# Prefect: Critical incident: Elevated errors and degraded orchestration performance

**Summary:** Prefect Cloud (US) experienced a critical incident affecting API requests, UI, and orchestration, with delayed flow run scheduling, automations, and event processing. It started at 2026-07-22 09:31 UTC and was resolved at 2026-07-22 09:58 UTC, lasting 26 min. Prefect reported resolving an underlying database issue; all services, including background processing, returned to normal. _(machine-written, sol)_
- Kind: Major incident · Label: outage (model (Jev))
- Changed: 2026-07-22 09:31 UTC · Detected: 2026-10-17 18:22 UTC
- [Source: https://status.prefect.io/incidents/01KY4JNK0BD3SJ3SAG81C8F7R4](https://status.prefect.io/incidents/01KY4JNK0BD3SJ3SAG81C8F7R4)
- [Company: Prefect](https://rewindex.com/company/prefect.md)
- Versions: before (none: first archived) → after incident\_version:158/01KY4JNK0BD3SJ3SAG81C8F7R4@2c120915383b
- Change 1 of 1 for this incident

## What changed

**1. Added: Title**

```diff
+ Elevated errors and degraded orchestration performance
```

**2. Added: Impact**

```diff
+ critical
```

**3. Added: Status**

```diff
+ resolved
```

**4. Added: Start time**

```diff
+ 2026-07-22 09:31 UTC
```

**5. Added: Resolved time**

```diff
+ 2026-07-22 09:58 UTC
```

**6. Added: Update** (investigating) · 2026-07-22 09:31 UTC

```diff
+ We're investigating elevated errors and degraded orchestration performance affecting Prefect Cloud (US). Some API requests may return errors and flow run scheduling may be delayed. We're actively working to resolve this and will post updates as we learn more.
```

**7. Added: Update** (monitoring) · 2026-07-22 09:47 UTC

```diff
+ The underlying database issue has been resolved and the system is recovering. API error rates are dropping and flow run scheduling is catching up. Some automations and event processing may remain delayed while a backlog clears.
```

**8. Added: Update** (resolved) · 2026-07-22 09:58 UTC

```diff
+ The issue affecting the Prefect Cloud API and UI has been fully resolved and all services are operating normally, including background processing. We apologize for the disruption.
```

## History of this incident

| When (UTC) | Change | Label |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2026-07-22 09:31 UTC | Critical incident: Elevated errors and degraded orchestration performance (this change) | outage |

All Prefect changes: [timeline](https://rewindex.com/company/prefect/changes.md)
_Diff excerpts are shown on normalized text: dates, counters and tokens appear as ‹date›, ‹count›, ‹tok›; noise-only edits are hidden. Rewindex shows the changed passages, not a copy of the page._


---
Canonical: https://rewindex.com/change/i65bf401ac853a6 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/change/i65bf401ac853a6.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/changes/i65bf401ac853a6 · Generated 2026-10-18T01:30:22.890Z