By When Cloudflare goes down, the internet feels it. On 18 November 2025, a major Cloudflare outage disrupted thousands of websites worldwide, affecting popular platforms, essential online services, and even businesses that rely on Cloudflare’s CDN, DNS, and security layers. The incident lasted several hours, causing widespread 5xx errors, slow loading times, and complete downtime for many sites. While outages happen across the tech world, the scale of this one highlighted how dependent the modern web is on Cloudflare’s global network.
In this blog, we break down what caused the outage, how it unfolded, its global impact, and what website owners can learn from it.
What Triggered the Cloudflare Outage?
According to Cloudflare’s internal investigation, the root cause of the outage was not a cyberattack or a hardware failure. Instead, it was a configuration-related issue deep within Cloudflare’s Bot Management system.
A faulty update caused Cloudflare systems to generate an unusually large configuration file. This file exceeded the maximum allowable size used by Cloudflare’s proxies. As the oversized file propagated through the network, edge servers running Cloudflare’s proxy software began failing. This triggered widespread errors across Cloudflare-protected websites.
In simple terms:
-
A backend configuration file became too large
-
Cloudflare’s edge servers couldn’t load it
-
The proxy software crashed
-
Requests began failing with 5xx errors worldwide
The outage affected core Cloudflare services, including caching, routing, Workers, Access, WAF layers, and customer dashboards.
How Long the Outage Lasted
The issue started around 11:20 UTC, with error spikes appearing across multiple regions. Many users immediately experienced:
-
Website downtime
-
Slow page loading
-
Broken CSS/JS assets
-
Failed API calls
-
Inaccessible dashboards
Cloudflare engineers rolled back the faulty configuration and restored a stable version. By 14:30 UTC, global traffic flows began normalizing. The full recovery was completed by 17:00 UTC.
Although the outage lasted just a few hours, its impact was significant due to Cloudflare’s massive footprint across the global internet.
Who Was Affected?
Cloudflare powers millions of websites—everything from small blogs to giant enterprise platforms. During the outage, users experienced issues on multiple major services, including:
-
Popular social platforms
-
Communication services
-
E-commerce stores
-
Government sites
-
Online tools and SaaS apps
Even businesses running Cloudflare DNS saw delayed DNS resolution or temporary failures. For developers, APIs relying on Cloudflare Workers also stopped functioning during the incident.
Because Cloudflare is often inserted between the website and visitors, any disruption in its services becomes visible immediately to end users.
Impact on Website Owners and Businesses
Website owners relying on Cloudflare saw live traffic drop dramatically. Many online stores reported:
-
Failed checkout pages
-
Broken product images
-
API timeouts
-
Payments failing to process
For content creators using Cloudflare CDN, static assets such as images, CSS, and front-end scripts stopped loading properly, breaking site layouts.
Search engines that crawled sites during this period might have temporarily logged errors. While most temporary outages don’t harm SEO, prolonged downtime or repeated outages can affect rankings.
How Cloudflare Responded
Cloudflare’s engineering team acted quickly:
-
Recognized abnormal system behavior
-
Stopped distributing the faulty configuration file
-
Rolled back to the last known good version
-
Restarted affected proxy nodes
-
Monitored the recovery of all edge servers
-
Conducted a full post-incident analysis
They also announced long-term improvements:
-
Hardening configuration limits
-
Improving safety checks before distribution
-
Adding faster rollback mechanisms
-
Strengthening global fail-safes
The company confirmed the outage was not caused by an attack, but by an internal configuration propagation issue.
Lessons for Website Owners
Even reliable platforms like Cloudflare can experience outages. Here’s what site owners can do:
1. Use Multiple DNS Providers
DNS redundancy ensures your domain remains resolvable even if one provider fails.
2. Add an Origin Fallback
Some CDNs allow adding multiple origins in case the primary fails.
3. Implement Server-Side Cache
Pages served directly from your server can remain online even if the CDN layer is down.
4. Monitor Your Website
Use uptime monitoring tools to detect outages instantly.
5. Avoid Full Dependence on One Vendor
Diversifying infrastructure reduces risk during outages.
Final Thoughts
The November 2025 Cloudflare outage reminded the world how interconnected and dependent our digital systems have become. Although the issue was resolved efficiently, it demonstrated the importance of redundancy, monitoring, and infrastructure planning. As Cloudflare strengthens its systems to prevent similar incidents, website owners should also evaluate their own resilience strategies to ensure uninterrupted service.