A significant technical issue at the core internet infrastructure provider, Cloudflare, has triggered a global outage, leaving users unable to access numerous popular websites and online services. The disruption, which began on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, highlights the modern internet’s reliance on a few key infrastructure companies.
Cloudflare has publicly acknowledged the incident, stating they are “aware of and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers.” The primary symptom reported across the affected platforms is the “Error 500”—a generic server-side failure message.
The company’s own diagnostic tools—the Cloudflare Dashboard and API—were also reportedly failing with high error rates, complicating real-time response efforts. Cloudflare has since confirmed it is working on a fix and is beginning to see services recover, though users may still experience elevated error rates during the remediation phase. Early reports suggest the problem may have stemmed from an unidentified spike in unusual traffic to one of their services.
Major Platforms Affected
The cascading failure due to Cloudflare’s technical issues has crippled services across social media, AI, gaming, and enterprise platforms. Outage tracking data from services like Downdetector recorded sharp spikes in user reports for the following major services:
Social Media: X (formerly Twitter)
Artificial Intelligence: OpenAI (including ChatGPT), Perplexity, Gemini
Streaming & Entertainment: Spotify, Letterboxd
Online Games: League of Legends, Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail
Design & Enterprise: Canva, PayPal, Archive of our Own
Even Downdetector, a platform used to track these very outages, was temporarily affected, underscoring the broad reach of the Cloudflare network.