Cloudflare Down: Major Platforms Hit as Global Internet Outage Strikes

November 18, 2025 - A significant portion of the internet went dark today after Cloudflare experienced a widespread technical outage. It left millions of users unable to access their favorite websites and services - X (formerly known as Twitter),Spotify, ChatGPT - to name a few. If you've been seeing error messages across multiple platforms, you're not alone - Cloudflare is down, and it's taking large chunks of the internet with it.

What Happened? Cloudflare Outage Explained

The disruption began around 11:30 AM UK time (early afternoon in India), when users worldwide started encountering widespread 500 errors and "internal server error on Cloudflare's network" messages. Cloudflare acknowledged the issue on its status page, stating it was "aware of and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers."

The timing couldn't be worse for productivity - with millions of people relying on these platforms for work, communication, and entertainment, the outage has caused significant disruption across the globe.

Major Platforms Down Due to Cloudflare Being Down

The cascading effect of this Cloudflare outage has been massive. Here's the complete list of services affected:

Social Media & Communication:

• X (formerly Twitter) - Users met with blank feeds and "something went wrong" screens

• Spotify - Music streaming interrupted for thousands

AI & Productivity Tools:

• ChatGPT & OpenAI platforms - AI services completely unavailable

• Perplexity AI - Search functionality down

• Google Gemini - Google's AI assistant affected

• Canva - Design platform inaccessible

Enterprise & Business Services:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Cloud services impacted

• PayPal - Payment processing issues reported

• Sage - Business management software down

Entertainment & Gaming:

• Letterboxd - Film review platform offline

• League of Legends - Gaming disrupted

• Genshin Impact - Players unable to connect

• Honkai: Star Rail - Server issues reported

• Archive of Our Own - Fan fiction platform affected

Ironic Casualty

Even DownDetector, the outage tracking website that people typically turn to first during internet problems, struggled to load because it also relies on Cloudflare infrastructure.

https://x.com/pzrsaa

Why Cloudflare Being Down Affects So Many Websites

For those wondering "What is Cloudflare and why does it matter so much?" here's the crucial context:

Cloudflare operates one of the world's largest network infrastructure platforms, sitting between websites and the people trying to access them. It provides:

• Content delivery network (CDN) services

• DDoS protection and security

• Performance optimization

• Traffic management during spikes

When Cloudflare goes down, it doesn't just affect one website, it creates a domino effect across thousands of unrelated platforms that depend on its infrastructure. This single point of failure demonstrates how centralized the modern internet has become around a handful of core service providers.

Current Status: Is Cloudflare Back Up?

Approximately 15 minutes after the initial acknowledgement, Cloudflare posted an update stating that investigations were continuing. Later updates indicated that services are beginning to recover, though the company warned users could continue to observe "higher-than-normal error rates" as remediation efforts continue.

Some websites are loading intermittently on refresh, but many users continue experiencing connectivity issues across multiple platforms.