OpenAI API reaches up to a 20% rate of 429 errors
Traffic was routed to an unhealthy compute node for nearly three hours, causing rate limits to trigger incorrectly.
- First observed
- Mar 25, 2026, 6:15:00 PM
- Disclosed
- Mar 25, 2026, 6:15:00 PM
- Status
- Resolved
- Confidence
- 99%
- Organization
- OpenAI
- Last reviewed
- Sep 1, 2026
Observed
Facts supported by sources
- According to the postmortem, the global error rate reached up to 20%.
- The disruption lasted from 10:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PDT; the stored times are converted to UTC.
Assessment
Interpretation, not observation
No additional interpretation recorded.
Impact
Impact
Unexpected HTTP 429 responses for API customers over approximately two hours and 45 minutes.
Response
Response
OpenAI temporarily disabled rate limits, repaired the node, and hardened the rate-limiting service against unhealthy compute nodes.