PayPal 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 PayPal has problems and how to get warned early.
What is PayPal?
PayPal is one of the most widely used online payment methods, letting shoppers pay from a PayPal balance, linked bank account, or card, and it also owns Venmo and the Pay Later installment products. Online stores offer it as an express checkout button and a standard payment option alongside card processing, and many merchants also use PayPal for payouts and refunds. For some stores it handles a large share of total checkout volume because customers trust it and it skips manual card entry.
PayPal 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 | 45,543 |
Among the 11 payment processing services StatusBird monitors, PayPal ranks number 6 for 90-day availability. See the full ranking of payment processing tools by reliability.
What happens to your store when PayPal goes down?
When PayPal goes down, the PayPal button at checkout fails: shoppers who click it see errors, endless spinners, or are bounced back from the PayPal login page without completing payment. Every customer who only wants to pay with PayPal, Venmo, or PayPal Pay Later is blocked from buying unless they switch to a card. Stores can also see orders stuck in pending when the payment authorization or the IPN/webhook confirmation fails mid-flow, and refunds issued through PayPal will not process until service recovers.
Typical symptoms during a PayPal outage:
- The PayPal button at checkout errors out or spins indefinitely
- Customers report being unable to log in to PayPal to approve payment
- Orders appear in a pending or unpaid state with PayPal as the method
- Conversion rate drops while card payments continue working normally
- PayPal API calls or webhooks fail in your platform's payment logs
If you are in the middle of an incident right now, see what to do when PayPal goes down for a step-by-step playbook.
Frequently asked questions
PayPal is down but cards still work. How much of my checkout is actually affected?
Only customers choosing PayPal, Venmo, or PayPal Pay Later are blocked, and your card processor keeps working independently. Check your recent order history to see what share of orders normally pay with PayPal; that is roughly the revenue at risk. A visible checkout notice steering customers to card payment recovers a good portion of it.
I have orders sitting in pending with PayPal payments. Should I ship them?
No, wait. Pending usually means the authorization or confirmation webhook never completed, so the money may not actually be captured. After PayPal recovers, reconcile those orders against your PayPal account activity and only fulfill ones showing a completed payment.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks PayPal'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 PayPal reliability page and current status on the PayPal status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors PayPal 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.