Cloudflare outage list: X, OpenAI, Canva, Spotify, more impacted
On November 18, 2025, Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure and security company, experienced a significant outage that disrupted services for numerous websites and applications worldwide. The outage began around 11:20 UTC and was fully resolved by 14:30 UTC. According to Cloudflare, the root cause was a configuration file that had grown beyond its expected size, leading to a crash in the software system responsible for managing traffic. This incident caused a spike in unusual traffic that resulted in errors for many services relying on Cloudflare’s network. Fortunately, the company clarified that there was no evidence of malicious activity or an external attack behind the incident.
This outage is reminiscent of a similar disruption in June 2025, which affected popular platforms such as Twitch, Etsy, Discord, and Google. The recent event also impacted a wide array of services, including Amazon Web Services, Canva, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify, among others. As users flocked to Downdetector to report issues, Cloudflare assured customers that they were working diligently to rectify the situation and would provide further analysis on their blog. By mid-morning, many affected services began to recover, with platforms like YouTube and Facebook returning to normal operation. Despite the resolution, lingering effects were possible, highlighting the unpredictability of internet infrastructure and the significant role Cloudflare plays in maintaining online connectivity.
In their communication, Cloudflare emphasized the importance of their services and apologized for the inconvenience caused to users and businesses alike. The company expressed their commitment to learning from the incident and improving their systems to prevent similar occurrences in the future. As the digital landscape becomes increasingly reliant on such infrastructure, outages like this serve as a reminder of the fragility of our online experiences and the necessity for robust systems to handle unexpected traffic surges. Cloudflare’s ongoing updates and transparency in addressing the situation are crucial for restoring confidence among their users and the broader internet community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVMTVjQrzJ8
UPDATE: Nov. 18, 2025, 11:41 a.m. EST
Many and apps affected by the Cloudflare outage are coming back online. Mashable received the following emailed statement from Cloudflare:
“Many of Cloudflare’s services experienced a significant outage today beginning around 11:20 UTC. It was fully resolved at 14:30 UTC. The root cause of the outage was a configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic. The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services.
“To be clear, there is no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity. We expect that some Cloudflare services will be briefly degraded as traffic naturally spikes post incident but we expect all services to return to normal in the next few hours. A detailed explanation will be posted soon on blog.cloudflare.com. Given the importance of Cloudflare’s services, any outage is unacceptable. We apologize to our customers and the Internet in general for letting you down today. We will learn from today’s incident and improve.”
Another day, another huge outage impacting sites across the internet.
At 11:48 UTC on Nov. 18,
Cloudflare confirmed
its global network is experiencing issues impacting “multiple customers.” No, you’re not experiencing déjà vu. This is not Cloudflare’s first rodeo. Huge swathes of the internet went down in June 2025 due to
Cloudflare disruption
, resulting in
problems for Twitch, Etsy, Discord, and Google
. Familiarity with these kinds of events doesn’t make them any less irritating.
Credit: Downdetector
In a statement to Mashable via email
, Cloudflare said, “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
.”
SEE ALSO:
Cloudflare outage cause revealed: This is what happened.
The situation is still developing, so we’ve catalogued sites and services for which users have reported difficulties via Downdetector during this latest Cloudflare outage.
Sites impacted by Cloudflare outage
According to
Downdetector
, here’s a list of some of the sites seemingly affected by the Cloudflare outage (Disclosure:
Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis
, which also owns Mashable):
Amazon Web Services
Archive of Our Own
Canva
Depop
Doordash
Downdetector
Facebook
Grindr
League of Legends
Letterboxd
OpenAI
ChatGPT
Grindr
Uber
Claude
Sniffies
Spotify
X (Twitter)
YouTube
As of around 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, it seemed like some of the affected services had started recovering. Amazon Web Services was not listing major issues on its
status page
, while other services like YouTube, Spotify, and X have slowly crept back to life. Facebook seemed to be working as well.
Similarly, the official status page for
Riot Games’
League of Legends
(as well as its other products) indicated that there were no issues. Cloudflare itself posted an update on
its status page
saying that “the incident is now resolved.” There may very well be lingering effects or even more to come because the internet is unpredictable, but for now, it seems like the hard part is over.
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