A major outage at Cloudflare on November 18, 2025 resulted in a widespread disruption in services across the internet. Popular platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, Perplexity, Gemini, and League of Legends were impacted as users saw 500 internal server errors and connectivity issues.
What Happened?
According to Cloudflare’s official status tracker, the outage began due to an internal service degradation caused by an unusual traffic spike. This caused services that rely on Cloudflare’s edge network to return error responses.
The outage particularly affected services that rely heavily on Cloudflare for DNS, CDN, and security layer services. Many users reported that not only websites but also APIs and backend services were affected.
Major Services Affected
- X (formerly Twitter)
- ChatGPT by OpenAI
- Spotify
- Canva
- Perplexity AI
- Google Gemini
- League of Legends
- Several news sites, gaming services, and streaming platforms
Impact in India and Asia
Users across India experienced intermittent outages while accessing services like ChatGPT, X, and Spotify. Many sharing screenshots of error messages and failed requests on social media platforms.
What is Cloudflare Saying?
Cloudflare issued a statement confirming that the outage was being investigated and that multiple services were slowly being restored. While no evidence of a cyberattack has been confirmed so far, the company cited system-level disruption from abnormal traffic spikes.
What Should Users Do?
- Wait for a few minutes and refresh the page. Most services should restore automatically.
- There is no need to restart your router or panic — the issue is not on your end.
- Follow official service status pages for realtime updates.
For Webmasters Using Cloudflare:
- Monitor your Cloudflare dashboard for error rates.
- Check server logs for 500 and 520 response codes.
- Prepare a fallback CDN setup for future emergencies.
Why This Matters
Cloudflare powers nearly 20% of all web traffic, making it one of the most critical pieces of internet infrastructure. This outage highlights how dependent the online ecosystem has become on centralized services, and why redundancy is important in web architecture.
FAQ: Cloudflare Outage on November 18, 2025
Was this a cyberattack?
No confirmed reports of a cyberattack yet, but Cloudflare is actively investigating the cause.
Which websites were affected?
Major platforms like X, ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, and several streaming, gaming, and media platforms experienced downtime.
Is it fixed?
Most services are coming back online gradually; some platforms may still experience intermittent issues.