Is Notion down? The Oct 22, 2026 outage and what to do

What happened to Notion on October 22, 2026

According to Notion's official status page, notion-status.com, this is the timeline (all times Eastern):

• 11:38 PM, Oct 22: Notion posts "Users unable to access Notion". It says users are having trouble signing in and loading pages, and "some users may see a blocked-access message or pages stuck loading".
• 11:38 PM to 12:01 AM: Login and user accounts, Notion Apps, and View and edit content are all marked as a full outage, for about 23 minutes.
• 11:54 PM: Notion says access "should now be restored" and that it is monitoring.
• 2:44 AM, Oct 23: Notion marks the incident resolved: "Signing in, loading pages, and viewing and editing content are working normally again."

Notion hasn't published a cause on its status page, so I won't guess at one. Reports on X started a few minutes before the status post, which is normal: people notice before an incident is written up.

What people said on X during the Notion outage

Mostly what you'd expect at midnight with a deadline. A few posts from X during the outage:

• @luctheriault: "It's so rare that Notion is down. It's making me think, though, that it's been too long since I did a backup."
• @studiobrittanyx: "notion is down and i've realized my entire brain lives in there."
• @Rigel15Lee: "Been using Notion for years and this is the first time it went down"
• @answerisuuu: "IS NOTION DOWN WTFFF I HAVE A QUIZ"

Two of those say the fair thing out loud: Notion is reliable most of the time. The other two say the real thing: when it isn't, everything in it is out of reach at once.

How to check if Notion is down

1. Check Notion's status page: notion-status.com. It's Notion's official page (status.notion.so redirects there) and lists current incidents by component, such as sign-in, the apps and editing.
2. Rule out your end. Try Notion in a browser if the app fails, or the app if the browser fails. Try another network, such as your phone's hotspot. If one works, the problem is probably local.
3. Look at what others report. Searching "Notion down" on X, or a third-party outage tracker, shows whether other people are seeing the same thing. These sometimes react faster than the official page, but they're less precise.
4. Check pages you saved for offline. Notion's desktop and mobile apps can keep pages you've marked available offline, and paid plans download recent and favorite pages automatically (Notion Help). If you've set that up, those pages may still open.

Why a Notion outage locks you out of your own notes

Because in Notion, your notes live on Notion's servers, and the apps are mostly windows onto them. That's what makes Notion great for teams: everyone sees the same page, live. It's also why, when sign-in or the servers have a bad night, you can't open your own writing, even the pages you wrote alone.

This isn't a Notion problem so much as a cloud problem. Every service that keeps your only copy on its servers has the same failure mode, and it can be an outage, a locked account, a lapsed card or a pricing change. Notion handled this one well. The point is that it was theirs to handle.

The alternative is called local-first: the main copy of your notes lives on your own device, the app works with no connection, and sync is something that happens between your devices when it can, not a gate you pass through to read a page.

What to do after a Notion outage

Notion is working again, so this is a good moment for a little insurance, whether you stay or not:

1. Export your workspace. In Notion go to Settings > General > Export all workspace content. Notion emails a download link that expires after 7 days, and a large workspace can take up to 30 hours to process (Notion Help: Export your content). Choose Markdown & CSV if you want something other apps can read.
2. Keep that export somewhere that isn't Notion. Your computer, an external drive, any backup you already run. An export inside the service you're backing up doesn't help on a night like this.
3. Mark your must-have pages for offline in the Notion desktop or mobile app, so the pages you'd need in a pinch are on your device.
4. Decide what really needs to be in the cloud. Shared team docs and databases probably do. Your journal, drafts and personal notes may not.

Where Koru fits: notes that open without a server

Koru is my app, so here's the honest pitch. Koru is a free, open-source (MPL-2.0), local-first workspace for notes and documents, for Windows and macOS, with mobile and Linux coming soon. Your notes live in a local database on your device, so they open with no connection and no account, whatever is happening on anyone's servers.

Your devices sync directly with each other, peer to peer and end-to-end encrypted, for free. Koru Cloud is optional at $9.99 a month for 100 GB, and free self-hosted sync is coming soon.

Koru imports a Notion export: take the Markdown & CSV .zip from the steps above, choose Import, Notion, and your pages come across with their page tree and links. It runs on your computer without connecting your Notion account. Databases become tables, so views and formulas don't carry over.

To be fair to Notion: Koru isn't a team wiki, has no databases or real-time collaboration, and has no phone app yet. If your team runs on Notion, keep it, and keep an export. If your own notes are in there, try Koru and keep a copy that doesn't need anyone's servers. More on Koru as a Notion alternative.

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