Websites and applications are now back online after suffering an outage as Cloudflare was experiencing technical issues.
Several widely used platforms, including X and ChatGPT, experienced significant outages on Tuesday following technical difficulties at Cloudflare, a leading digital infrastructure provider. The incident, which began around 11:20 UTC, triggered a surge in complaints on outage tracking site Downdetector as thousands of users struggled to access prominent websites and online services.
Cloudflare attributed the disruption to a sudden, abnormal increase in traffic directed at one of its core services. This anomaly caused widespread HTTP 500 errors, a common server-side issue, for users relying on Cloudflare’s global network, according to the company’s spokespersons.
A range of essential platforms felt the immediate effects, including Spotify, Canva, Discord, and multiple major cryptocurrency exchanges. Even Downdetector, the tool used to monitor outages, was briefly impacted in a clear reflection of the web’s intricate interconnections.
To manage the crisis, Cloudflare’s engineering teams temporarily switched off some services, such as its WARP secure connectivity tool, in critical markets like London. By the afternoon, Cloudflare reported that services were stabilizing, though the company warned that some users could still face higher error rates as full recovery continued.
This outage adds to a mounting list of high-profile cloud failures, following recent service interruptions reported by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The persistence of such disruptions has fueled growing debate over the risks posed by the heavy concentration of internet infrastructure within a few dominant firms.