No, you didn’t really crash Reddit, but there’s a strong possibility you’re encountering an error message letting you know that you did right now. On Wednesday morning at approximately 11:52 a.m. ET, Reddit started facing a significant outage. Trying to access any page on the website redirects users to a page informing them that “reddit broke!” We’re still collecting details, but we are sharing everything we know regarding why Reddit is down below.
Why is Reddit down?
Shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET on July 16, reports of Reddit outages surged on Downdetector. At the moment of writing, there have been more than 72,000 separate reports, suggesting that almost everyone is experiencing difficulties accessing Reddit this morning. In other words, it’s not just you. Something malfunctioned that is leading to issues for anyone trying to visit Reddit.
Meanwhile, the Reddit Status page was updated at 11:52 a.m. ET to mention that the team commenced “investigating elevated site errors.” By 12:07 p.m. ET, Reddit reported that the staff “pinpointed the cause of the issue and are taking steps to resolve it.” It’s now 12:17 p.m. ET as I write this, and for the time being, everything appears to be functioning properly once again.
Here’s the latest update from the Reddit team as of 12:21 p.m. ET: “A fix has been put in place and we are observing the results.”
The issue was completely resolved at 12:38 p.m. ET, and the site is operational again.
Reddit has faced issues before
Outages of this nature aren’t particularly rare at Reddit. Reviewing its record of recent incidents, one should anticipate a brief interruption approximately two to three times monthly. For example, in June, there were two occurrences of “elevated errors,” both of which were handled in under an hour. One involved comments not being posted on the site.
In reality, there has been at least one incident report every month since 2025 started. Given that Reddit ranks among the 10 most visited websites globally, it’s not shocking that the servers occasionally become overloaded with traffic. Nevertheless, it’s no less exasperating for those visiting the social news aggregator to continue a discussion, catch up on current events, or look for firsthand reviews of a product they’re considering purchasing.
