Live answer below — we ping janitorai.com from our own server every 30 seconds and surface the result here, so you don't have to refresh the site yourself. The rest of the page covers what's behind the most common "JanitorAI down" reports (usually it's the free-tier DeepSeek proxy, not the platform), how to fix the specific error you're seeing, and where to go if you're tired of the workaround dance.
Most of the time, no. The platform itself is up — what's down is the third-party DeepSeek proxy that powers the free tier. Janitor doesn't ship its own model. It routes free-tier chats through a community-maintained proxy that hits rate limits whenever traffic spikes.
If you can load janitorai.com and the character library renders but chat fails with "proxy error" or hangs, the proxy is the problem, not the site.
These are the errors you'll see most often, mapped to root causes.
| Error | What it means | Quick fix |
|---|---|---|
| Proxy error | Free-tier DeepSeek proxy hit a rate limit | Wait 1-5 min, retry. Or switch to BYOA. |
| Rate limit exceeded | Same — proxy throttled | Same. Or upgrade to OpenRouter. |
| Chat hangs / no response | Proxy timeout or model overload | Refresh tab. If persists, switch model. |
| Cloudflare error 5xx | Janitor's actual servers struggling | Wait — usually resolves in minutes. |
| Character won't load | Cache issue or character deleted | Hard refresh (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+R). |
| Login fails | Auth backend issue or your session expired | Clear cookies for janitorai.com, log in again. |
The free-tier proxy is the bottleneck. JanitorAI supports bring-your-own-API setups through OpenRouter or direct DeepSeek API. Costs roughly $5-15/mo depending on usage. The trade-off: you skip the proxy errors, but you're now paying twice (the platform plus the API) for what most alternatives bundle into one subscription.
The cleaner fix is migrating to a platform that ships its own model. CrushOn AI, SpicyChat, Joyland — none of them route through a community proxy. No rate limits, no setup.
The status pill at the top of this page reflects a real check, not a guess. Every 30 seconds our Cloudflare edge sends an HTTP request to janitorai.com from an independent network (not your network, not AT&T, not your ISP) and records the response. The 24-hour bar shows whether each 30-minute bucket of the last day saw the site reachable, slow, returning errors, or completely down.
States we report:
Worth knowing: even when our monitor shows "up," the JanitorAI chat backend can still be broken because chat runs on a separate community-maintained DeepSeek proxy. The monitor checks the website front door; the section below covers what to do when the chat itself fails.
If you're hitting proxy errors several times a week, your bring-your-own-API bill keeps creeping up, or the recent ID verification rollout has you reconsidering — the migration cost is genuinely low. Most ex-Janitor users we've talked to migrated in an afternoon.
The 6 alternatives we tested all ship their own models. No proxy errors, no rate-limit roulette, no waiting on community-maintained infrastructure to come back up.
The free tier runs on a community-maintained DeepSeek proxy that hits rate limits when traffic spikes. The platform itself is usually fine — the proxy is the bottleneck.
Wait 1-5 minutes and retry, switch to a different model in your settings, or switch to bring-your-own-API with OpenRouter ($5+/mo). Permanent fix: migrate to a platform that ships its own model.
No. It's still operational. Most 'down' reports trace to proxy errors on the free tier, not platform outages.
CrushOn AI ships its own model — no proxy, no rate limits. Closest one-to-one Janitor replacement and the alternative we send most refugees to first.
There's no official JanitorAI status page. The live monitor at the top of this page is our best independent answer — we ping janitorai.com every 30 seconds from Cloudflare's edge and surface the result here. For commentary and root-cause discussion the JanitorAI Discord and the r/JanitorAI_Official subreddit are the fastest community sources.
It checks janitorai.com from our server, not from your browser, so it sidesteps your ISP, VPN, and any local network filters. If our monitor says 'up' but you can't load the site, the problem is between you and janitorai.com (DNS, ISP block, VPN routing). If our monitor says 'down,' janitorai.com is unreachable from a neutral vantage point. The monitor checks the website itself, not the chat proxy — chat can still error even when the green pill is showing.
Most "JanitorAI down" reports trace to the free-tier proxy hitting rate limits, not to a platform outage. The fix is either bring-your-own-API (paying twice) or migrating to a platform that ships its own model. CrushOn AI is the alternative most ex-Janitor users end up on for exactly this reason.