Login returns 500 for all users

Hello,

Our project’s login is completely broken. All users, including the owner/admin account, are locked out of the Studio. I’ve done some diagnostics and isolated the failure to the auth/login handler on the server side.

Project: Sigma Design (sigmadzn1.directus.app)
Plan: Professional — US, N. Virginia

Summary of the issue:

  • POST /auth/login returns HTTP 500 with {“code”:“INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR”,“message”:“An unexpected error occurred.”} — reproduced via raw curl with valid owner credentials (so this is not a credentials or browser issue; a bad password returns 401, we get 500).
  • The x-powered-by: Directus header confirms the 500 is coming from the Directus app itself, not the Cloudflare edge.
  • Fails identically in incognito with all extensions disabled, and from the command line.
  • The Studio shows only a generic “Unexpected Error” on the login screen.

What is working (so the instance itself is otherwise healthy):

  • GET /server/ping returns “pong”.
  • GET /server/health returns a clean structured FORBIDDEN (unauthenticated), which means the app is up, the database is reachable, and the permissions layer is evaluating normally.
  • Other API paths return proper structured responses; only /auth/login 500s.

Additional context that may help you pinpoint it:

  • A “Project Environment Updated” redeploy occurred earlier today; it did not resolve the issue, so the fault survives a restart.
  • The Cloud dashboard shows the Studio Users count (9) flagged with a red overage warning, in case seat/license enforcement in the login path is related. No users have been added since March.

Because this is a managed Cloud instance and the app is returning 500s, the real stack trace is in the server logs on your side. Could you please check the instance logs for the /auth/login error and let us know the cause and a fix? This is currently a full outage for our team.

Thank you in advance.

1 Answer

1

Hey Amy! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Passing this along - in the meantime, could you drop us a quick note with this on our support contact page at Support | Directus?

Sure thing! Apology if this was not the right place to post. will send this message via support form right now.