Cloudflare is Down: Why ChatGPT, Canva, and X Are Down Today – The Great Internet Outage
Why ChatGPT, Canva, and X Are Down Today – The Great Internet Outage
[Date: November 18, 2025]
If you’ve spent your afternoon staring at an “Internal Server Error” page or wondering why your favorite AI tools aren’t loading, you are not alone. Large parts of the global internet, including titans like OpenAI (ChatGPT), X (formerly Twitter), Canva, Spotify, and countless others, have been experiencing a massive disruption today.
The internet experienced a major global disruption today as Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest CDN, DNS, and security providers, suffered a widespread outage. This incident triggered loading failures, slow responses, and complete service interruptions across thousands of websites and applications, including platforms such as ChatGPT, Canva, online banking systems, streaming platforms, hosting companies, and numerous SaaS tools.
This is one of the most significant multi-service outages of 2025, affecting users worldwide.
What Happened?
A large-scale technical failure within Cloudflare’s global network caused disruptions across:
- DNS resolution
- Edge routing
- CDN caching
- Firewall and Zero Trust services
- API connectivity
Because Cloudflare powers a massive portion of global internet traffic, even a partial failure causes ripple effects across almost every sector of the online world.
Major Platforms Affected
The outage impacted a wide range of industries, including AI tools, content platforms, productivity services, web hosting companies, and financial institutions.
AI Platforms
- ChatGPT (OpenAI)
- Claude (Anthropic) — intermittent failures reported by users
- Perplexity AI — slow response times
- Midjourney web services — partial loading failures
Most AI platforms rely on Cloudflare either directly or indirectly for API routing, authentication, or CDN delivery.
Design & Creative Tools
- Canva
- Figma (static assets/CDN lag)
- Adobe Creative Cloud online components
- Descript and other cloud-based editors
Users faced issues such as:
- Apps not loading
- Projects not syncing
- Login failures
- Media assets not rendering
Hosting Companies & Website Builders
Many hosting providers and website builders depend on Cloudflare for DNS or CDN, leading to outages across:
- Bluehost
- SiteGround
- Hostinger
- WP Engine
- Namecheap
- DigitalOcean (network paths)
- Vercel and Netlify deploy previews
- Squarespace and Wix asset delivery
Millions of websites became slow or inaccessible.
Financial & Banking Services
Some online banking portals slowed down or became unreachable due to DNS failures, including:
- Mobile banking apps
- Payment gateways
- Card verification systems
- Fraud-detection APIs
Not all banks were affected globally, but the impact was clearly noticeable in regions relying heavily on Cloudflare’s edge network.
Streaming & Media Platforms
Users reported issues with:
- Spotify web playback
- YouTube asset loading
- Twitch chat & CDN
- Cloud gaming services (GeForce Now / Xbox Cloud Gaming)
Many of these interruptions were caused by dependency on Cloudflare CDN or edge routing.
Productivity & Collaboration Tools
Cloudflare’s issue disrupted a variety of cloud-based collaboration platforms:
- Slack (image/CDN paths)
- Notion (resource delivery)
- Trello
- Asana
- Zoom web client (edge routing delays)
- Google Workspace services relying on CDN interconnects
Users experienced login loops, missing assets, and slow loading.
E-Commerce Platforms
Several online stores and marketplaces had:
- Cart failures
- Checkout errors
- Broken images
- Payment declines
Platforms impacted included:
- Shopify stores
- WooCommerce sites using Cloudflare
- Amazon affiliate sites
- GlobalDropship and other SaaS shopping tools
Impact Duration
While recovery efforts were underway, users worldwide experienced:
- Higher-than-normal error rates
- Websites partially loading
- API requests timing out
- Authentication failures
- Slower-than-usual global performance
Several services began restoring functionality gradually, but some regions continued to see degraded performance.
Why This Outage Is So Significant
Cloudflare sits at a critical layer of the global internet. It handles:
- DNS resolution
- CDN delivery
- DDoS protection
- API routing
- Firewall enforcement
- Zero Trust infrastructure
Because of its position between websites and users, an internal failure can disrupt a massive portion of the internet simultaneously.
This incident highlights how deeply interconnected modern internet infrastructure has become—and how a single-point failure can impact millions instantly.
Current Situation
As of the latest updates:
- Many platforms are recovering, but still unstable.
- Some regions remain partially degraded depending on network routing.
- Major companies are still monitoring their services for residual issues.
Users are advised to expect intermittent behaviour, such as slow loading or occasional login failures, until Cloudflare confirms full stability.
What You Should Do
For now:
✔ Refresh services periodically
✔ Avoid clearing DNS unless necessary
✔ Expect intermittent loading errors
✔ Monitor official status pages for updates
Final Thoughts
The Cloudflare outage of November 2025 has once again shown how critical internet infrastructure truly is. With AI tools, creative platforms, e-commerce stores, streaming apps, and banking systems all experiencing disruptions, today’s event will be remembered as one of the most wide-reaching internet outages of the year.
We will continue to monitor the situation and update as platforms return to full stability.
