Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Major Websites Including Twitter and ChatGPT
A major technical outage at Cloudflare disrupted access to numerous popular websites on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, affecting millions of users worldwide. The incident caused error messages to appear on platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, betting site bet365, and film reviewing platform Letterboxd.
Cloudflare is an internet infrastructure company that provides essential services to keep websites online and protected from cyber attacks. When the service experienced technical problems, users attempting to access affected websites encountered error messages stating “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”.
The company acknowledged the issue in an official statement: “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing.”
Tracking website Down Detector, which monitors online service disruptions, was itself affected by the outage. When accessible, it showed a dramatic spike in reported problems across multiple platforms. Besides X and ChatGPT, other affected services included OpenAI, League of Legends, and payment company Sage.
Users visiting bet365 saw concerning messages stating “Sorry, you have been blocked. You are unable to access bet365.com.” Similarly, ChatGPT displayed errors asking users to “unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.”
The outage comes approximately one month after a similar incident at Amazon Web Services (AWS) took much of the internet offline. Like Cloudflare, AWS provides infrastructure services to companies worldwide, meaning technical problems can affect numerous seemingly unconnected websites simultaneously.
As the situation developed, Cloudflare posted updates indicating progress toward resolution. “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts,” the company stated.
The company later confirmed that some tools, including its Access and WARP services, had been restored. However, Cloudflare indicated it was “continuing to work towards restoring other services” as problems persisted for major websites.
The incident highlighted the critical role that invisible infrastructure services like Cloudflare play in maintaining internet functionality. When these services experience disruptions, the impact cascades across countless websites and online platforms used by millions daily.
