Mumbai, November 18, 2025 — A significant outage at Cloudflare, one of the world’s leading internet infrastructure and security companies, has caused widespread disruption across the internet. The incident, first noticed around 11:20 am GMT, resulted in elevated error rates across multiple Cloudflare-powered services.
What Happened
Cloudflare reported a sharp “spike in unusual traffic” to one of its services, triggering internal service degradation. As a result, many users began encountering 500-series errors, and some website owners were temporarily locked out of Cloudflare’s Dashboard and API.
By early afternoon GMT, the company said that some services had started to recover, but warned that customers could continue to see “higher-than-normal” error rates.
Impacted Platforms
The outage didn’t just affect obscure corners of the web — it hit major platforms too. According to reports, ChatGPT, X (formerly Twitter), and even some gaming platforms experienced outages or degraded performance.
Additionally, Cloudflare’s support portal and customer query systems were impacted, compounding the chaos for businesses depending on real-time support.
Possible Causes & Speculation
- Cloudflare staff said the root cause was still under investigation, and they hadn’t yet confirmed what led to the “unusual traffic” surge.
- Some critics speculated whether the outage could be tied to scheduled maintenance in Cloudflare data centers.
- However, security experts like Professor Alan Woodward noted that such major failures are rarely due to cyber-attacks; they instead underscore how heavily the internet depends on a few key infrastructure players.
Reactions & Consequences
- On Reddit, users reported that sites across the web were inaccessible, with comments like: “Cloudflare just went offline globally and it’s taking half the internet with it”
- Others advised site owners to change their DNS nameservers temporarily to bypass Cloudflare — though this comes with its own risk and latency due to DNS propagation delays.
- Cloudflare confirmed it re-enabled WARP access in London, saying error rates for WARP and Access services “have returned to pre-incident rates.”
Why This Is a Big Deal
This outage is a reminder of how much of the internet rides on a few infrastructure providers: when one of them falters, the effects are widespread. As Woodward put it, Cloudflare acts as a “gatekeeper” — protecting billions of requests, defending against DDoS attacks, and helping verify legitimate users.
Less than a month ago, a major AWS outage had similarly knocked offline major services, underscoring how fragile and interconnected web infrastructure can be.
What’s Next
Cloudflare says it’s working alongside third-party providers to figure out the full extent of the issue and the root cause. A detailed post-incident report is expected once normal operations resume.
In the meantime, affected users and organizations are being advised to monitor Cloudflare’s official status page and explore temporary workarounds if their services are mission-critical.
A Cloudflare outage today shook large parts of the internet, disrupting major platforms like ChatGPT and X. While some recovery is underway, the incident throws a spotlight on how dependent the web is on a handful of infrastructure giants.
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Arsalan Malik is a passionate Software Engineer and the Founder of Makemychance.com. A proud CDAC-qualified developer, Arsalan specializes in full-stack web development, with expertise in technologies like Node.js, PHP, WordPress, React, and modern CSS frameworks.
He actively shares his knowledge and insights with the developer community on platforms like Dev.to and engages with professionals worldwide through LinkedIn.
Arsalan believes in building real-world projects that not only solve problems but also educate and empower users. His mission is to make technology simple, accessible, and impactful for everyone.
