A widespread internet outage impacted numerous websites and online services on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, due to issues with Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure and security company. The disruption led to access problems for various platforms, including crypto websites, social media channels, and other online services.
The outage, which began around 11:00 AM UK time, triggered a cascade of errors across the internet. Users reported encountering "internal server errors" and failures to load pages, with error messages specifically pointing to Cloudflare's network. Downdetector, a service that tracks online outages, also experienced intermittent downtime as reports of disruptions surged.
Among the most affected platforms were social media giant X, music streaming service Spotify, and AI chatbot ChatGPT. Other services experiencing issues included OpenAI services, Perplexity, Letterboxd, Bet365, League of Legends, Canva and Sage. The outage highlighted the extent to which many online services rely on Cloudflare for traffic management, DNS services, content delivery, and protection against DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare acknowledged the issue as an "internal service degradation" and confirmed that its network was facing widespread 500 errors. The company's dashboard and API also experienced failures. Cloudflare's team is investigating the cause of the outage and working on recovery. At 1.09pm, Cloudflare said it had identified the issue and was implementing a fix. Cloudflare Access and Warp services had recovered, and that it is working to restore the rest of its services.
The incident underscores the systemic risk associated with centralized web infrastructure. As Check Point's head of public sector, Graeme Stuart, noted, outages affecting major platforms like Cloudflare have a widespread and immediate impact because so many services depend on them. This event follows similar disruptions experienced by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in recent months, raising concerns about the stability of core internet services.
Cloudflare has not yet disclosed the specific cause of the outage. The company is continuing its investigation and has promised to provide further updates as more information becomes available.
