ChatGPT Faces Global Outage from Routing Issue
On December 2, 2025, OpenAI’s ChatGPT went down for thousands of users around the world. The problem stemmed from a routing misconfiguration, which the company fixed the same day.
What Users Saw
People reported login problems, lost chat histories, lag, timeouts, and app crashes. Many hit an error saying “Unusual activity has been detected from your device. Try again later.” The web version struggled most, though the Mac app worked sometimes.
- 93% of issues tied directly to ChatGPT, per The Economic Times and The Times of India.
- Downdetector logged over 12,000 reports around 2:20 p.m. ET (Economic Times), peaking at more than 12,580 in the US (Hindustan Times and Times of India).
- Other reports noted roughly 3,000 to 3,400 issues during peak hours (CNBC, TechRadar).
- In India, about 97% of users reporting outages said ChatGPT was unavailable, with over 2,000 reports around 1 a.m. local time (The Financial Express).
OpenAI’s Fix
OpenAI spotted elevated error rates around 2:40 p.m. ET and started investigating by 2:57 p.m. They rolled out a fix at 3:12 p.m. ET and watched recovery. Reports on Downdetector dropped fast after that—to 115 by 3:03 p.m. ET, according to TechRadar.
“Some users briefly ran into issues using ChatGPT earlier today because of a routing misconfiguration,” OpenAI told CNBC. “It’s now fixed.”
TechRadar staff tested it: queries failed with endless spinning circles on web and mobile, but responses returned post-fix.
Background
This hit days after OpenAI revealed a security breach at data provider Mixpanel, which leaked names, emails, and API details for some users (CNBC). Times of India called it the second straight day of big disruptions.
Check OpenAI’s status page for live updates.
