USPS has been highly reliable recently: StatusBird's independent monitoring recorded 100.0% availability and zero major incidents over the last 90 days.
Here is the full picture behind that verdict, and what an outage would mean for your store.
What is USPS?
USPS is the United States Postal Service, the default carrier for lightweight and low-cost e-commerce shipping in the US through services like Ground Advantage and Priority Mail. Stores use USPS through shipping platforms and its Web Tools and USPS APIs for address validation, live rates at checkout, label purchasing, and package tracking.
USPS 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 | 43,584 |
Among the 11 shipping and logistics services StatusBird monitors, USPS ranks number 8 for 90-day availability. See the full ranking of shipping and logistics tools by reliability.
What happens to your store when USPS goes down?
When USPS systems go down, address validation and rate lookups fail, which can block or degrade checkout for stores that depend on live USPS rates. Label purchasing through connected shipping software errors out, stalling fulfillment for the large share of orders many small stores send via USPS. Tracking stops updating, so customers see packages frozen at their last scan and support volume climbs. Mail and packages already in the postal network continue moving; the outage is in the digital layer.
Typical symptoms during a USPS outage:
- USPS rates not appearing or erroring at checkout
- Address validation failing during checkout or in your shipping software
- USPS label purchases failing or hanging in ShipStation, Shippo, or similar tools
- Tracking pages stuck with no new scans across many shipments at once
- usps.com or USPS developer APIs slow or unreachable
If you are in the middle of an incident right now, see what to do when USPS goes down for a step-by-step playbook.
Frequently asked questions
Did my customers' packages get lost because tracking stopped?
Almost certainly not. USPS tracking outages affect scan data reaching the website and APIs, not the physical mail stream. Missing scans typically appear retroactively after systems recover, so ask customers to wait a day before opening claims.
How do I keep shipping orders when USPS label APIs are down?
Use a second carrier configured in your shipping software for time-sensitive orders, and let the rest queue. If only the API is down, you can sometimes still buy individual labels through Click-N-Ship on usps.com. Batch-process the backlog when the API returns.
How this data is measured
StatusBird checks USPS'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 USPS reliability page and current status on the USPS status page, or browse all 84 service grades.
Know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors USPS 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.