On 18 November 2025, a major Cloudflare infrastructure failure caused global service disruptions, affecting ChatGPT and hundreds of other platforms. The incident, known as the chatgpt cloudflare outage, made users encounter errors such as “chatgpt down” and “please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.” This outage highlighted how dependent the internet ecosystem is on Cloudflare.
ChatGPT Down
During the outage, many users reported that ChatGPT not working, pages not loading or requests failing. Error messages like “chatgpt challenges cloudflare error” became common as backend systems could not authorize traffic properly.
Cloudflare Outage
Cloudflare later confirmed that the outage was triggered by an unexpected increase in the size of a critical internal file linked to the Bot Management system. This file exceeded service limits, causing widespread failures and HTTP 5xx errors across Cloudflare’s network. Major services relying on Cloudflare—including ChatGPT, X, Canva, Spotify, and Perplexity—experienced downtime.
ChatGPT Not Working? What Users Saw
Users encountered repeated errors such as:
- “please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed. what is this”
- “chatgpt cloudflare error”
- “why is chatgpt not working today?”
These messages appeared because Cloudflare’s challenge verification system malfunctioned, blocking or restricting legitimate traffic.
Impact of Cloudflare Outage
The outage had a significant global impact:
- Websites such as ChatGPT, X (formerly Twitter), and many others were inaccessible.
- Downdetector charts were flooded with reports under keywords like “cloudflare down today”, “chat gpt down”, and “is cloudflare down right now”.
- Multiple industries relying on API services experienced delays and disruptions.
Preventing Future Cloud Disasters
The cloudflare outage chatgpt incident reinforces the need for:
- Multi-cloud routing and redundancy
- Strict change-management policies
- Automatic rollback systems
- More transparent uptime communication
Why Cloudflare Is Not Working?
Cloudflare clarified that this was not a cybersecurity attack, but a configuration error. The Bot Management file size increase caused a cascading system failure across their global network. This explains why so many users searched for terms like “what is cloudflare error”, “cloudflare server down”, and “why cloudflare is not working”.
Are Its Systems Effectively Back to Online?
Yes. Cloudflare confirmed that fixes were implemented successfully, and systems are effectively back to online. However, some users may still see delayed restoration due to DNS caching, outdated sessions and region-wise load balancing.
Total Loss of the Outage?
Precise financial loss figures were not released, but the outage affected millions of users globally. Reports on Downdetector dropped from nearly 5,000 complaints at peak to under 600 within hours. The service disruption impacted businesses, ad-platforms, gaming services like Valorant, and social platforms such as X.
Disclaimer
This article provides informational coverage of the Cloudflare outage and its impact on ChatGPT based on publicly available updates. Users should refer to official Cloudflare and service-provider announcements for exact technical details.
FAQs
Q1. Why did the ChatGPT Cloudflare outage occur?
The outage occurred due to a Cloudflare configuration file growing too large, causing system failures and blocking legitimate user sessions.
Q2. What does “please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed” mean?
It means Cloudflare’s security layer is attempting to verify traffic. During the outage, it malfunctioned and triggered false blocks.
Q3. Is Cloudflare down right now?
No. Cloudflare states that systems are effectively back to online, although some regions may still experience delays.
