Major ChatGPT Outage Disrupts Millions: “Too Many Concurrent Requests” Error Plagues Users
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is experiencing a global outage today, leaving millions of users unable to access the AI chatbot. Widespread reports of errors like “Too many concurrent requests”, “Error in message stream”, and network timeouts have flooded social media and outage trackers since early this morning. Here’s what we know so far.
Image Source: https://status.openai.com (June 10, 2025 – 9:45 AM ET Time)
🌍 Global Disruption
The outage began around 2:45 AM ET and has persisted for over 7 hours, spiking as users in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia came online. DownDetector recorded a 4,900% surge in reports—peaking at 1,309 incidents by 7:35 AM ET. Both free and paid ChatGPT Plus subscribers are affected, with the latter expressing frustration over paying $20/month for unusable service.
⚠️ User Impact
- Common Errors: Users face repeated interruptions like “Hmm…something seems to have gone wrong”, timed-out responses, and abrupt message deletions.
- Work & Study Chaos: Students like Jack (UK) cited stalled college assignments, while professionals like Melissa (Ohio) relied on ChatGPT for transcript summaries and project planning.
- Model Variability: While flagship models (e.g., GPT-4o) failed, lighter versions like
4o-miniworked intermittently for some.
🔧 OpenAI’s Response
At 8:35 AM ET, OpenAI confirmed it identified the root cause and is “implementing a mitigation”. Their status page notes 21 components of ChatGPT are compromised, alongside issues for Sora (video tool) and APIs. No ETA for full restoration was provided.
💡 Workarounds & Alternatives
While OpenAI works on a fix, users can:
- Switch to lighter ChatGPT models (e.g.,
4o-mini). - Try alternatives like Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, or DeepSeek.
- Avoid repeatedly reloading ChatGPT—this exacerbates server strain.
🔮 Broader Implications
This incident highlights the fragility of centralized AI infrastructure. As one user noted, “We’ve built daily workflows around tools that can vanish in an instant” . With ChatGPT serving 500+ million users, outages disrupt productivity, education, and even mental health routines—like Daisie (Utah), who uses ChatGPT for “peaceful meditative visualizations” to sleep.
OpenAI has yet to clarify if the outage stems from technical bugs, overloaded servers, or external attacks. For now, users wait—and backup chatbots see a surge in traffic.
Stay tuned for updates.
