A widespread outage linked to Cloudflare, a leading web infrastructure provider, disrupted access to numerous popular websites and online services today, November 18, 2025. The outage, which began around 11:30 a.m. UK time, affected platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, and Amazon Web Services, leaving users worldwide with “internal server error” messages.
Cloudflare acknowledged the issue, attributing it to an internal network configuration error rather than a cyberattack. “We are aware of and investigating an issue impacting multiple customers. Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API are also failing,” the company stated. By early afternoon, the company reported progress in restoring services, but some users continued to experience disruptions.
The outage underscores the internet’s vulnerability to single-point failures in critical infrastructure. Cloudflare, which handles about a fifth of global web traffic, provides essential services to protect websites from cyber threats and traffic surges.
Reports of the outage flooded social media, with Downdetector tracking thousands of user complaints. The incident follows recent disruptions to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, raising concerns about the resilience of the internet’s backbone.