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Is PBS Down?

No — PBS is up

Reachable from all 8 checked regions

Average response time: 864ms

Last checked · checks run every 6 hours

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

PBS uptime

100%
Last 7 days
100%
Last 30 days
99.95%
Last 90 days
762ms
Avg response, 30 days

Measured from multiple regions every 6 hours. Percentages count only checks that returned an availability answer — 69 days measured so far. A dash means that window does not yet hold enough measured days to publish a figure.

30-day history

39-day clean streak
Sep 14: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 15: 100.00% uptime, 31 checks
Sep 16: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 17: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 18: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 19: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 20: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 21: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 22: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 23: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 24: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 25: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 26: 100.00% uptime, 47 checks
Sep 27: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 28: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 29: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 30: 100.00% uptime, 31 checks
Oct 1: 100.00% uptime, 29 checks
Oct 2: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 3: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 4: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 5: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 6: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 7: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 8: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 9: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 10: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 11: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 12: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Oct 13: 100.00% uptime, 32 checks
Sep 14 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.

jnb
1297ms
DNS 145ms TCP 161ms TLS 163ms TTFB 808ms
lax
563ms
DNS 57ms TCP 1ms TLS 3ms TTFB 387ms
lhr
225ms
DNS 47ms TCP 3ms TLS 4ms TTFB 217ms
nrt
1296ms
DNS 173ms TCP 104ms TLS 107ms TTFB 811ms
ord
566ms
DNS 187ms TCP 1ms TLS 4ms TTFB 490ms
sin
1209ms
DNS 151ms TCP 137ms TLS 139ms TTFB 787ms
sjc
584ms
DNS 172ms TCP 2ms TLS 4ms TTFB 495ms
syd
1173ms
DNS 110ms TCP 136ms TLS 138ms TTFB 750ms

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 up to 17 cities across three 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 — the most recent check ran from 8 of them.
  • 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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