A widespread service degradation at internet infrastructure company Cloudflare on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, led to major disruptions across numerous popular online platforms worldwide. Users attempting to access sites that rely on Cloudflare’s network for content delivery and security, including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Spotify, were met with “widespread 500 errors” and temporary inaccessibility. Cloudflare acknowledged the “Major Outage” affecting its Global Network and core services, immediately launching an investigation into the cause, which reportedly began with a spike in unusual traffic. While the company has since reported that services are beginning to recover, it cautioned that customers may continue to experience higher-than-normal error rates as remediation efforts continue, underscoring the vital but often hidden role the firm plays in the modern internet.
While the services are reported to be recovering, Cloudflare has not yet released a full, official post-mortem report detailing the precise technical root cause of the widespread November 18, 2025 outage.
However, based on initial statements and reports, the company is investigating an issue that started with a “spike in unusual traffic” to one of its core services.
Here is what is currently known:
Initial Trigger: A spokesperson stated the incident began around 11:20 AM UTC with an “unusual spike in traffic” directed at one of Cloudflare’s services.
Impact: This spike caused some traffic passing through the network to experience widespread 500 (Internal Server) errors, affecting multiple Cloudflare services, the Cloudflare Dashboard, and the API.
The Cause of the Spike: Cloudflare explicitly stated, “We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic.” They are focused on restoring service and will then investigate the root cause of the spike.
Remediation: Cloudflare’s status page indicated they identified the issue and were implementing a fix, which involved temporarily disabling certain services (like WARP access in London) during remediation attempts.
In short, the outage was caused by a system-wide failure triggered by an abnormal surge in traffic, but the underlying reason for that traffic spike is still under investigation.
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