Discord API Down? How to Handle Outages in Your Bot or App (2026)

by API Status Check

TLDR: When Discord API goes down, check apistatuscheck.com/api/discord and discordstatus.com first. Implement exponential backoff retries, queue failed messages for replay, and add graceful degradation to keep your bot functional during outages instead of silently failing.

Your Discord bot just went silent. Commands aren't responding, webhooks aren't firing, and your community is wondering what happened. Discord API outages affect millions of bots and integrations — here's how to handle them without losing your users' trust.

Is Discord Actually Down Right Now?

Check these sources in order:

  1. API Status Check — Discord — Independent real-time monitoring
  2. Is Discord Down? — Quick yes/no with 24h history
  3. Discord Status — Official status page
  4. Discord Outage History — Past incidents and resolution times

Discord-Specific Error Codes

Error Meaning What to Do
502 Bad Gateway Discord servers overloaded Wait and retry
503 Service Unavailable Full outage Check status page
429 Too Many Requests Rate limited Respect retry_after header
5xx on Gateway WebSocket connection failed Reconnect with backoff
Opcode 7 (Reconnect) Discord requesting reconnect Resume session
Opcode 9 (Invalid Session) Session invalidated Full reconnect

Important: 429 errors during normal operation are your rate limit. 429 or 5xx during a status page incident means Discord is struggling system-wide.

For App Developers: Integration Resilience

Slack as a Fallback Channel

If your app sends notifications to Discord and Slack, automatically route to Slack during Discord outages:

async function sendNotification(message) {
  try {
    await sendToDiscord(message);
  } catch (error) {
    if (isDiscordOutage(error)) {
      console.warn('Discord unavailable, routing to Slack');
      await sendToSlack(message);
    } else {
      throw error;
    }
  }
}

function isDiscordOutage(error) {
  return error.status >= 500 || 
         error.code === 'ECONNREFUSED' || 
         error.code === 'ETIMEDOUT';
}

Compare reliability: Discord vs Slack uptime

Cache Recent Messages

For bots that need message history, cache locally so outages don't break context:

const messageCache = new Map(); // channelId -> messages[]
const MAX_CACHE_PER_CHANNEL = 100;

client.on('messageCreate', (message) => {
  const channelMessages = messageCache.get(message.channelId) || [];
  channelMessages.push({
    id: message.id,
    content: message.content,
    author: message.author.tag,
    timestamp: message.createdTimestamp,
  });
  
  // Keep only recent messages
  if (channelMessages.length > MAX_CACHE_PER_CHANNEL) {
    channelMessages.shift();
  }
  messageCache.set(message.channelId, channelMessages);
});

Discord's Reliability Track Record

Discord has improved significantly but still experiences regular incidents:

  • Average incidents per month: 3-8 (mostly minor)
  • Common issues: Gateway connectivity, API latency spikes, message delivery delays
  • Typical resolution: 15-60 minutes
  • Worst-case: Major outages can last 2-4 hours

View full Discord incident history →

Bot Outage Checklist

  • WebSocket reconnection handling (don't process.exit() on disconnect)
  • Command queue for retrying failed operations
  • Webhook retry logic with backoff
  • Rate limit handling (retry_after header)
  • Status monitoring (API Status Check)
  • Local message cache for context preservation
  • Fallback notification channel (Slack, email)
  • User-facing status message ("Bot is experiencing issues, commands are queued")

Monitor Discord and 100+ APIs

API Status Check monitors Discord, Slack, and 100+ APIs that developers depend on:

  • Independent monitoring — Not relying on Discord's own status page
  • Response time tracking — Catch slowdowns before they become outages
  • Comparison tools — Compare communication APIs
  • Free alerts — Get notified when Discord goes down

Check Discord status → | Is Discord down? →

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