A major global internet outage on November 18, 2025, brought down numerous popular websites and services for over an hour, affecting millions of users worldwide. The disruption originated from inconsistencies at web service provider Cloudflare, which handles approximately one-fifth of all internet traffic.
Which Major Platforms Were Affected?
The service disruption impacted several high-profile platforms simultaneously. X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Canva were among the most notable services experiencing widespread accessibility issues. Users reported being unable to log in, sign up, explore feeds, or use premium features across these platforms.
Downdetector, the popular service that monitors website accessibility, itself became non-operational at one point during the incident, highlighting the severity of the outage. The simultaneous failure of multiple unrelated services pointed toward a common infrastructure problem rather than individual platform issues.
Understanding Cloudflare's Critical Role
Cloudflare operates as a protective layer between websites and internet users, functioning like a bridge that manages traffic flow. As one of the world's largest networks, it serves over 63 million HTTP(S) requests per second on average and handles more than 42 million DNS requests per second.
The company's massive infrastructure spans over 330 cities across 120 countries, processing an average of 81 million HTTP requests every second. This extensive network typically helps websites load faster and remain protected against cyberattacks and traffic surges. However, this central position also makes Cloudflare a potential single point of failure for the millions of websites that depend on its services.
Cloudflare's Response and Investigation
Cloudflare began investigating the "internal service degradation" around 6:40 a.m. ET, with Downdetector reports peaking at nearly 5,000 complaints. The company acknowledged the problem in its first public statement approximately ninety minutes after issues began emerging.
In an emailed statement, Cloudflare explained: "We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors." The company assured users that they were "all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors."
Specific measures included temporarily disabling certain services for United Kingdom users and making changes that allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. The company confirmed that error levels for these services eventually returned to pre-incident rates.
The financial impact was immediate, with Cloudflare's shares dropping approximately 5 percent in premarket trading following the incident. This marks the second major cloud infrastructure disruption in recent months, following October's Amazon Web Services outage that affected thousands of websites including Snapchat and Reddit.
