GitHub Slow or Unreachable? Fixes That Actually Work

In some regions GitHub isn’t blocked outright, but it’s often painfully slow: pages crawl, images don’t load, and git clone drops to a few dozen KB/s or times out. There are two main causes — DNS interference on some GitHub domains and congested international links. Free workarounds like editing your hosts file or using mirrors help with some of it, but the reliable fix is to send GitHub traffic — including git in your terminal — over a stable overseas route, typically a VPN.

Why is GitHub so slow and inconsistent?

Symptom	Usual cause
The page loads but avatars and README images don’t	Domains that serve images and raw files (raw.githubusercontent.com, avatars.githubusercontent.com) get bad DNS answers and can’t be reached
Fine during the day, sluggish at night	International links get congested in the evening, with heavy packet loss
git clone is slow or drops halfway	Big transfers are most sensitive to link quality — packet loss makes TCP slow right down
SSH clones time out	Some networks restrict port 22
Release downloads crawl	Release files live on separate domains such as objects.githubusercontent.com, which hit the same limits

For why DNS and packet loss hurt so much, see Common network protocols explained.

Free workarounds and their trade-offs

Edit your hosts file or change DNS

Hard-code working IP addresses for GitHub’s domains in your hosts file, or switch to a public DNS resolver, to sidestep tampered DNS answers.

• Pros: free, and quick to fix “images won’t load”;
• Cons: GitHub’s IPs change, so shared hosts lists go stale fast — and it only fixes DNS, not slow links.

Mirrors and download proxies

Various GitHub mirrors and download-acceleration services let you swap in their URL to clone or download.

• Pros: very effective for cloning public repos and grabbing release files;
• Cons: third-party services can disappear at any time and may be out of date. Never sign in or use access tokens on them — pushing and opening PRs still has to go to GitHub itself.

Import via a local code host

Import the repo into a local code-hosting platform and clone from there. Fine for the occasional big download, but it’s fiddly, doesn’t stay in sync, and is no good for day-to-day collaboration.

When you need a stable overseas route

If you’re on GitHub every day — writing code, opening PRs, pulling dependencies — the workarounds above get old fast. The low-hassle option is to route all GitHub traffic over a stable overseas connection. The key is that your terminal has to use it too, not just the browser.

Why is the browser fast but git still slow?

Many tools only set a system proxy. Browsers honour it, but git, curl, npm and other command-line tools ignore it by default and still connect directly. Two ways to fix that:

Option 1: set a proxy for git (for tools that expose a local proxy port — use your tool’s port):

# Proxy only GitHub
git config --global http.https://github.com.proxy http://127.0.0.1:<port>

# Remove it again
git config --global --unset http.https://github.com.proxy

This only applies to HTTPS clones, not SSH.

Option 2: use TUN mode, where a virtual network adapter captures the whole device, so git, curl, docker and everything else work without per-tool settings. See System proxy vs TUN mode for the difference.

Speeding up GitHub with Pangolin

Pangolin uses TUN mode on every platform with Smart routing on by default: GitHub goes through the VPN automatically, while local package mirrors and your company network stay direct. Once you’re connected there’s nothing else to set up — git clone, git push and release downloads all use the fast route. If things slow down in the evening, tap refresh in the server list and pick a lower-latency server; see Connecting and switching servers.

Fixing SSH timeouts on port 22

If git clone git@github.com:... or ssh -T git@github.com keeps timing out, port 22 is probably restricted. GitHub runs an official SSH service on port 443. Edit ~/.ssh/config (create it if it doesn’t exist) and add:

Host github.com
    Hostname ssh.github.com
    Port 443
    User git

Then test it:

ssh -T git@github.com
# "Hi <username>! You've successfully authenticated" means it worked

Your repository URLs stay the same — git@github.com:... now goes over port 443 automatically. This works alongside a VPN, too.

Faster releases and raw files

What you’re downloading	Tip
Release installers	Download in the browser while connected; on the command line use curl -L -O <url>, which goes through the VPN automatically in TUN mode
A single raw file	Same as above; for the odd one-off, a mirror service also works
A big repo where you only need the latest code	git clone --depth 1 <repo> fetches just the latest commit — often a fraction of the size
A repo with large files (LFS)	Clone first, then git lfs pull; if it fails partway, retry — finished files are kept

Related reading

• System proxy vs TUN mode: three ways to route your traffic
• ChatGPT not available in your region? 2026 access guide
• Custom routing rules