Is PayPal down?
Updated Oct 08, 2026 10:30 UTC. StatusBird re-checks PayPal's status page every 2 minutes.
- Current state
- Operational
- Changed
- Jul 10, 2026 10:32 UTC
- Held for
- 89 days 23 hours
PayPal is currently operational as of Oct 08, 2026 10:30 UTC, with no outage reported on its official status page. StatusBird reads PayPal'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.
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Free email alert. No account required.
PayPal uptime and incident history
30-day uptime, from checks every 2 minutes.
Over the past 90 days StatusBird recorded 0 major or critical PayPal incidents totalling 0 minutes of downtime, for 100.00% availability and a A+ reliability grade, across 64,657 independent checks. Full history: PayPal reliability report.
PayPal's 90-day uptime of 100.00% is above the Payments category average of 99.88% across the 11 services StatusBird monitors in that category.
PayPal risk in the next 24 hours
StatusBird's stack risk model puts the chance of any PayPal degradation in the next 24 hours at 15% (elevated) and the chance of a major or critical outage at 8% (elevated). It is scored every 10 minutes from four inputs: how often PayPal 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.
- no degraded-or-worse episodes in the last 180 days
- no major outages in the last 180 days
- runs on cloudflare, which is in a major incident now; downstream services misbehave about twice as often in the following hour
Scored Oct 08, 2026 10:26 UTC, and rescored every 10 minutes. Method: how StatusBird measures and scores.
How do I get notified when PayPal has an outage?
Three options, from free to full coverage. Plan details are as published on StatusBird's pricing page and paypal-status.com as of October 08, 2026.
- Free email alert on this page. The form above emails you when PayPal 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.
- PayPal's own status page. paypal-status.com offers the subscription options on paypal-status.com. It is the official record and worth subscribing to alongside any monitor; it updates when PayPal confirms an incident.
Full guide: How to get notified when a payment processor has an outage.
What usually breaks for Shopify stores when PayPal is down?
- The PayPal button at checkout errors or redirects to a blank page
- Shoppers who prefer PayPal abandon rather than switch to a card
- Orders paid moments before the outage stay in a pending state until PayPal catches up
Step-by-step response: what to do when PayPal is down.
About PayPal
One of the most widely used payment methods online. PayPal outages block customers from checking out, directly impacting your conversion rate and revenue.
StatusBird monitors PayPal 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.
PayPal last five incidents
StatusBird recorded zero non-operational PayPal readings in the last 90 days, across 64,657 checks every 2 minutes.
What to do when PayPal is down
PayPal isn't just a payment method, for many Shopify stores, it's the preferred checkout for a significant share of customers, particularly those who prefer not to enter card details directly. When PayPal goes down, those customers hit a dead end.
A PayPal outage won't break your entire checkout the way a Stripe outage would. But it will silently block every customer who tries to use PayPal, and that can be 20-40% of your checkout attempts depending on your audience.
Step 1: Confirm it's PayPal, not your integration
Go to www.paypal-status.com (PayPal's official status page). Check the components relevant to your setup: Checkout, PayPal.me, APIs, and Webhooks.
Signs of a PayPal outage:
- Customers clicking "Pay with PayPal" and getting an error or blank screen
- PayPal checkout button not loading on your storefront
- PayPal payments failing at the confirmation step after login
- Webhooks not firing for completed PayPal transactions
If the issue is only affecting certain regions or browsers, it may be a CDN or partial outage, still worth treating as urgent.
Step 2: Evaluate how much of your traffic uses PayPal
Pull your payment method breakdown from Shopify Analytics or your PayPal dashboard. This tells you the scale of the problem:
- If PayPal is less than 10% of checkouts, the impact is meaningful but contained
- If PayPal is 25%+ of checkouts, this is a significant revenue event and should be treated accordingly
Step 3: Add a store notice pointing customers to your other payment options
Most Shopify stores with PayPal also accept cards via Stripe or Shopify Payments. Add a short banner:
"PayPal is currently experiencing issues. You can still complete your purchase using a credit or debit card at checkout."
This redirects conversion-ready customers rather than losing them entirely.
Step 4: Consider pausing any PayPal-specific promotions
If you're running a promotion tied to PayPal ("Pay with PayPal and get 10% off"), pause or extend it for the duration of the outage. Sending traffic to a broken checkout option while running a PayPal promotion is a waste of spend and erodes trust.
Step 5: Monitor for webhook failures after recovery
PayPal outages sometimes cause webhook delivery failures, meaning orders that went through near the end of the outage may not have triggered your fulfillment or confirmation flows. After PayPal recovers, check your order log for any transactions from the outage window that are missing fulfillment confirmations or Klaviyo triggers.
How to know before your customers do
StatusBird monitors PayPal alongside Stripe, Shopify, Klaviyo, and 80 other e-commerce services, all in one dashboard. You get an SMS the moment something changes, before the first abandoned cart report shows up in your analytics. Start monitoring free.
PayPal outage checklist
- Confirm on paypal-status.com
- Check what percentage of your transactions use PayPal
- Add a banner directing customers to card checkout
- Pause any PayPal-specific promotions
- After recovery, audit orders from the outage window for missing webhooks
The stakes at checkout are well documented: the Baymard Institute's cart abandonment research puts average online cart abandonment near 70% even when everything works. A payment outage hits shoppers at the exact moment they were ready to buy.
This playbook was published separately until September 2026. It now lives here, alongside the live PayPal status it applies to.
PayPal status FAQ
Is PayPal down right now?
No. PayPal is operational in StatusBird's independent monitoring. That state began Jul 10, 2026 at 10:32 UTC and has lasted 89 days 23 hours. Last checked Oct 08, 2026 at 10:30 UTC.
How often does PayPal go down?
StatusBird recorded zero major or critical PayPal 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 PayPal has a problem in the next 24 hours?
StatusBird's stack risk model puts the chance of any PayPal degradation in the next 24 hours at 15% (elevated) and the chance of a major or critical outage at 8% (elevated). It is scored every 10 minutes from four inputs: how often PayPal 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 PayPal goes down?
Confirm the outage is on PayPal'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 PayPal outage is on this page, under 'What to do when PayPal is down'.
How do I get notified when PayPal 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 PayPal's own status page at paypal-status.com.
What should I do when PayPal goes down? The full playbook is on this page.
Related services
PayPal 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/paypal, accessed October 08, 2026. See the methodology for how these numbers are measured.
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