On November 18, 2025, a major outage at internet infrastructure company Cloudflare caused widespread disruption, taking down popular services including ChatGPT, X, and Spotify, and highlighting the interconnected nature of the modern web.

The Story: A Widespread Internet Disruption

A significant global outage at Cloudflare, a key content delivery network and cybersecurity company, caused widespread internet issues. The problem began in the morning, around 11:30 AM GMT/06:30 AM EST, and led to a cascade of failures across unrelated websites and online platforms.

Web users encountered “500 errors” and “Internal server error” messages, generic error notices that indicate a website’s server is down but do not specify the cause. The outage was severe enough that even Downdetector, a popular site for tracking service outages, was temporarily knocked offline because it, too, relies on Cloudflare services.

Cloudflare acknowledged the issue on its status page, stating it was investigating “widespread 500 errors” and that its own dashboard and API were also failing. The company later identified the issue and began implementing a fix, with services beginning to recover in the hours that followed, though users were warned they might continue to see elevated error rates during the remediation.

Recent Cloudflare Outage Stats

~9,706 – The number of user reports for X on Downdetector at the peak of the outage. ~4,582 – The high point of outage reports for Cloudflare itself on Downdetector. 50+ minutes – The duration OpenAI’s services were down before Cloudflare identified a fix. 3.5% – The drop in Cloudflare’s share price (NET) in pre-market trading following the outage.

🌐 Affected Services: A Cross-Section of the Internet

The table below summarizes some of the major platforms affected by the Cloudflare outage.

Your FAQs, Answered

• What caused the outage? A technical issue within Cloudflare’s global network led to widespread “500 errors”. Cloudflare identified the issue and applied a fix, though the exact technical root cause was not immediately detailed in public updates.
• Why did a Cloudflare problem affect so many different websites? Cloudflare provides a critical backbone layer for the modern internet. Many companies use its services for content delivery, DNS management, and cybersecurity protection against DDoS attacks. When its network experiences a problem, all the platforms that rely on it can be affected simultaneously.
• Is this related to the recent AWS and Azure outages? While the effect is similar—widespread disruption across the internet—the cause is different. The November 18th event was a Cloudflare-specific outage. However, it underscores the same vulnerability: the internet’s heavy reliance on a few key infrastructure providers.
• When will everything be back to normal? Cloudflare has stated that services are recovering. However, the company also cautioned that customers might “continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates” as remediation efforts continue. There is no official timeline for a full restoration, but services typically stabilize over several hours.

This incident serves as a stark reminder of the internet’s interconnected infrastructure. For the latest updates, you can monitor the official Cloudflare Status Page or the OpenAI Status Page