A major global outage disrupted internet services on Tuesday after Cloudflare, one of the world’s leading web infrastructure providers, experienced a severe technical failure that affected thousands of websites and apps worldwide. Platforms such as X faced widespread loading issues, leaving millions of users unable to access essential services for several hours.
Cloudflare reported that the disruption stemmed from an internal server error, which caused websites using its content delivery and security systems to show “500 errors” or fail to load altogether. The problem spread rapidly across multiple regions, impacting social platforms, business applications, e-commerce sites, and news outlets.
The company stated that its engineering teams were working to identify the root cause and restore normal operations. Although some functionality gradually returned, Cloudflare cautioned that users could still encounter intermittent issues as systems stabilised. The outage was so significant that DownDetector, a widely used service-monitoring platform that depends on Cloudflare, also faced difficulties during the incident.
Independent monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed that the disruption was global and not related to government-imposed restrictions, ruling out the possibility of deliberate internet shutdowns.
The event underscores how deeply Cloudflare’s infrastructure is embedded within the global internet. As businesses and users wait for full restoration, the outage serves as a reminder of the vulnerabilities in an interconnected digital ecosystem where a single point of failure can disrupt services across the world.