Cloudflare outage disrupts millions of websites worldwide

A major technical issue at Cloudflare disrupted access to millions of websites globally on Tuesday, triggering widespread service failures across platforms including ChatGPT, Canva, Spotify, and X.

Cloudflare, a leading internet infrastructure provider that handles traffic for over 78 million websites, confirmed the outage began around 6:20 a.m. EST due to a spike in unusual traffic. The company said this caused errors across its global network, affecting dashboard access and core services.

“We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors,” Cloudflare stated on its status page. A fix was implemented later in the morning, but users continued to experience intermittent issues as remediation efforts continued.

The outage also impacted DownDetector, a popular site used to track service disruptions, which itself relies on Cloudflare. Cybernews reported that platforms like X, ChatGPT, and Spotify were briefly inaccessible, with services gradually returning to normal.

Cloudflare is down and because of it so is half the internet, you can get updates here:https://t.co/4gDBsZyHEo

— ????????Possum Squat Hollow Farms™???????? (@SmokenHerb) November 18, 2025

While Cloudflare listed scheduled updates for data centers in Guatemala City, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles, it remains unclear whether these contributed to the outage.

This incident follows a recent major disruption at AWS, highlighting the vulnerability of centralized internet infrastructure. Developers and users voiced concerns across social media, particularly on X, as the outage unfolded.

Cloudflare has not yet disclosed the root cause of the traffic spike but continues to monitor its systems for residual errors.