Authorize.net has been highly reliable recently: StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 100.0% availability and zero major incidents over the last 90 days.
Numbers alone do not tell you whether to worry, so this post also covers what actually breaks when Authorize.net has problems and how to get warned early.
What is Authorize.net?
Authorize.net is one of the longest-running payment gateways, owned by Visa, that passes credit card and ACH transactions from a website to payment processors. Many e-commerce stores, especially on WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, and custom carts, use it as the gateway behind their checkout, along with features like customer payment profiles (CIM), recurring billing (ARB), and virtual terminal for phone orders.
Authorize.net uptime and outage history
| Metric (90 days, as of July 2026) | Value |
|---|---|
| Availability | 100.0% |
| Reliability grade | A+ |
| Major incidents | 0 |
| Total major-outage downtime | 0 minutes |
| Average incident duration | n/a |
| Most recent major incident | None in the last 90 days |
| Checks in window | 61,550 |
Among the 11 payment processing services StatusBird monitors, Authorize.net ranks number 3 for 90-day availability. See the full ranking of payment processing tools by reliability.
What happens to your store when Authorize.net goes down?
An Authorize.net outage stops payment authorization at your checkout: customers get gateway errors or timeouts when submitting card details, and orders cannot complete. Recurring billing charges scheduled during the outage may fail or be delayed, and stored-profile payments through CIM stop working. If you take phone or mail orders through the virtual terminal, those halt too. Any payment method routed through a different provider, such as PayPal Standard, keeps working.
Typical symptoms during a Authorize.net outage:
- Checkout returns gateway error or transaction could not be processed messages
- Payment step hangs and times out after customers submit card details
- Completed orders drop sharply while traffic remains normal
- Merchant Interface login or virtual terminal unavailable
- Recurring billing charges failing or reporting errors
If you are in the middle of an incident right now, see what to do when Authorize.net goes down for a step-by-step playbook.
Frequently asked questions
Does an Authorize.net outage take down my entire checkout?
It takes down the card payment step, which for most stores is the whole checkout unless you offer another provider. Cart, shipping, and tax steps still load; the failure happens when the customer submits payment. A separately integrated method like PayPal continues to work.
Were my customers double charged from retries during the outage?
Failed authorizations do not create settled charges, but repeated attempts can leave temporary pending holds on customers' cards that drop off within days. After recovery, review the Merchant Interface for any duplicate approved transactions from retries and void or refund them before settlement.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Authorize.net's status every 2 minutes, around the clock, independently of the vendor. The availability figure counts major and critical outages only; minor degradation is excluded so numbers are not skewed by vendors that report small blips near-continuously. Grades run from A+ to F. See the live numbers on the Authorize.net reliability page and current status on the Authorize.net status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Authorize.net and 83 other services online stores depend on, plus your own storefront, every 2 minutes. When something goes down you get an SMS, email, or Slack alert with plain-English context, usually before the official status page catches up. Start monitoring free, no card required for the free plan.