Design
Unsplash
Unsplash is a free stock photography platform with over 5 million high-resolution images contributed by photographers worldwide under a permissive license.
What is Unsplash?
Unsplash started in 2013 as a side project: a Tumblr blog posting ten free high-quality photos every ten days, shot by founders who couldn't afford stock photography for their own startup. The concept resonated immediately, and Unsplash grew into the internet's most popular source of free-to-use photography, eventually hosting over 5 million photos contributed by 300,000+ photographers. Acquired by Getty Images in 2021, it now serves billions of image downloads per year across its website, apps, and an API that's embedded in hundreds of third-party products including Notion, Squarespace, Medium, and countless design tools.
Unsplash's API is arguably its most important surface — it powers image search and selection inside products that users interact with far more than the Unsplash website itself. Notion's cover image picker, Squarespace's media library, and various design tools' stock photo integrations all route through the Unsplash API, meaning Unsplash API latency or availability issues silently degrade experiences in dozens of popular products. The image delivery CDN — which handles billions of download requests per day at no cost to users — must maintain high availability for a traffic load that few paid services would need to sustain.
When Unsplash has issues, the effects are usually broad: the Unsplash.com search interface returning slow or empty results, photo downloads failing or downloading a corrupted file, the API returning 429 (rate limited) or 503 responses which propagate to error states in embedded integrations (like Notion's image picker showing "No photos found"), user profile and collection pages failing to load photos for specific photographers, and the iOS app search failing to populate results even with a strong internet connection. Post-Getty acquisition, some users have also reported periodic authentication issues when Getty account systems are under maintenance.
Outage.gg tracks Unsplash and its API status in real time. When integrated tools start returning empty image results or the website feels sluggish, the live status page provides a quick first check.
Common Unsplash Problems
Issues users most frequently report when Unsplash is having problems.
Login failures
Players are unable to sign in, receiving authentication errors or being stuck on loading screens.
Matchmaking problems
Unable to find or join matches, long queue times, or errors when trying to connect to game servers.
Disconnections mid-session
Getting unexpectedly kicked from active sessions, losing in-game progress or items.
In-game store & purchases
Cannot load the in-game store, complete purchases, or received items are not appearing in inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Unsplash outages and server status.
You can check the live Unsplash server status at outage.gg/services/unsplash. The page shows real-time community-submitted outage reports, an hourly trend chart, and the current health status.
Unsplash can stop working for a number of reasons including scheduled maintenance windows, unexpected server failures, network infrastructure problems, or DDoS attacks. Check the live status page on Outage.gg for the latest community reports to see if others are experiencing the same issue.
Go to outage.gg/services/unsplash and click the "Report an Issue" button. Your report is counted immediately and helps confirm whether a problem is widespread. Reports from multiple users trigger a status change visible to everyone watching the page.
Click the "Notify Me" bell button on the Unsplash status page at outage.gg/services/unsplash. Create a free account and we will send you an email the moment Unsplash comes back online — no app download required.
Many services maintain official status pages with planned maintenance notices. Outage.gg aggregates real-time community-reported outages which often surface faster than official channels.
Related Services
Other services you might be tracking alongside Unsplash.
