Dropbox status

How we check Dropbox

We watch dropbox.com from all five of our probe regions, every 2 minutes. A region that sees a failure does not make this page say "down" on its own: a second region has to agree first, the same confirmation rule every YoPingMe monitor uses.

We watch Dropbox's own web host and pin the response an anonymous request receives, rather than assuming a 2xx. The developer API runs on a separate host with its own availability, so this reading answers the question most people checking this page actually have, whether they can reach their files.

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox was one of the first products to make file sync feel effortless, and a large number of individuals and teams still keep their working files there by default, with a desktop client that mirrors a folder locally and keeps it in sync across every device signed into the same account. That local mirror is the detail most worth understanding before treating any sync problem as an outage.

Because files are mirrored locally, most "Dropbox is broken" reports are actually the sync client, not the service. A client that lost its network connection and never noticed, a sync deliberately paused from an earlier session and forgotten about, or an account that quietly filled its storage quota will all produce files that will not update, while Dropbox's own servers answer every request normally. Checking the client's own sync status, visible in its menu bar icon on most platforms, resolves far more of these than any status page could.

The developer API is served separately from the consumer clients and matters to a different audience: applications and integrations that read from and write to Dropbox programmatically. It shares the same backend infrastructure, so an incident affecting file storage broadly tends to affect both, but the two are still worth distinguishing when an integration starts failing, since an API-specific problem can exist without the consumer apps noticing anything at all.

Sharing and permissions are the most common source of file access problems that get mistaken for a platform issue. A folder owner changing who has access, a team administrator restricting sharing outside the organisation, or a link set to expire on a schedule will all produce an access error on a file that opened fine yesterday, entirely independent of whether Dropbox itself is healthy. These are configuration changes, not incidents, and checking a file's current sharing settings is the fast way to rule this out.

The practical shape of relying on Dropbox is similar to any sync-based storage product: most reported problems live in the client or the account configuration rather than in Dropbox's infrastructure. Ruling out a paused sync, a full quota, or a changed permission first is what actually narrows down whether something is wrong on Dropbox's side at all.

Frequently asked questions

Is Dropbox down right now?

Check the board above; it reflects our own probes against Dropbox from all five of our regions, refreshed every couple of minutes and confirmed across two regions before this page would call it down.

My files are not syncing but this page shows Dropbox up. What should I check?

Check the desktop client's own sync status and available storage first, since both cause far more sync trouble than an outage. An account over its storage limit stops accepting new files silently in some cases, a paused sync toggle left on from earlier, or a client that lost its connection and never reconnected will all look identical to a platform problem from the user's side.

Does a Dropbox outage affect apps built on the Dropbox API?

Yes, since third-party integrations authenticate against and read from the same backend that the desktop and web clients use, even though the API and the consumer apps are served from different hosts. An integration returning elevated errors during a period this page shows as down is very likely experiencing the same incident rather than a bug in its own code.

How is this page different from Dropbox's own status page?

Theirs reports what Dropbox's team has confirmed and published, broken down by component. This page reports what our own probes measured from outside Dropbox's infrastructure, on a fixed schedule, whether or not Dropbox has posted an update yet - a coarser signal that shows up sooner, not a replacement for theirs.

I am getting a sharing or permissions error on a file that used to work. Is that an outage?

Almost never. A folder owner changing sharing settings, a team admin restricting external sharing, or a link that was set to expire will all produce an access error that has nothing to do with whether Dropbox is running. Checking the file's current sharing settings resolves this far faster than waiting on a status update.