GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that lives inside your editor and the GitHub workflow. It autocompletes lines and whole functions as you type, answers questions in a chat sidebar, explains unfamiliar code, drafts tests, and helps review pull requests. Developers lean on it constantly, so when suggestions stop appearing or chat stops responding, it interrupts real work. This page tracks whether the problem is on GitHub’s side or local to you, and the verdict and recent user reports at the top of this page reflect what we and others are seeing right now.
Common reasons GitHub Copilot stops working
- Backend or model outages. The completion and chat services depend on infrastructure that can degrade. When it does, suggestions stall, time out, or return errors for many users at once.
- Authentication and licensing. An expired token, a signed-out session, or a seat that lost access through your organization will silently stop completions even when GitHub is healthy.
- Editor extension issues. The Copilot extension in your IDE can fail to load, fall out of date, or conflict with another plugin after an update.
- Network and proxy blocks. Corporate firewalls, VPNs, or proxies that block Copilot endpoints cut off the connection between your editor and the service.
- Rate limits and quota. Heavy use, or limits on certain plans, can throttle requests so that chat and completions slow down or pause.
- GitHub platform incidents. Because Copilot rides on the wider GitHub platform, a broader incident with the API or authentication can take it down indirectly.
How to fix GitHub Copilot when it is not working
- Check the verdict first. Look at the status and user reports at the top of this page. If Copilot is down for everyone, the fix is to wait, not to troubleshoot your own setup.
- Confirm you are signed in. Reauthenticate your GitHub account in the editor and verify your Copilot subscription or organization seat is still active.
- Reload and update. Restart your editor, reload the window, and make sure both the editor and the Copilot extension are on the latest version.
- Toggle the extension. Disable and re-enable Copilot, or check its status icon in the editor to see whether it reports an error.
- Test your network. Try a different connection, or temporarily step off the VPN or proxy to rule out a blocked endpoint.
- Try chat and completions separately. If one works and the other does not, that narrows whether it is a local extension fault or a service-side problem.
- Wait and retry. If you are being rate limited, pause briefly before trying again. For a deeper checklist, see our guide on what to do when an AI tool is down.
Is GitHub Copilot down, or is it just you?
The fastest way to tell is to separate signals you can see. If completions fail in one project but work in another, or in one editor but not another, the issue is probably local: an extension, a workspace setting, or your account. If chat and completions fail everywhere, and reauthenticating and reloading change nothing, the problem is more likely on GitHub’s side. A blocked endpoint behind a corporate proxy looks like an outage but only affects people on that network. The live verdict and the volume of user reports at the top of this page help you place your experience in context: a spike in reports points to a real, shared incident.
How we check GitHub Copilot
We combine two independent signals so you are not relying on a single source. First, we read GitHub Copilot’s official status page to capture what GitHub itself is reporting about the service. Second, we run our own independent reachability check from the outside, hitting the service from our infrastructure to confirm whether it actually responds. When both signals agree, the verdict is high confidence. When they disagree, that usually means a partial or regional problem, and we say so rather than guess. You can read the full details of this approach on our methodology page.
Alternatives to GitHub Copilot during an outage
If Copilot is down and you need to keep coding, a few peer tools can fill in. Cursor is an AI-first editor with strong in-line assistance and chat. Windsurf is another AI coding environment built around agentic edits across your project. Copilot, Microsoft’s broader assistant, can help with code questions outside the editor. Before you switch, confirm the backup is healthy on its own status page, since AI tools sometimes share upstream infrastructure and can be affected at the same time. Keeping one alternative configured ahead of time means you can stay productive the moment Copilot stops responding.
Where GitHub Copilot breaks
Copilot lives inside your editor as an extension for VS Code, the JetBrains IDEs, and Visual Studio, and it also exposes Copilot Chat. Because it authenticates against your GitHub account, an outage can come from three very different layers: the Copilot completion service, GitHub.com sign-in and OAuth, or the network path between your machine and GitHub. When any of those falter you often see “Copilot could not connect” or completions that simply stop appearing while the rest of your editor works fine.
In managed environments the cause is frequently local rather than a service incident. A corporate proxy, VPN, or firewall can block the endpoints Copilot needs, and enterprise org policy or an unassigned seat can disable it entirely for your account regardless of service health.
- Inline suggestions stop while Chat still works, or the reverse
- “Copilot could not connect” or repeated sign-in prompts
- Proxy, VPN, or firewall blocking the required endpoints
- Org policy disabled, or no seat assigned to your account