How to Check if Gmail Is Down (or if It Is Just You)

To check whether Gmail is down, read Google's status dashboard first, then see whether Gmail's servers answer. The Gmail status checker does both on one page: it reads Google's Workspace Status Dashboard for open Gmail incidents and connects to smtp.gmail.com from our server to read the greeting, refreshed every minute. No open incident and a server that answers means Gmail is up for most people and the problem is probably yours.

It only knows what Google publishes and what our server can reach. The limits are below.

Step 1: look at the official status

An open incident on Google's dashboard is Google confirming a problem. The panel shows it with its start time and Google's own wording. Google's dashboard covers the Workspace services, Gmail among them, so an incident for a company account on Workspace shows up there as soon as Google posts it.

Step 2: look at the probe

A 220 greeting means the mail server accepted a connection from us a moment ago. The panel shows the greeting and the response time, and confirms that gmail.com's MX records resolve. A result is cached for a minute, so pressing Check faster than that returns the same reading.

Step 3: narrow it down if both look fine

What you see	Likely cause	What to try
Open incident on Google's dashboard	Google-side problem	Wait for Google's update
No incident, servers answer	Local: connection, browser extension, old app, signed-out session	A private window, another network, another device
No incident, but only some people affected	Possibly regional	Google's posts say who is affected when it is regional
Mail not arriving, no incident	Spam folder, filters, storage	Check those, and ask the sender for a bounce message

By hand

Open Google Workspace Status Dashboard and find the Gmail row. A green dot means no open incident. That is the same source the checker reads, so the tool saves you the click and adds the server probe.

What this check cannot do

• It does not count user reports the way crowd-sourced outage sites do, and it cannot see problems with a single account.
• The probe runs from our server, so it shows Gmail's servers were reachable from there, not from your network or country.
• A 220 greeting does not prove sign-in, the web app or inbox delivery work.
• The inbound mail servers are only resolved in DNS, not connected to, because our host blocks outbound port 25.

If Gmail is up but a Gmail address bounces

An outage is rare compared with a bad address. If mail to a Gmail address fails while Gmail is up, the address may not exist: see how to check if a Gmail address exists and Gmail address valid but bounced later. To check a whole list before you send, use the verify page: the first 100 email checks are free with a Google sign-in, no card. See also pricing.

Check Gmail now

Open the Gmail status checker.