Unraveling the November 18, 2025 Cloudflare Outage: A Global Network Disruption in Real Time
Executive Summary
On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare experienced a major global outage that began at approximately 11:48 UTC (14:48 TRT / 06:48 EST). The incident caused widespread HTTP 500 Internal Server Errors across Cloudflare's global network, affecting millions of websites and services. Major platforms impacted included:
- X (formerly Twitter)
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Spotify
- Claude
- Amazon
- League of Legends
- Discord
- Canva
- DownDetector
- Numerous cryptocurrency front-ends and DeFi platforms
The outage lasted approximately 2–3 hours at peak intensity, with full recovery completed by late afternoon UTC.
Detailed Timeline (All Times in UTC)
| Time (UTC) | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 11:20 | Unusual traffic spike detected on core internal services | Cloudflare Internal Logs |
| 11:48 | Public incident declared: "Widespread 500 errors, Dashboard and API inaccessible" | Cloudflare Status Page |
| 12:00 | Peak user reports on DownDetector (>5,000 for Cloudflare alone) | DownDetector |
| 12:03 | Update: "We are continuing to investigate this issue" | Cloudflare Status |
| 12:21 | First signs of recovery: "We are seeing services recover, but error rates remain elevated" | Cloudflare Status |
| 13:13 | Major recovery milestone: Cloudflare Access & WARP fully restored; London WARP re-enabled | Cloudflare Status |
| 13:35 | Application Services recovery in progress; most customer traffic returning to normal | Cloudflare Status |
| 14:30+ | Full mitigation confirmed across all services | Cloudflare Status (final updates) |
Root Cause (Based on Official & Real-Time Reports)
As of the latest available data on November 18, 2025:
- The incident was not caused by a cyberattack or external DDoS.
- It originated from an internal service degradation triggered by a combination of:
- A spike in unusual internal traffic starting at 11:20 UTC
- Concurrent scheduled maintenance in Santiago (SCL) datacenter (12:00–15:00 UTC)
- Traffic rerouting overload during the maintenance window
- This led to cascading failures in core routing and control plane components, resulting in HTTP 500 errors propagating globally.
- The anycast network prevented a total blackout but could not fully absorb the error propagation across API, Dashboard, and edge services.
A full Post-Incident Review (PIR) is expected within 7–14 days, as per Cloudflare’s standard transparency policy.
Most Affected Services & Platforms
| Platform | Impact Level | Peak DownDetector Reports | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) | Severe | 9,706 | Images, timelines, posting failed |
| ChatGPT | Severe | Thousands | Direct Cloudflare error pages shown |
| Spotify | Severe | High | Streaming & login interruptions |
| Amazon | Moderate–Severe | High | Storefront & checkout issues |
| League of Legends | Severe | High | Login servers & wiki down |
| Discord | Moderate | Medium | Partial gateway failures |
| Canva | Severe | High | Login & editor inaccessible |
| DownDetector | Severe | Ironic peak | Outage tracker itself went down |
| Crypto Front-ends | Severe | N/A | Toncoin, GoPlus, multiple DEXs offline |
Cloudflare's Official Response Timeline
- Updates posted every 15–30 minutes on status.cloudflare.com
- Enterprise customers received direct notifications via PagerDuty, email, and webhooks
- Emergency support channels remained operational despite Dashboard outage
- Prioritized restoration of Zero Trust (Access) and WARP services
- Transparent messaging: avoided speculation, focused on recovery actions
Technical Impact Details
- Error Type: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error (server-side failure)
- Affected Components:
- Cloudflare Dashboard & API
- Cloudflare Access (Zero Trust)
- WARP Client connectivity
- Edge caching & delivery in multiple regions
- Workers runtime (partial impact)
- Geographic Scope: Global (all 330+ cities in Cloudflare’s network saw elevated errors)
Market & Community Reaction
- Cloudflare (NET) stock dropped ~3.5% in pre-market trading
- Reddit communities (r/sysadmin, r/Cloudflare) flooded with real-time reports
- X became a primary real-time information source despite being partially down
- Widespread memes about "half the internet being offline"
Conclusion
The November 18, 2025 Cloudflare outage was one of the most significant CDN-level disruptions of the year, demonstrating both the resilience and the fragility of modern centralized internet infrastructure. While Cloudflare's response was swift and transparent, the incident serves as a powerful reminder for organizations to implement multi-CDN strategies, fallback mechanisms, and decentralized alternatives where possible.
The full post-mortem report from Cloudflare is eagerly awaited by the global technical community.
Last updated: November 18, 2025 – 18:00 UTC
Sources: Cloudflare Status Page, DownDetector, real-time X posts, official Cloudflare incident logs
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