Is DALL-E (Shut Down) Down?

Quickest ways to check the current status of openai.com plus recent known issues and working alternatives if it's out.

Last editorial review: 2026-05-13

How to check right now

Step 1 -- Load the site
Open openai.com→

The simplest check. If it loads and you can log in, the tool is up for you.

Step 2 -- Crowdsourced reports
DownDetector: DALL-E (Shut Down)→

User-reported outages aggregated across regions. Good signal for partial or regional outages.

Step 3 -- Live social
Search X for “DALL-E (Shut Down)down” →

Live tweets from other users. Fastest signal for a fresh outage -- often beats status pages by 10-20 minutes.

Step 4 -- Official status page
Find DALL-E (Shut Down)'s status page →

Most vendors publish a status page at status.[domain] or on Statuspage.io. Google-search to find the current URL.

Known issues we've tracked

DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3 APIs were SHUT DOWN on 2026-05-12 (yesterday). OpenAI's deprecations page now lists both `dall-e-2` and `dall-e-3` past their retirement date. API calls to either endpoint now fail. No extension was granted. Migration target per OpenAI is gpt-image-1.5 / gpt-image-1-mini -- request shape differs (not a drop-in swap, response format and parameters changed). DALL-E 3 was already removed from the consumer ChatGPT product in December 2025 in favor of GPT Image native multimodal. This closes out the first wave of standalone AI image APIs.
2026-05-12•OpenAI API deprecations page (developers.openai.com/api/docs/deprecations)
Pre-shutdown timeline: OpenAI notified API developers 2025-11-14, posted a reminder 2026-04-09, and stuck to the 2026-05-12 retirement date. The 6-month notice window was the longest OpenAI has given for an image-API sunset to date.
2026-04•OpenAI Community / Developer Deprecations page
During product life: content filter regularly blocked non-offensive prompts (especially involving people), sending legitimate commercial users to Midjourney or Flux
2026-03•Reddit r/ChatGPT

Issues here are sourced from our editorial sweeps, not real-time telemetry. Newer issues may exist.

What to use if DALL-E (Shut Down) is down

Top AIToolTier-ranked alternatives in the same category, ordered by our overall score.

A

Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)

8.9

Google's Gemini 3.1 Flash Image model -- the best-in-class text-in-image renderer, now the default across the Gemini app

A

Leonardo AI

8.3

Versatile AI image generator with fine-tuned models and a generous free tier

A

Stable Diffusion

8.0

Open-source AI image generation with unlimited free local use and full customization

B

Midjourney

7.8

Industry-leading AI image generation with stunning artistic quality. V8.1 Alpha (2026-04-14, alpha.midjourney.com) brings default HD/2K output at ~3x V8 speed with improved prompt adherence

B

Ideogram

7.8

AI image generator that nails text rendering -- now with Custom Models (April 2026) for brand-trained generation on Pro / Team / Enterprise plans

About DALL-E (Shut Down)

Tier D (5.0/10). OpenAI's DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3 -- SHUT DOWN. Both APIs were retired on 2026-05-12 (yesterday). DALL-E 3 was already removed from ChatGPT in December 2025. Existing integrations now fail; migrate to gpt-image-1.5 / gpt-image-1-mini (request shape differs -- not a drop-in swap). Tier-list alternatives: Nano Banana 2, Midjourney, FLUX.2 [klein], Ideogram

Read the full DALL-E (Shut Down)review →