IRCTC — the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation — handles millions of train ticket bookings every day. When it goes down, it affects not just casual travelers but students, daily commuters, and anyone trying to book Tatkal tickets in the brief window before they sell out. A few minutes of downtime on IRCTC is a real problem for millions of people.
If irctc.co.in is not loading for you right now, here is how to find out whether it is a global outage or a problem specific to your connection.
How to check if IRCTC is down
Go to WebsiteDown.com and enter irctc.co.in. Our infrastructure sends a direct HTTP probe to IRCTC's servers — bypassing your ISP, your browser cache, and your local network. If the check fails, IRCTC is down for everyone. If it succeeds but you still cannot load the site, the issue is on your end.
You can also check community reports on this page. When IRCTC goes down, thousands of users report it within minutes — the spike in reports is itself a confirmation signal.
Why IRCTC goes down so often
IRCTC handles an extraordinary volume of traffic — particularly during Tatkal booking windows (10 AM for AC, 11 AM for non-AC) when tens of thousands of users hit the booking system simultaneously. This flash-traffic pattern is one of the hardest problems in web infrastructure.
Other common causes include scheduled maintenance windows (usually late night, announced on the IRCTC website), payment gateway failures affecting checkout but not browsing, and regional CDN issues that make the site slow or unreachable in specific states.
The IRCTC mobile app sometimes stays functional when the website is down because it uses different API endpoints and caching layers.
What to do when IRCTC is down
If IRCTC is confirmed down globally: the only option is to wait. Tatkal slots may already be gone by the time the site recovers, which is a known frustration with no easy workaround.
If the issue appears to be on your end: try clearing your browser cache and cookies for irctc.co.in specifically. Switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data — IRCTC occasionally has issues with specific ISPs. Try the IRCTC Rail Connect app instead of the website. If you are getting a login error rather than a full outage, log out completely and log back in.
For Tatkal bookings specifically, use the IRCTC app over the website — it tends to handle peak load better and has a faster booking flow.
IRCTC official status and support
IRCTC does not maintain a real-time public status page in the way that tech companies like GitHub or Discord do. Outage announcements are typically made via their official Twitter/X account (@IRCTCofficial) and the IRCTC website itself when service is restored.
For booking issues, refunds, and ticket problems, contact IRCTC customer care at 14646 or 0755-6610661. For technical issues with the website or app, use the feedback form at irctc.co.in/nget/contact-us.