The 500 Internal Server Error you’re seeing during Claude OAuth requests is almost certainly due to a major service disruption currently affecting Anthropic’s systems today, March 3, 2026.
This is the second significant outage in the last 24 hours. Anthropic has officially acknowledged “Elevated Errors” across several components, including claude.ai, console, and Claude Code.
Current Status Summary (March 3, 2026)
Status: Active/Unresolved incident.
Symptoms: OAuth failures, 500 (Internal Server Error), and 529 (Overloaded Error).
Cause: A massive surge in traffic and demand (partially linked to the “Quit ChatGPT” campaign) has overwhelmed their backend authentication and login paths.
The status page continues to report “Elevated Errors” across almost all services, specifically affecting:
Claude.ai (Web interface)
Claude Code (CLI/OAuth requests)
Console & Platform (API developer tools)
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Recommended Troubleshooting
While the issue is primarily on Anthropic’s side, you can try these steps once their status page starts showing signs of recovery:
Check Official Status: Monitor the Anthropic Status Page for the “Resolved” notice.
Clear Local Session (for Claude Code users): If you are using the CLI and the OAuth window fails, try removing your local config to force a fresh handshake:
rm -rf ~/.claude(macOS/Linux)Then run
claude loginagain.
Terminal Width: Interestingly, some users have reported that if your terminal window is too narrow, the OAuth token wraps and causes a 401 or 500 error when pasted back. Ensure your terminal is wide enough to keep the token on a single line.
Disable VPNs: Some users have found that VPNs or strict firewall settings interfere with the OAuth callback, triggering a generic 500 error from the server side.
Standard Rate Limit Fixes
If your error is a standard “usage reached” message, here is how the limits work as of March 2026:
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