Cloudflare outage — what happened, why it matters

Cloudflare outage — what happened, why it matters

• Tech News
• November 18, 2025

What Happened Today?

The Outage

• On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare experienced a widespread “internal service degradation,” which caused major disruption across the internet. The Washington Post+2Reuters+2

• The company reported that the root issue was a spike in unusual traffic to one of its services, which overwhelmed parts of its network and resulted in 500-series errors (server errors) for many sites. Reuters+1

• Cloudflare said the incident affected multiple service lines, including its dashboard, API, performance services (CDN), firewall, and other application-level services. Reddit+1

• During recovery efforts, Cloudflare temporarily disabled some parts of its infrastructure (for example, WARP access in London) to bring systems back online. Reddit+1

What Was Disrupted

Many well-known platforms and services were impacted by this outage, including:

• ChatGPT / OpenAI — Some users reported inability to access or use ChatGPT. Reuters+1

• X (formerly Twitter) — Users were unable to access the platform. Reuters

• Crypto services — Several crypto-related sites experienced downtime. CoinDesk

• Other major platforms — Reports included disruption at apps like Canva, Spotify, and even infrastructure for retail or financial sites in some regions. The Guardian+1

Duration: How Long Was the Outage?

• The outage began in the early morning U.S. time. Cloudflare first noted an internal degradation around 6:40 a.m. ET, according to reports. Reuters

• A fix was deployed by about 9:42 a.m. ET, at which point Cloudflare said they believed the incident was resolved. The Washington Post

• Even after the fix, some users continued to experience elevated error rates or issues accessing the Cloudflare dashboard. Business Recorder+1

• On Cloudflare’s status page, updates continued into the afternoon (UTC), indicating they were still monitoring and addressing residual problems. Reddit

Why This Matters

1. Widespread impact: Because Cloudflare is so deeply embedded in the architecture of many internet sites, an outage ripples through the web. When Cloudflare goes down, it’s not just one website—it can be many.

2. Reliance on cloud infrastructure: This incident underscores how dependent we are on a few key infrastructure providers. A failure here has outsized consequences.

3. Resilience and risk: For businesses that use Cloudflare, this is a reminder of the importance of redundancy, monitoring, and incident response planning.

4. Traffic anomalies: Cloudflare attributed the outage to a spike in “unusual” traffic. Understanding what caused that is likely to be a high priority, as similar patterns could pose future risks.

Final Thoughts

Today’s Cloudflare outage is a significant reminder of how critical infrastructure providers are to the stability of the internet. While the company managed to deploy a fix in a few hours, the disruptions were still far-reaching, affecting major platforms people rely on daily. As Cloudflare investigates the traffic spike that triggered the issue, the broader internet ecosystem will likely be watching closely—because when one key node wobbles, the effects can be felt across the web.