Full Breakdown
Cloudflare Outage: Investigation and Impact on Services
11/19/2025, 11:17:15 PM
Overview of the Outage
On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare experienced a significant outage that affected numerous services and websites globally. The incident began around 11:20 UTC when a spike in unusual traffic caused errors across Cloudflare's network. As of 14:42 UTC, Cloudflare reported that a fix had been implemented, but users continued to experience issues with various applications and services.
Impact on Services
The outage had widespread repercussions, affecting platforms such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, which reported intermittent access issues attributed to the Cloudflare incident. Additionally, popular websites including The Register, Notebookcheck, and Videocardz displayed HTTP 500 error messages, indicating server-level problems. Other services, such as the Personnel Access Data System (PADS) used in the U.S. nuclear industry, were also impacted, disrupting access for authorized personnel.
Cloudflare's Response
Cloudflare's updates indicated that they were actively investigating the cause of the unusual traffic spike. The company acknowledged the ongoing issues, stating, "We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors." They also noted that they had disabled WARP access in London to mitigate the situation, which is a tool designed to encrypt internet traffic for users.
Criticism & Opposition
Despite Cloudflare's efforts to resolve the outage, users expressed frustration over the disruptions. Many took to social media platforms like Reddit to share their experiences, with one user humorously noting that even McDonald's self-service ordering systems were affected. The incident raised concerns about the reliability of Cloudflare's infrastructure, particularly given its role as a critical service provider for many online platforms.
Conflicting Reports & Gaps
While Cloudflare reported that services were beginning to recover, Downdetector showed fluctuating numbers of outage reports, peaking at 11,201 at 11:37 AM GMT before declining to 6,570 later in the day. This discrepancy raises questions about the effectiveness of the fixes being implemented and whether users were still experiencing issues despite official statements of recovery.
Verbatim Quotes
- “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. We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic. We will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis when it is ready to blog.cloudflare.com.” — Cloudflare
- “We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem. More updates to follow shortly.” — Cloudflare
What's Next
Cloudflare is expected to conduct a post-mortem analysis to determine the root cause of the outage and prevent future occurrences. Users and affected services will be closely monitoring the situation as Cloudflare continues to stabilize its network and restore full functionality.
