Due to a Cloudflare outage, large portions of the internet are currently experiencing difficulty loading.
The internet infrastructure service provider verified the difficulties and is currently examining them.
There are several well-known names affected; you can stay up to date on the Twitter/X outage here, and the ChatGPT/OpenAI difficulties here. Here’s what we know so far.
As previously said, the most prominent names affected by this outage appear to be Twitter and ChatGPT, both of which are experiencing troubles, most likely owing to Cloudflare’s problems.
We’re tracking each of these outages separately; you can get updates on the Twitter/X outage here and the ChatGPT/OpenAI difficulties here.
I think it’s fair to say the US is now online…that’s quite a spike
Cloudflare: 18 November 2025 at 19:16
In addition to the updates released on Cloudflare’s status page, we have received an official statement from the firm.
“We saw an increase in anomalous traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services starting around 11:20 UTC. This caused some traffic going via Cloudflare’s network to encounter problems. We do not yet know what is behind the extraordinary traffic rise. We are all hands on deck to ensure that all traffic is handled correctly. Following that, we will investigate the reason for the extraordinary increase in traffic. We will release updates to cloudflarestatus.com as well as more in-depth analysis to blog.cloudflare.com when they are available.”
18 November 2025 at 19:15
While this is going on, Cloudflare claims it is still working hard to resolve the issues, stating, “We are continuing to work on restoring service for application services customers.”
18 November 2025, 19:10
An interesting side note: it appears that the Cloudflare outage may have also affected ChatGPT.
The chatbot’s site is presently flashing the error message “please unblock challenges cloudflare.com to proceed,” which we’ve seen elsewhere, so things may not be calming down just yet.
18 November 2025, 19:03
There has been no official word from Cloudflare that problems have been resolved, but outage reports are still decreasing, so perhaps this is a positive sign?
18 November 2025, 18:44
But excellent news! The issue has been found, and a solution is on its way…
“The problem has been identified, and a solution is being implemented,” Cloudflare states on its update site.
Londoners should also rest easy: “We made improvements that enabled Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. The error rates for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident levels.
18 November 2025, 18:38
Bad news if you’re in London (like me): Cloudflare is cracking down on users in the city in an effort to remedy the problem.
“During our remediation efforts, we disabled WARP access in London. Users in London who attempt to access the Internet over WARP will encounter a connection failure.”
18 November 2025, 18:35
We’re seeing another increase in outage reports on DownDetector, but this is to be anticipated given that much of the East Coast of the United States is waking up and logging on for work right now.
Will the increased load on servers and services aggravate the problem? Only time will tell.
18 November 2025, 18:25
This must be a difficult one, though, for the fourth update in a row, Cloudflare’s statement is the same.
“We are continuing to investigate this issue.”
I suppose it’s nice they’re keeping us updated?
18 November 2025, 18:17
If you believe this isn’t a serious issue, you’re mistaken; it’s having real-world cINteronsequences.
I just tried to schedule some vacation time for next month using our internal HR system here at Future; however, the website is down due to the Cloudflare outage.
No Christmas holiday for me, I suppose….
November 18, 2025, at 18:10.
Outage complaints continue to come in, but Cloudflare has yet to announce an end to the situation; in fact, its most recent statement states the contrary.
“We are continuing to investigate this issue,” it stated at 12:37 UTC.
November 18, 2025, at 18:03.
In “better” news, it appears that Twitter/X has returned to full operating capability.
This was one of the first sites to appear to be hit by the Cloudflare troubles; you can follow TechRadar’s live coverage here.
November 18, 2025, at 18:02.
It appears that the problem is also hurting Cloudflare internally, particularly in terms of customer assistance.
“Our support portal provider is currently experiencing issues, and as such, customers might encounter errors viewing or responding to support cases,” claims the organisation. “Responses on customer inquiries are not affected, and customers can still reach us via live chat (Business and Enterprise) through the Cloudflare Dashboard, or via the emergency telephone line (Enterprise).”
“We are working alongside our 3rd party provider to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem.”
18 November 2025, 17:58
An encouraging update: Cloudflare suggests things may be on the mend…
“We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to experience higher-than-normal error rates while we continue remediation efforts,” according to the most recent update on its status page.
18 November 2025, 17:54
Ah, it’s back…but no big news.
“We are continuing to investigate this issue,” states the 12.21 UTC statement.
18 November 2025, 17:53
And, at a huge ironic moment, the Cloudflare status site is down…
“We are unable to connect to the server for this application or website at this time. “There could be too much traffic or a configuration error.”
18 November 2025, 17:48
We’re already noticing a drop-off in outage reports; might this be over before it even begins?
Cloudflare has not issued an official confirmation or update, but we will keep tuned for the time being…
18 November 2025, 17:45
Interestingly, Cloudflare had previously said that it planned “scheduled maintenance” on certain of its servers; may this have caused the problem?
“We will be performing scheduled maintenance in the SCL (Santiago) datacenter on 2025-11-18 between 12:00 and 15:00 UTC,” the business stated on its status page.
“Traffic may be rerouted from this location, so end-users in the affected region may experience a slight increase in latency during this maintenance window.” PNI / CNI clients connecting with us at this site can expect this traffic to fail over elsewhere during this maintenance window, since network interfaces in this datacenter may become momentarily unavailable.”
18 November 2025, 17:44
If you’re unfamiliar with the firm, Cloudflare offers a wide spectrum of internet infrastructure that supports some of the world’s largest websites.
The company’s products include cyberattack defence, notably DDoS assaults, in which victims are blasted with a large number of requests.
On November 18, 2025, at 17:41, Cloudflare confirmed the issue and posted at at11.48 am GMT.
“Cloudflare is aware of and researching a problem that affects many customers: There have been widespread 500 errors, and the Cloudflare Dashboard and API are also down.
“We’re working to understand the full scope of the problem and mitigate it.” “More information will be provided shortly.”
18 November 2025, 17:39
First and foremost, the problem appears to have affected a number of big websites, including X, previously known as Twitter, film review site Letterboxd, and even outage monitoring website DownDetector, making it difficult for us to follow the problem…