When Claude isn't working, the fastest path to a fix is working through the possible causes in a deliberate order, rather than guessing at the first thing that comes to mind.
Step 1: check official availability and status
Start with Anthropic's own published regional availability information and current service status — a broad outage or a genuinely unsupported region explains the issue immediately and rules out everything else on this list.
Step 2: check your account
Sign-in issues, billing problems, or organization-level restrictions (for business accounts) can all produce access problems unrelated to your network or region — worth confirming your account itself is in good standing.
Step 3: check your browser
Browser extensions (particularly ad blockers or privacy tools), outdated browser versions, or corrupted local data can interfere with a web application working correctly — try a different browser or an incognito/private window to rule this out.
Step 4: check your IP's apparent location
If you're using a VPN, or if your ISP routes traffic in a way that makes your apparent location different from your actual one, this can trigger region-based restrictions unexpectedly. See How Claude May Infer Connection Location.
Step 5: check your network policy
Corporate firewalls, DNS filtering, or restrictive network policies (common on school or workplace networks) can block access to specific services entirely, independent of anything about your account or region.
Step 6: get official support
If none of the above resolves the issue, Anthropic's own support channels are the authoritative source for account-specific or region-specific questions that general troubleshooting can't answer.
A diagnostic starting point
NetRiskScan's Claude Access Checker can help narrow down steps 4 and 5 specifically — checking your network's reachability and apparent region signals in one pass.
FAQ
What if multiple factors seem to apply at once?
Address them in the order above — network and account issues are usually easier to rule out first, narrowing down to the more specific remaining possibilities.