Global Web Chaos: Cloudflare Outage Disrupts X, Spotify and Major Platforms
A massive disruption hit the internet today after a major outage at Cloudflare left dozens of popular websites inaccessible across the globe.
Platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Spotify, Uber, Zoom, ChatGPT, League of Legends, and Grindr were among those affected when Cloudflare — a key internet security and performance provider — went down shortly after 11 a.m.
More than 10,000 users reported problems on Downdetector, which was also impacted by the outage, suggesting the true scale of the disruption is likely far greater.
Roughly one-fifth of all websites reportedly rely on Cloudflare’s services, leaving a significant portion of the internet unable to load. The outage is believed to have originated within the Cloudflare Global Network, a vast system of data centers connecting users to websites worldwide.
Cloudflare confirmed it is investigating what it described as an “internal service degradation” that is intermittently affecting multiple customers.
The company operates a network spanning more than 330 locations in over 120 countries, linking around 13,000 internet networks, including major global apps and service providers. Websites such as Ikea, Vinted, Dayforce, OpenAI, and Amazon Web Services were all among those disrupted.
Online multiplayer games and even the Scottish Parliament’s website were also hit.
By midday, tens of thousands of outage reports had been filed as users struggled to access platforms. X users in particular reported login errors, suspicious-login warnings, and issues with disappearing direct messages.
Cloudflare, which provides services such as bot protection, routing optimization, and website acceleration, said work is ongoing to fully restore all affected systems. The company had scheduled maintenance at its Santiago (SCL) data center today, though it remains unclear if this is linked to the incident.
The disruption comes less than a month after a major Amazon Web Services outage brought down thousands of websites, raising new concerns about global reliance on a handful of internet infrastructure giants.
