Introduction
An outage caused by Cloudflare on November 18, 2025, disrupted access to a number of popular websites and other online services. Because the company serves millions of websites with DNS, content delivery, routing, bot detection, and security filtering, an internal disruption quickly spread noticeable problems throughout the internet.
This review describes what transpired, why it happened, what users went through, and what organisations can take away from the event. The essential technical details are covered in an easy- to-follow manner.
Cloudflare’s Role in Modern Internet Infrastructure
Cloudflare sits between users and the servers of many websites. Its network provides:
- DNS resolution
- CDN caching and distribution
- Traffic routing and reverse proxying
- DDoS protection and bot detection
- Zero Trust services such as Access and WARP
Because Cloudflare is part of the request path for so many websites, a failure inside Cloudflare can make otherwise healthy sites appear offline.
Incident Timeline (IST)
This timeline summarises Cloudflare’s official updates, converted into IST
17:33 IST
- Initial internal service degradation detected
- Error rates begin rising
17:51–18:23 IST
- Errors increase across global regions
- Partial but unstable recovery in some areas
18:34 IST
- WARP access temporarily disabled in London to stabilise internal load
18:39 IST
- Root issues identified
- Work on remediation begins
18:43 IST
- Cloudflare Access and WARP start recovering
- Error rates drop for these services
19:05–19:28 IST
- Application services still degraded
- Dashboard access intermittent
19:52–20:04 IST
- Dashboard access restored
- Fix continues rolling out across Cloudflare’s global network
20:12 IST
- Fix deployed
- Cloudflare moves into monitoring phas
20:27–22:16 IST
- Intermittent errors and latency spikes
- Bot score inconsistencies
- Dashboard login issues for some users
22:44–23:14 IST
- Error and latency levels stabilise globally
01:58 IST (19 Nov)
- Cloudflare confirms full recovery
- All services operating normally
[ Also Read: Building a Reliable Cloud Data Storage Architecture for Big Data ]
Impact on Cloudflare Services and Customer Platforms
Cloudflare Services Impacted
- Application traffic failed or timed out
- Periodic unavailability of Cloudflare Dashboard
- Zero Trust services (Access, WARP) disrupted\
- Incorrect bot-scoring data in parts of the recovery
- Global routing and latency affected
Companies and platforms affected
Many famous websites had errors due to depending on Cloudflare, including:
- ChatGPT
- X (formerly Twitter)
- Canva
- Spotify and other high-traffic platforms These services weren’t themselves at fault- requests to them failed because of Cloudflare’s routing issues
What users experienced
- Sites not loading or loading very slowly
- Repeated appearance of Cloudflare challenge pages
- “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com” errors
- Failed dashboard logins
- API timeouts
- Disrupted WARP connectivity – especially London region
To many users, it seemed like full websites had become unreachable.
Root Cause Analysis
Cloudflare confirmed the incident originated from an internal file used by the Bot Management system.
Key points:
- a bot-management “feature file” grew far larger than expected
- Traffic-handling software relied on this file and had built-in size limits
- Systems dependent on this file began failing once it exceeded those limits.
- Cloudflare globally propagates internal data, so the oversized file was overspread across regions before detection.
- The fault cascaded into routing, bot scoring, and application services
- No signs of cyberattack; the issue was internal configuration and data handling
Recovery Actions and Stabilisation
Services were restored by the engineering teams in several steps:
- Stopped global propagation of the oversized file
- Replaced the file with a corrected version
- Restored WARP and Access connectivity
- Restored Dashboard functionality
- Repaired application service impacts
- Monitored global error rates, latency, and scoring accuracy
- Declared stability after confirmation of consistent recovery across regions
The full recovery completed at around 01:58 IST on 19 November
Lessons for Organisations Using Cloudflare
This incident underlines some important considerations for organisations relying on Cloudflare.
Reduce reliance on Cloudflare challenge and bot systems
- Do not rely exclusively on Cloudflare bot scores for critical user flows
- Add fallback logic in case challenge pages fail
- Keep your application accessible when the challenge system of Cloudflare is unstable
Build a Cloudflare bypass route
- Use a secondary DNS provider
- Keep an origin-access path for emergencies
- Keep routing rules flexible enough that Cloudflare can be disabled temporarily if needed
Cache intelligently at the origin
- Serve cached content when Cloudflare fails to provide the essential headers
- Employ stale-while-revalidate like strategies
- Minimize end-user impact in case of instability at the CDN layer
Prepare Zero Trust and WARP backup options
- Keep the alternative VPN method
- Provide emergency login routes for administrators
- Ensure that critical internal access is not tied to a single provider
Use independent monitoring
- Monitor uptime via providers outside Cloudflare’s network
- Ensure alerts can fire even when Cloudflare panels are down
Consider limited multi-edge or multi-provider configurations
- Utilize multiple DNS providers where possible
- Serve static assets through more than one edge provider
- Enable Direct origin failover for critical traffic
The strategies improve the resilience in provider-level outages
Conclusion
The Cloudflare outage on 18 November 2025, for instance, showcased the potential disruption of core traffic systems impacted by an unforeseen internal data issue. The company took several hours to troubleshoot the problem and kept the public informed with regular updates during the whole situation.
The incident not only pointed out the need for configuration validation and proper data propagation but also emphasized the necessity of having architectural designs that would limit the impact of unexpected failure in distributed systems to Cloudflare and its customers
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What caused the outage?
An internal bot-management file reached unanticipated size that caused dependent system failures.
2. Was it a cyberattack?
No, Cloudflare confirmed that this was an internal data and configuration problem.
3. Which platforms were affected?
Outages hit ChatGPT, X, Canva, Spotify and other Cloudflare-backed sites.
4. Why did sites appear down even though servers were healthy?
Cloudflare handles routing and filtering; when those systems fail, websites cannot serve responses to users.
5. How can organizations reduce future impact?
By utilizing fallback DNS, caching, independent monitoring, and alternative access methods.
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References
Cloudflare Official Incident Page
https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/8gmgl950y3h7
Reuters – Platforms Affected
https://www.reuters.com/business/elon-musks-x-down-thousands-us-users-downdetector-shows-2025-11-18
Cloudflare Network Architecture
https://www.cloudflare.com/network Cloudflare Bot Management