Guides / Jira or Confluence slow, timed out, or spinning

Last reviewed 5 Oct 2026

Jira or Confluence slow, timed out, or spinning

Atlassian Jira or Confluence hanging, 504s, or "taking longer than usual"? Separate a Cloud incident from browser, VPN and app sprawl.

Jira will not load the board. Confluence spins on a large page. Someone pastes a screenshot of a blank white page and writes "Atlassian is down". Sometimes they are right. More often it is a marketplace app, a filter that scans half the site, a VPN hairpin, or a browser profile that has been open since Monday.

Is Atlassian Cloud down?

Open status.atlassian.com and our Atlassian status page. Atlassian publishes by product and often by experience (Jira Software, Confluence, authentication, and so on). A Jira incident does not automatically mean Confluence is broken. If the board is quiet and only your site misbehaves, keep reading. Atlassian Cloud rides on AWS, so a wide AWS event can coincide — wait for Atlassian to post before you migrate spaces in a panic.

User-level checks

1. Another browser or private window. Disable extensions, especially ad blockers and script blockers that break Atlassian's editor. Stale service workers cause odd partial loads.
2. Another network. Phone LTE versus office Wi-Fi. If LTE is fine, your proxy, SSL inspection or VPN path is the patient.
3. Disconnect the VPN as a test (if policy allows). Full-tunnel VPNs that send Atlassian traffic home through a congested office gateway make every issue load like dial-up.
4. Narrow the URL. Try the site home, then a small page or a simple filter. If only one board or one Confluence space fails, it is content or an app on that page — not the whole Cloud.
5. Hard refresh and clear the site's cookies for your Atlassian domain if you see repeated authentication loops after an SSO change.

Admin / site-admin checks

• Atlassian Access / SSO. If nobody can sign in, check SAML to Okta or Entra first. A bad certificate looks like "Jira is down" from the user's chair.
• Marketplace apps. Recently installed or updated apps are the first suspects for slow issue view and editor hangs. Disable the last change in a maintenance window and retest.
• JQL and boards. Boards that pull enormous filters, or dashboards with dozens of gadgets, time out for everyone who opens them. Clone the board with a tighter filter before blaming Cloud performance.
• Confluence macros and attachments. Pages with heavy macros, huge attachments or outdated macros from old apps render slowly. View page storage format and trim.
• Rate limits and automation. Aggressive automation rules or integrations can throttle a site. Check admin audit logs and automation usage around the start time.
• IP allowlisting. If your organisation allowlists egress IPs, a new VPN or cloud proxy range will look like intermittent timeouts for those users only.

What to tell the team

Either: "Atlassian has posted a Jira/Confluence incident — use status.atlassian.com and avoid big changes" or "Cloud is up; we are fixing our VPN/path or a broken board filter." Do not announce an Atlassian outage because one overloaded sprint board spun for thirty seconds.

Mobile apps

The Jira and Confluence mobile apps use the same Cloud backends but different caches. If mobile works and the desktop browser does not, clear browser site data. If mobile fails and the browser works, sign out of the app, clear its cache, and sign in again after you confirm SSO in a browser.

Reporting usefully

When you open a ticket with Atlassian or your MSP, include the site URL, whether Jira or Confluence (or both), a sample issue key or page ID, the browser and whether VPN was on, and the first time it failed. "It is slow" without a timestamp wastes the first hour.

When to escalate

Open an Atlassian support case when status is green, multiple products fail for users on different networks, and you have already ruled out SSO and the last marketplace app change. Include site URL, product, timestamps with time zone, HAR files if asked, and whether the problem is anonymous access or authenticated only.

Related status pages

• Atlassian
• Amazon Web Services
• Cloudflare

Related guides

• Notion slow, timed out, or stuck loading
• How to tell if a service is down or it's just you
• VPN connected but no internet or can't reach internal sites

FAQ

Why is Jira so slow for me but fine for others?

Often a VPN or office proxy path, a browser extension, or a specific board filter you open that others do not. Compare on LTE in a private window, then ask a site admin to review that board's filter and apps.

Where is the official Atlassian status page?

https://status.atlassian.com/ — check the specific product (Jira, Confluence, authentication, and so on), not only the top banner.

Can AWS being down take Jira with it?

Atlassian Cloud is hosted on AWS. A wide AWS event can coincide with Atlassian issues, but wait for Atlassian's own status post before you declare your site dead.

What should admins disable first when Confluence hangs?

The most recently installed or updated marketplace app, then heavy macros on the failing page. Test with a nearly empty page in the same space to separate content from platform.