diff --git a/dev/create-release/release-util.sh b/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
index 9a340528b506..5486c18e95bc 100755
--- a/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
+++ b/dev/create-release/release-util.sh
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ DRY_RUN=${DRY_RUN:-0}
 GPG="gpg --no-tty --batch"
 ASF_REPO="https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/spark.git"
 ASF_REPO_WEBUI="https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf?p=spark.git"
+ASF_GITHUB_REPO="https://github.com/apache/spark"
 
 function error {
   echo "$*"
@@ -73,9 +74,7 @@ function fcreate_secure {
 }
 
 function check_for_tag {
-  # Check HTML body messages instead of header status codes. Apache GitBox returns
-  # a header with `200 OK` status code for both existing and non-existing tag URLs
-  ! curl -s --fail "$ASF_REPO_WEBUI;a=commit;h=$1" | grep '404 Not Found' > /dev/null
+  curl -s --head --fail "$ASF_GITHUB_REPO/releases/tag/$1" > /dev/null
 }
 
 function get_release_info {