Stripe 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 Stripe has problems and how to get warned early.
What is Stripe?
Stripe is a payments infrastructure platform that processes online card payments, wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, and dozens of local payment methods through its API. E-commerce stores use it as the payment gateway behind their checkout, whether directly via Stripe Checkout and Elements or under the hood of platforms like Squarespace and WooCommerce. Stripe also handles subscriptions through Stripe Billing, payouts, fraud screening with Radar, and invoicing.
Stripe 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 | 43,605 |
Among the 11 payment processing services StatusBird monitors, Stripe ranks number 8 for 90-day availability. See the full ranking of payment processing tools by reliability.
What happens to your store when Stripe goes down?
When Stripe goes down, your checkout stops converting: card authorizations fail or hang at the final payment step, so shoppers with full carts cannot pay. Subscription renewals through Stripe Billing can fail during the window, webhooks stop arriving so order status updates and fulfillment triggers stall, and the Stripe Dashboard may be unavailable for refunds and lookups. Your storefront still renders normally, which makes this outage sneaky: everything looks fine until the moment of payment.
Typical symptoms during a Stripe outage:
- Payment step at checkout erroring, declining everything, or spinning indefinitely
- Sudden drop to zero completed orders while site traffic looks normal
- Stripe Dashboard unreachable or showing stale data
- Webhooks not arriving, leaving orders stuck in pending or unpaid states
- Subscription renewal failures spiking
If you are in the middle of an incident right now, see what to do when Stripe goes down for a step-by-step playbook.
Frequently asked questions
A customer says they were charged but there is no order in my store. What happened?
The charge likely succeeded on Stripe but the webhook or callback that creates or updates the order never reached your store. Search the payment in the Stripe Dashboard once it is reachable, and if the charge is there, create or complete the order manually. Only refund if the customer no longer wants the item, not as a first reflex.
Will failed subscription renewals during a Stripe outage cancel my subscribers?
No. Stripe Billing treats a failed renewal as a payment failure and follows your configured retry schedule, typically retrying over several days before any cancellation. Most renewals that failed during a brief outage succeed on automatic retry, but review the failed invoices list afterward to confirm.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks Stripe'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 Stripe reliability page and current status on the Stripe status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors Stripe 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.