9 months ago
Cloudflare Outage: Technical Glitch Disrupts Major Websites
Cloudflare, a big company that helps many websites work fast and stay safe, had a problem with its own systems.
This caused lots of popular websites and games to stop working for a while.
Cloudflare found the issue and fixed it, but it took a few hours for everything to work again.
Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure service, experienced an outage on November 17-18, 2025.
The outage affected numerous popular websites and services, including X (formerly Twitter), Spotify, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Canva, PayPal, and several online games.
The cause was a technical issue within Cloudflare's systems, not a cyber attack or malicious activity.
A change in a database system led to an oversized file, causing software to fail and disrupt internet traffic routing.
Cloudflare apologized for the disruption and worked to restore services, with core traffic flowing normally by 2:30 pm and all systems back by 5:06 pm on November 18.
- Who
- Cloudflare, a global internet infrastructure service
- What
- Experienced an outage affecting numerous websites and services
- Where
- Globally
- When
- November 17-18, 2025
- Why
- Due to a technical issue within Cloudflare's systems
Those Blaming Maintenance
Those Cautious About Speculation
Maintenance as Cause
Those Blaming Maintenance
The outage might be due to a scheduled maintenance in the Santiago (SCL) data center.
Those Cautious About Speculation
Cloudflare confirmed the cause was a technical issue within its own systems, not maintenance.
Key facts
- Services Affected
- X, Spotify, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Canva, PayPal, League of Legends, among others
- Cause of Outage
- Oversized file due to a database system change
- Duration of Outage
- Approximately 7 hours
Timeline
Cloudflare clamps down on AI crawlers, services stumble.
Temporary glitches hit popular sites, games in wake.
Outage leaves users in limbo, Cloudflare races to fix.
Quotes
FinanceMagnates
A news portal specializing in financial markets
“The Cloudflare outage may have cost brokers an average of $1.58 billion in trading volumes, which amounts to nearly 1% of their monthly trading revenues.”
livemint.com
“An average broker lost $1.58 billion in trading volume in those three hours, which is also 0.91 per cent of brokers’ monthly trading volume.”
livemint.com
Sources
Why Cloudflare outage just broke half of the internet: This is all we know so far
Cloudflare outage disrupts ChatGPT, X, other internet services
Cloudflare Down Live Updates: X Working Now? Is ChatGPT Still Down After Massive Outage? - Check Latest Updates cloudflarestatus.com
Cloudflare Down: ChatGPT to PayPal — Here's a full list of websites facing widespread technical outage
Why was X down globally for users and how Cloudflare works
Cloudfare outage: X, ChatGPT, Spotify, Perplexity AI among apps, websites down
Cloudflare outage hits X, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Canva, Google Cloud
Global Internet Disruption as Cloudflare Outage Takes Down Twitter, X, and ChatGPT
Cloudflare outage impacts thousands, disrupts transit systems, ChatGPT, X and more
Global internet disruption: Cloudflare server issue causes widespread outages
Cloudflare outage hits X, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google Cloud
Cloudflare outage triggers internet-wide confusion: ‘Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com’
Cloudflare outage hits X, ChatGPT, Google Cloud globally
Cloudflare Outage Took Down X, ChatGPT: All About The Company
Cloudflare outage knocks major platforms offline as company blames latent bug and issues apology
Cloudflare outage hits global internet as X, ChatGPT, Spotify and gaming services falter
Cloudflare Outage That Impacted ChatGPT, X, Dropbox Users Resolved
Cloudflare CTO says ‘we failed our customers’ after huge outage takes down half the internet
Global outage caused by internal error, not cyberattack: Cloudflare CEO
Global outage was caused by internal error, not cyberattack: Cloudflare CEO
Cloudflare outage cost an average CFD broker nearly $1.6 billion in trading volumes, data shows
Cloudflare Has Finally Explained What Happened in the Massive Outage
Cloudflare Explains Massive Global Outage, Confirms No Cyberattack Involved
Cloudfare Outage: What Happened In The Background That Caused The Outage Taking Down Apps Like Spotify, X, ChatGPT And More?
Cloudflare down update: Cloudflare fixes global outage that disrupted ChatGPT, X and several major platforms
