a quick fix.

It now reports “elevated errors on Opus 4.6”, which is Claude’s latest flagship model announced in February. The update adds that “we are continuing to work on a fix for this issue”.

Considering it’s now been three hours since Anthropic said a fix was being implemented, it seems this may be proving tricky to solve….

“Still working on it…”

Today’s Claude issues don’t seem to be restricted to its Opus 4.6 model, despite Anthropic’s latest update (see below).

When I try to use Sonnet 4.6, for example, it simply hangs indefinitely with “gathering my thoughts” and “still working on it” messages. Others are also reporting that the chatbot is very slow for them this morning, although Downdetector reports are moving in the right direction…

A fair point

With today’s Claude issues seemingly affecting Claude Code as well as its chat interface on web and mobile, it’s a reminder of the dangers of having all your eggs in one AI basket.

We recently saw a large number of people switch from ChatGPT to Claude due to the former’s unpopular AI military deals, but it certainly pays to have an AI backup plan for the times when your favorite chatbot inevitably has a bad day.

The issues are lingering

It looked like Claude’s Downdetector graph was moving in the right direction 30 minutes ago, but it’s now stabilized at around 145 reports in the UK. Numbers in the US remain fairly low at 85 reports, but it is still very early morning for most Claude users there.

The latest from Anthropic is that is is “continuing to work on a fix for this issue”, which has been the case for the last 90 minutes. With “partial outage” still the status for many Claude services, it seems this one is proving tricky to fix.

“Unexpected capacity constraints”

We’re now seeing the warning message above when using Claude’s free plan — it says that “due to unexpected capacity constraints, Claude is unable to respond to your message”.

It then suggests upgrading to a Pro plan, which seems a bit odd — if this is related to the “partial outage” on the Claude Status page then this isn’t really the time to nudge free users towards a paid plan.

Are you still experiencing issues on Claude’s free or paid plans? Let us know in the comments below, or vote in our poll at the top of this liveblog.

A fix is coming

The reports of Claude issues on Downdetector remain stable at around 150 reports in the UK (and about 100 in the US), but those should be dropping soon — if a new fix does the trick.

A new update on the Claude status page says “a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results”. The chatbot still isn’t working for me on the web, but that’s a promising sign at least…

Positive signs

Claude is now working okay for me on the web, albeit with some slight pauses for thinking time — and that seems to be the trend on Downdetector.

The reports have now dropped significantly down to around 30 in the UK and it’s a similar story in the US. Claude’s status page has also been updated with an “all systems operational” message, so it looks like today’s earlier troubles are finally behind us…