(Update at 07:34): Anthropic has announced that Claude services are now back to normal.
According to BleepingComputer and other overseas media outlets, Anthropic Claude experienced a widespread service outage, with numerous users reporting that they could not log in normally. The performance of several Anthropic services was also affected.
According to Anthropic, the outage began at around 5:58 a.m. Beijing time on August 17, 2026, affecting services including Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork.
Anthropic initially said it was investigating an issue preventing some users from authenticating and logging in to Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork. The issue subsequently developed into a widespread platform outage, with affected users encountering various errors, including being unable to log in, load Claude pages, or complete requests.
Anthropic’s status page marked Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork as experiencing a “Major Outage.” By contrast, Claude Console and the Claude API continued to be listed as operational.
Anthropic did not disclose the specific cause of the outage, and the issue was still under investigation as of IT Home’s publication.