A widespread technical failure at internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare triggered a major global outage on Friday, severely disrupting online services across India and the world. The incident left users of popular Indian trading platforms like Zerodha, Angel One, and Groww unable to log in, execute trades, or access live market data.
Platforms Paralyzed as Backend Systems Fail
Cloudflare, which provides critical security, traffic routing, and content delivery services for millions of websites, reported an "internal service degradation" as the cause. This technical glitch led to widespread connectivity failures, hitting backend systems and APIs that depend on Cloudflare's vast network.
Zerodha promptly confirmed the disruption to its users, stating that "due to a cross-platform downtime on Cloudflare, Kite is currently unavailable." The brokerage advised its clients to use the Kite WhatsApp backup feature to manage their trades while engineers worked to resolve the issue. The outage caused significant frustration among traders, leading to delays and incomplete transactions during active market hours.
Global Ripple Effect Beyond Fintech
The impact was not confined to stock trading platforms. The outage created a ripple effect, interrupting a diverse array of global applications and enterprise tools. Services affected included the AI chatbot Claude, search engine Perplexity, travel portal MakeMyTrip, and numerous other apps built on Cloudflare's architecture.
Cloudflare itself acknowledged ongoing problems with its Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs, warning customers that they "may experience failed requests or see error messages." As complaints flooded social media platforms, the company announced it had implemented a fix and was monitoring system performance while investigating the root cause.
History Repeats: A Pattern of Major Disruptions
This incident marks the second major Cloudflare-related disruption in recent months. A previous outage had temporarily crippled large sections of the internet, impacting major platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, and Letterboxd. Ironically, even Downdetector, a site that tracks online service outages, struggled to load because it too operates on Cloudflare infrastructure.
The event underscores the immense, centralized dependency of the modern internet on a few key infrastructure providers. When a critical player like Cloudflare experiences a technical fault, it rapidly results in cascading downtime across a multitude of unrelated global services, from fintech in India to AI tools in the West. While services began stabilizing after fixes were rolled out, companies continued to monitor their systems for any residual disruptions.
