25,000+ users reported outages on DownDetector.
All 13 components showed degraded status.
Error message: "Hmm...Something Seems To Have Gone Wrong"
The timing couldn't be worse:
- 1 day after OpenAI launched Codex app for Mac (200,000 downloads)
- Same day Apple announced Xcode integration with Codex and Claude
- Days after OpenAI disclosed the Mixpanel security breach
"I was working on a project and it started having issues with loading conversation errors." — Student panicking on DownDetector
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total incidents | 61 |
| Major outages | 2 |
| Minor incidents | 59 |
| Median duration | 1 hour 34 minutes |
| ChatGPT uptime | 98.67% (lowest among OpenAI services) |
| Date | Issue | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 3, 2026 | Elevated error rates, 25K reports | Ongoing |
| Jan 31, 2026 | Subscription renewal failures | ~30 hours |
| Jan 24, 2026 | Intermittent service disruptions | 40 min |
| Jan 21, 2026 | Video generation failures | Unknown |
| Jan 16, 2026 | Complete unresponsiveness | Hours |
| Jan 13, 2026 | Elevated error rates | Unknown |
| Jan 8, 2026 | Warning state | 1h 10m |
| Jan 6, 2026 | Warning state | 3h 49m |
| Dec 2, 2025 | Major outage, users locked out | Hours |
Just days before the February 3rd outage, OpenAI disclosed a data breach affecting API users.
- Names and email addresses
- Approximate location (city, state, country)
- Operating system and browser details
- Organization/User IDs
- Terminated relationship with Mixpanel
- Launched "broader security reviews" of vendor ecosystem
- Claims: "No chat, API requests, passwords, or API keys compromised"
"Even low-sensitivity data can be misused in social engineering techniques or phishing attacks because attackers could combine data such as name, email, even approximate location to craft convincing fraudulent messages."
The landmark study tracked GPT-4 performance from March to June 2023:
| Task | March 2023 | June 2023 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prime number identification | 97.6% | 2.4% | -95.2% |
From Reddit r/ChatGPTPro:
- "It could not even add three numbers correctly"
- "It used to feel like a partner that understood my whole project. Now I can only use it for simple tasks"
- "ChatGPT loves to sprinkle in em dashes in every other sentence"
- "Refuses simple tasks, asks users to 'do their own research'"
A backend update reportedly caused catastrophic failure in long-term memory:
- Users lost years of accumulated work
- Assistants "forgot" established context, names, project details
- No warning, no recourse
OpenAI declared Code Red — their highest urgency level:
- Google's Gemini 3 outperformed ChatGPT on multiple benchmarks
- Gemini added 200 million users in 3 months
- Salesforce CEO publicly switched to Gemini
| Plan | Price | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 messages/5 hours, then "Mini" fallback |
| Go | $8/mo | No Sora, no Thinking models |
| Plus | $20/mo | 160 messages/3 hours during peak, 720p Sora |
| Pro | $200/mo | "Unlimited" — but still has caps |
- No annual discount (unlike competitors)
- No sales ever
- Costs more than Adobe Creative Cloud Business
- More than a Hyundai Ioniq 5 lease payment
"ChatGPT Pro is useful but way overpriced. You could cover Claude Pro + Perplexity + Midjourney + more for less than half the price."
| Alternative Stack | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Claude Pro | $20 |
| Perplexity Pro | $20 |
| Midjourney | $10-30 |
| Total | ~$50-70 |
| ChatGPT Pro | $200 |
| Category | Winner | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Logic & Reasoning (MMLU-Pro) | ChatGPT (GPT-5.2) | 94.2% |
| Coding (SWE-bench) | Claude 4.5 | 42% vs 39% |
| Context Mastery (NIAH) | Gemini 3 Pro | 99.8% |
"Claude 4.5 has officially overtaken OpenAI, solving 42% of complex GitHub issues compared to ChatGPT's 39%."
"ChatGPT is down!! Time to use brains"
"The fact that ChatGPT went down in the middle of me cracking the da Vinci code"
"lol, ChatGPT is currently down so the world's productivity about to take a nosedive"
"ChatGPT went down, the robots are unionizing against our dumb prompts"
"I'm up here trying to vent and ChatGPT is down. 😭"
- Outperformed ChatGPT on reasoning, math, code generation
- Beat GPT-5 on "Humanity's Last Exam"
- 650 million monthly active users
- Google invented the transformer architecture that powers ChatGPT
- Superior coding (42% vs 39% on SWE-bench)
- Cleaner, more human-readable code
- Same $20/mo price point
- 30-50x cheaper than OpenAI API
- Comparable quality on many tasks
- Open weights available
Nov 9, 2025: Mixpanel breach detected
Nov 25, 2025: OpenAI receives breach dataset
Nov 27, 2025: OpenAI terminates Mixpanel
Dec 2, 2025: Major ChatGPT outage (Code Red declared)
Dec 25, 2025: Google Gemini 3 dominates benchmarks
Jan 6, 2026: 3h 49m warning state
Jan 8, 2026: 1h 10m warning state
Jan 13, 2026: Elevated error rates
Jan 16, 2026: Complete unresponsiveness
Jan 21, 2026: Video generation failures
Jan 24, 2026: Intermittent disruptions (40 min)
Jan 30-31: Subscription renewal failures (30h)
Feb 3, 2026: 25,000+ reports, all 13 components down
61 incidents in 90 days for a service that:
- Charges up to $200/month
- Has 800 million weekly users
- Handles 18 billion messages per week
- Just suffered a data breach
- Is being outperformed by competitors
"I'm cancelling my ChatGPT Plus subscription... to see if alternatives offer a more stable and reliable experience."
"It's frustrating because I expected more for my money."
"Why is it so slow? I can't stand this speed anymore!"
- OpenAI Status Page: https://status.openai.com/
- IsDown ChatGPT Tracker: https://isdown.app/status/chatgpt
- StatusGator: https://statusgator.com/services/openai/chatgpt
- DownDetector: https://downdetector.com/status/openai/
- 9to5Mac: ChatGPT outage coverage
- Digital Trends: ChatGPT down report
- GV Wire: 25,000+ user reports
- TechBuzz: OpenAI scrambles to fix
- NewsX: Global outage coverage
- OpenAI Mixpanel Incident: https://openai.com/index/mixpanel-incident/
- Stanford/UC Berkeley Study: "How Is ChatGPT's Behavior Changing Over Time?"
- PCWorld: ChatGPT Pro Review
- Reddit r/ChatGPTPro: User complaints
Last updated: February 3, 2026
Tags: #ChatGPT #OpenAI #Outage #AIReliability #DataBreach #Mixpanel #CodeRed #GPT5