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Is PBS Down?

No — PBS is up

Reachable from all 8 checked regions

Average response time: 594ms

Last checked · checks run every 6 hours

Official status page: https://status.pbs.org

PBS uptime

100%
Last 7 days
100%
Last 30 days
100%
Last 90 days
569ms
Avg response, 30 days

Measured from multiple regions every 6 hours. Percentages count only checks that returned an availability answer — 18 days measured so far. A dash means that window does not yet hold enough measured days to publish a figure.

30-day history

18-day clean streak
Jul 25: no data
Jul 26: no data
Jul 27: no data
Jul 28: no data
Jul 29: no data
Jul 30: no data
Jul 31: no data
Aug 1: no data
Aug 2: no data
Aug 3: no data
Aug 4: no data
Aug 5: no data
Aug 6: 100.00% uptime, 24 checks
Aug 7: 100.00% uptime, 31 checks
Aug 8: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 9: 100.00% uptime, 31 checks
Aug 10: 100.00% uptime, 37 checks
Aug 11: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 12: 100.00% uptime, 24 checks
Aug 13: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 14: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 15: 100.00% uptime, 31 checks
Aug 16: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 17: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 18: 100.00% uptime, 40 checks
Aug 19: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 20: 100.00% uptime, 40 checks
Aug 21: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 22: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Aug 23: 100.00% uptime, 24 checks
Jul 25 Today
No downtime Partial Downtime Not measurable No data

Reachability by region

Each region runs its own request from a different part of the world. A service can be up for one continent and down for another, which is usually the first sign of a routing or CDN problem.

cdg
231ms
DNS 0ms TCP 1ms TLS 4ms TTFB 190ms
dfw
431ms
DNS 1ms TCP 3ms TLS 4ms TTFB 403ms
ewr
607ms
DNS 0ms TCP 1ms TLS 3ms TTFB 536ms
fra
508ms
DNS 0ms TCP 1ms TLS 3ms TTFB 377ms
gru
899ms
DNS 0ms TCP 108ms TLS 112ms TTFB 609ms
iad
428ms
DNS 1ms TCP 1ms TLS 4ms TTFB 360ms
jnb
1107ms
DNS 0ms TCP 165ms TLS 167ms TTFB 642ms
lax
567ms
DNS 0ms TCP 2ms TLS 5ms TTFB 477ms
lhr
211ms
DNS 0ms TCP 2ms TLS 4ms TTFB 172ms

What PBS does

PBS is the American public broadcaster, and its online services carry local live station streams, on-demand episodes through the PBS Video portal and Passport for donating members, PBS KIDS, and LearningMedia for classrooms. Viewers arrive through pbs.org, the apps on phones and streaming boxes, and station-branded players, all of which sit on shared PBS infrastructure rather than on each station's own.

What an outage looks like

Episodes buffer indefinitely or fail with a playback error while the page around them loads normally. Passport members are asked to sign in again, or told they lack access to a video they have watched before, which is an account problem rather than a lapsed donation. Local live streams fail while on-demand still plays, and the KIDS apps and games can fail on their own.

What to do about it

Check status.pbs.org, which lists the PBS website, the Video Portal, the Partner Player, mobile and OTT apps, PBS Account, Local Live Streams, PBS KIDS and LearningMedia as separate components. Sign-in trouble usually points at PBS Account rather than at your membership. If one station's stream fails while everything else is green, that station's own feed is the likelier cause than PBS.

Is it down for everyone, or just you?

If this page says PBS is up but it is not loading for you, the problem is between you and them. Run a check against any URL from all 18 regions to find out where it breaks.

Test it yourself

Related services

P
Plex
V
Vimeo
W
Wikipedia
K
Khan Academy

PBS outage FAQ

Why does Passport say I do not have access?
That is usually PBS Account rather than your donation. Passport access is checked at playback time against your PBS Account and your station's membership record, so an authentication incident looks exactly like an expired membership from the viewer's side. Check status.pbs.org for the PBS Account component before contacting your station, and try again once it reads operational rather than donating a second time.
Is it PBS or my local station?
Both are possible, and the status page distinguishes them. Local Live Streams is its own component, and individual stations also run infrastructure that PBS does not report on at all. If national on-demand content plays and only your station's live feed fails, the station is the likelier cause, and the station's own website or social account is usually where that gets announced.
Do the apps work when the website does not?
Sometimes. PBS reports the website, the Video Portal and the mobile and OTT apps as separate components, so an app on a streaming box can play while pbs.org fails in a browser, or the reverse. Trying the other surface takes less time than waiting for an update. Content already downloaded for offline viewing, where the app supports it, is unaffected.
Does a PBS KIDS outage affect the main site?
Not necessarily. PBS KIDS has its own website, Activate and OTT app components on the status page, separate from the main PBS website and Video Portal. Children's programming also appears inside the general PBS apps, so an outage of the dedicated KIDS app does not always remove access to the shows themselves. Check which component the status page names before giving up.
Why did playback stop part way through an episode?
A player that starts and then stalls usually points at the video delivery path rather than the site, which is why PBS lists the Video Portal and Partner Player separately from the website. Reload once before assuming an outage, since a single failed segment request can stall playback on an otherwise healthy service. If it repeats across episodes and devices, read the status page.

How we measure this

  • We request PBS's public endpoint every 6 hours from Fly.io regions across six continents — 8 of them answered the most recent check.
  • A region counts as down only when it gets no usable HTTP response. A 403 or 429 means the origin answered and refused us, which we report as blocked, never as an outage.
  • A single failing region is treated as probe noise. We only change the verdict when two consecutive cycles agree.
  • Response times average only the regions that actually served the page, so a timeout never inflates the number.
  • Where PBS publishes an official status feed we read it too. An all-clear from the vendor can soften an unconfirmed degradation; a vendor-declared outage only worsens our verdict when our own checks corroborate it.

Get alerted when PBS goes down

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