Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Major Online Services Globally

On November 18, 2025, a significant outage at Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure provider, led to widespread disruptions across numerous online platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Canva, and Grindr. The incident began around 11:20 UTC, with users globally encountering errors and connectivity issues.

Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince, explained that the outage was triggered by a change to the company's database system permissions, which caused the database to output multiple entries into a 'feature file' used by their Bot Management system. This file doubled in size unexpectedly, exceeding the software's size limit and causing it to fail. Prince emphasized that the issue was not the result of a cyber attack or malicious activity.

The company deployed a fix by 14:30 UTC, and services began to recover. By 17:06 UTC, all systems were functioning normally. Cloudflare is implementing measures to prevent similar incidents in the future, including enabling more global kill switches for features.

This outage underscores the critical role of infrastructure providers like Cloudflare in maintaining internet stability, as their services support approximately 20% of global web traffic. Similar incidents have occurred in recent months, highlighting the need for robust systems to prevent widespread disruptions.

"We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors," Cloudflare stated during the incident.

The company has apologized for the impact and is committed to ensuring such outages do not recur.