Is USPS down?
Updated Oct 08, 2026 13:40 UTC. StatusBird re-checks USPS's status page every 2 minutes.
- Current state
- Operational
- Changed
- Jul 10, 2026 13:41 UTC
- Held for
- 89 days 23 hours
USPS is currently operational as of Oct 08, 2026 13:40 UTC, with no outage reported on its official status page. StatusBird reads USPS's status page every 2 minutes and, on the Pro plan, alerts subscribers by SMS, email, Slack, Teams or Discord within that cycle; the free email alert on this page covers major and critical outages with no account.
Get alerted when USPS goes down
Free email alert. No account required.
USPS uptime and incident history
30-day uptime, from checks every 2 minutes.
Over the past 90 days StatusBird recorded 0 major or critical USPS incidents totalling 0 minutes of downtime, for 100.00% availability and a A+ reliability grade, across 64,621 independent checks. Full history: USPS reliability report.
USPS's 90-day uptime of 100.00% is above the Shipping category average of 99.84% across the 11 services StatusBird monitors in that category.
USPS risk in the next 24 hours
StatusBird's stack risk model puts the chance of any USPS degradation in the next 24 hours at 2% (normal) and the chance of a major or critical outage at 0% (normal). It is scored every 10 minutes from four inputs: how often USPS has had an episode over the last 180 days, whether it has had one in the last 24 hours or 7 days, how often its degradations turn into major outages, and whether the infrastructure it runs on is having trouble right now.
- 3 degraded-or-worse episodes in the last 180 days
- no major outages in the last 180 days
Scored Oct 08, 2026 13:36 UTC, and rescored every 10 minutes. Method: how StatusBird measures and scores.
How do I get notified when USPS has an outage?
Three options, from free to full coverage. Plan details are as published on StatusBird's pricing page and developers.usps.com as of October 08, 2026.
- Free email alert on this page. The form above emails you when USPS enters a major or critical outage and again when it recovers. No account, no card.
- A StatusBird account. The free plan monitors 1 service with a live dashboard and a day-after incident digest. Pro ($29/month) checks all 84 services every 2 minutes and alerts by SMS, email, Slack, Teams or Discord, with quiet hours and per-service thresholds; Business is $49/month and Agency $99/month. Create a free account.
- USPS's own status page. developers.usps.com offers the subscription options on developers.usps.com, where available. It is the official record and worth subscribing to alongside any monitor; it updates when USPS confirms an incident.
Full guide: Best downtime alert services for online store owners (2026).
About USPS
The United States Postal Service shipping network. USPS service disruptions affect package delivery timelines and tracking visibility for your customers.
StatusBird monitors USPS every 2 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When an outage or degradation is detected, StatusBird sends instant alerts so you can act before your customers notice. The 30-day uptime percentage and incident history above reflect live data from our monitoring network.
USPS last five incidents
StatusBird recorded zero non-operational USPS readings in the last 90 days, across 64,621 checks every 2 minutes.
What to do when USPS is down
A USPS outage is not something you can fix, but how you respond in the first 15 minutes decides how much it costs you. This guide covers confirming the outage, limiting the damage, and keeping customers informed.
How do I confirm USPS is actually down?
Check two independent sources before changing anything in your store. First, StatusBird's live USPS status page, which is based on independent checks every 2 minutes. Second, USPS's own status page at developers.usps.com/. If the official page still shows green, do not assume you are wrong: vendors often acknowledge incidents well after they start. If both look clean, the problem is more likely your store's configuration or a specific integration.
What does a USPS outage look like?
- 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
What breaks in your store
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.
For context, USPS has had no major incidents in the last 90 days of StatusBird's independent monitoring (100.0% availability), so a real outage is unusual. That makes it easy to mistake one for a problem on your end, which is why confirming first matters.
What to do during the outage
- Offer a flat-rate shipping option at checkout so orders keep flowing without live USPS rates.
- Route urgent shipments to UPS or FedEx while USPS label creation is down.
- Disable strict address validation temporarily rather than blocking checkouts on a failing API.
- Queue USPS orders and batch-print labels once the API responds again.
- Post a banner or send an email telling customers tracking updates are delayed, not lost packages.
These steps follow the same logic Google codifies in its Site Reliability Engineering chapter on managing incidents: establish what is actually happening, contain the damage, and communicate clearly while the incident is still running.
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.
After the outage
Once USPS recovers, verify the affected workflows end to end rather than trusting the status page. Note the start and end times while they are fresh: if you are on a paid USPS plan with an SLA, documented downtime is what a service credit claim is built on. See how to claim SLA credits for the process.
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.
This playbook was published separately until September 2026. It now lives here, alongside the live USPS status it applies to.
USPS status FAQ
Is USPS down right now?
No. USPS is operational in StatusBird's independent monitoring. That state began Jul 10, 2026 at 13:41 UTC and has lasted 89 days 23 hours. Last checked Oct 08, 2026 at 13:40 UTC.
How often does USPS go down?
StatusBird recorded zero major or critical USPS incidents in the last 90 days, at 100.00% availability and a A+ reliability grade. Minor degradation is excluded from that figure.
What is the chance USPS has a problem in the next 24 hours?
StatusBird's stack risk model puts the chance of any USPS degradation in the next 24 hours at 2% (normal) and the chance of a major or critical outage at 0% (normal). It is scored every 10 minutes from four inputs: how often USPS has had an episode over the last 180 days, whether it has had one in the last 24 hours or 7 days, how often its degradations turn into major outages, and whether the infrastructure it runs on is having trouble right now.
What should I do when USPS goes down?
Confirm the outage is on USPS's side rather than in your store, protect whatever the outage is breaking, and tell affected customers before they find out the hard way. The full step-by-step playbook for a USPS outage is on this page, under 'What to do when USPS is down'.
How do I get notified when USPS goes down?
Use the free email alert form on this page, which needs no account and covers major and critical outages. Or open a StatusBird account: the free plan monitors 1 service with a next-day digest, and Pro at $29 a month checks all 84 services every 2 minutes and alerts by SMS, email, Slack, Teams or Discord, or subscribe to USPS's own status page at developers.usps.com.
What should I do when USPS goes down? The full playbook is on this page.
Related services
USPS guides
"Every figure we publish comes from the same 2-minute checks that trigger our customers' alerts. We publish the data exactly as we measured it, and anyone is free to cite it."
Sydney Murphy, founder of StatusBird
Cite this data: StatusBird monitoring data, https://statusbird.io/status/usps, accessed October 08, 2026. See the methodology for how these numbers are measured.
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