How to Know When Cloudflare Is Down

You can determine if Cloudflare is down by checking their official status page, monitoring community reports on social media, and using third-party network status websites. While a single website being down doesn’t necessarily mean Cloudflare has an outage, the simultaneous failure of multiple, diverse services is a strong indicator of a broader issue.

Official Cloudflare Status Page

The most reliable source for information is the official Cloudflare status page, located at status.cloudflare.com. This page provides real-time updates on the operational status of Cloudflare’s various services. When investigating potential cloudflare issues today, look for newly created incidents, detailed updates, and eventually, post-mortem reports that explain the root cause of the problem. The cloudflare outage status is typically updated here first.

Community Reports (Reddit, Twitter/X)

Real-time user reports often provide the first clues that something is wrong. Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit are hotspots for immediate feedback from users and system administrators. Searching for hashtags like #CloudflareDown or terms like is cloudflare down can reveal a stream of reports from people experiencing issues. Subreddits such as r/sysadmin and r/cloudflare are valuable resources for technical discussions and confirmations from other professionals during a cloudflare down reddit event.

Using Downdetector and Other Tools

Third-party network monitoring tools like Downdetector can offer a comprehensive view of an outage. These services work by aggregating user-submitted reports and data from other sources to visualize the scale of a service disruption. The graphs on Downdetector can clearly show the start time and peak of an incident, confirming that the issue is widespread and not isolated to your own connection. A cloudflare outage map on such sites can also illustrate the geographical impact of the disruption.

Why Do Cloudflare Outages Happen? The Technical Causes

Cloudflare outages typically happen due to three main categories of technical failures: errors in internet routing (BGP), failures in the domain name system (DNS), or internal software and configuration mistakes. To simplify these complex systems, one can use an analogy: BGP is like the internet’s postal service directing mail, DNS is its address book, and internal bugs are like a critical typo in a command that brings the whole system to a halt.

BGP Routing Errors

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing system that finds the most efficient paths for data to travel across the vast network of the internet. A BGP routing error, sometimes called a “route leak,” is like a GPS giving incorrect directions to all traffic simultaneously. This can cause data packets to get lost or stuck in loops, making websites and services unreachable. A 2005 USENIX study on BGP configuration faults found that such errors can cause forwarding loops and packet loss, contributing to significant failures of internet connectivity. These cloudflare routing issues can effectively take large parts of the internet offline.

DNS Resolution Failures

The Domain Name System (DNS) acts as the internet’s phonebook, translating human-readable domain names (like hussamkazim.com) into the numerical IP addresses that computers use to communicate. If Cloudflare’s DNS service experiences a failure, browsers cannot find the correct IP address for a requested website. This makes the site appear offline, even if its servers are running perfectly. According to an IETF draft on DNSSEC, validation failures can cause persistent DNS resolution outages, effectively blocking access to services. Such cloudflare dns outage events highlight the critical role of DNS in web accessibility.

Internal Bugs & Configuration Errors (Case Study: Nov 2025 cloudflare outage)

Sometimes, the cause of a major disruption is an internal issue, such as a bug in a new software deployment or a simple human error during a configuration update. These mistakes can have cascading effects across a global network. For instance, a notable cloudflare outage cause can be traced back to internal changes. In the post-mortem for the November 2025 outage, Cloudflare engineers explained that a bug in the generation logic for a Bot Management feature file caused configuration issues. These issues propagated across the network, degrading endpoint reliability and leading to widespread service disruptions, including what some users referred to as the cloudflare regex outage.

The Widespread Impact of a cloudflare outage

A cloudflare outage has a widespread impact because the company’s services handle a significant percentage of all internet traffic, providing performance, security, and reliability for millions of websites. Because Cloudflare occupies such a central role in the internet’s architecture, its stability is critical. When its network falters, it can create a massive single point of failure, leading to a domino effect that impacts users and businesses globally.

Why One Company’s Problem Affects Everyone

Cloudflare provides a suite of essential services, including its Content Delivery Network (CDN), DDoS protection, and DNS. When these foundational services fail, it’s not just websites that go down. The outage also affects APIs that mobile apps rely on, internal business tools companies use for operations, and countless other digital services. This creates a ripple effect, turning a single company’s technical issue into a global cloudflare outage that disrupts digital life for millions.

Notable Services Affected in Past Outages

The scale of a Cloudflare outage is best understood by looking at the major services that have been affected in the past. These incidents show that no corner of the internet is immune when core infrastructure fails. An analysis by Control D documents several major events, including a June 2022 incident that impacted services like Discord, Shopify, Fitbit, and Peloton. The cloudflare outage impact is felt across e-commerce, communication, fitness, and entertainment platforms, demonstrating how interconnected these services are.

Economic and Operational Consequences

The consequences of downtime extend beyond user inconvenience, often translating into significant financial losses. For e-commerce sites, an outage means lost sales every minute services are unavailable. For other businesses, it disrupts internal operations, reduces productivity, and can damage brand reputation. A study by the Brookings Institute calculated that from 2015-2016, internet shutdowns resulted in at least $2.4 billion in lost GDP, highlighting the severe economic consequences of such large-scale disruptions.

FAQ – Answering Your Questions About Cloudflare Outages

why is cloudflare down?

Cloudflare can go down due to technical failures like BGP routing errors, DNS resolution issues, or internal software bugs. BGP acts as the internet’s GPS, and errors can misdirect traffic. DNS is the internet’s address book; if it fails, websites can’t be found. Internal configuration mistakes or software updates can also accidentally disrupt the network. These issues can cause widespread service unavailability.

is cloudflare down?

The best way to check if Cloudflare is down is to visit the official Cloudflare Status page (status.cloudflare.com). This page provides real-time information on service disruptions and ongoing incidents. You can also check third-party sites like Downdetector or search for user reports on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit for community-driven confirmation of a widespread issue.

what is causing the cloudflare outage?

The specific cause of a cloudflare outage varies, but it is typically a BGP routing error, a DNS failure, or a flawed software deployment. For example, a past major outage was attributed to a faulty software deployment that led to a spike in CPU usage, overwhelming their network. Cloudflare usually publishes a detailed post-mortem report on their blog after an incident, explaining the root cause and the steps taken to resolve it.

is cloudflare outage resolved?

To confirm if a Cloudflare outage is resolved, check the official Cloudflare Status page for an “All Systems Operational” message. The incident report on that page will typically be updated to “Resolved” or “Monitoring” after a fix has been implemented. Tech news sites and Cloudflare’s official blog and social media accounts will also usually announce when services have been fully restored. Service restoration can sometimes be gradual.

what sites are impacted by cloudflare outage?

A Cloudflare outage can impact millions of websites and online services, from large platforms to small businesses. Notable services that have been affected in past outages include Discord, Shopify, Peloton, DoorDash, and various cryptocurrency exchanges. Because Cloudflare’s client base is so diverse, an outage can disrupt e-commerce, communication tools, gaming platforms, and corporate websites simultaneously, making its impact globally significant.

Limitations, Alternatives, and Professional Guidance

Research Limitations

It is important to acknowledge that public information on outages is primarily based on company-published post-mortems, which may not capture every technical detail of an incident. The complexity of global internet routing means the full impact can be difficult to measure with complete precision in real-time. Furthermore, research into preventing such large-scale, single-point-of-failure events is ongoing, as the internet’s architecture is in a constant state of evolution.

Alternative Approaches

For businesses seeking to improve uptime, strategies like multi-CDN or multi-cloud architectures can help build redundancy and reduce reliance on a single provider. Designing a resilient architecture can mitigate some risks. For users, configuring alternative DNS providers (such as Google’s 8.8.8.8 or Quad9’s 9.9.9.9) on their devices may sometimes lessen the impact of a DNS-specific outage. However, it should be noted that these strategies can add complexity and cost and may not protect against all types of service disruptions.

Professional Consultation

Businesses that depend on critical online infrastructure are encouraged to consult with network architects or DevOps professionals. These experts can help design a robust architecture, implement effective failover strategies, and create a formal incident response plan. Having such a plan in place can help minimize the impact of third-party provider outages on their operations and, ultimately, their customers.

Conclusion

A cloudflare outage is a significant disruption stemming from the company’s central role in the modern internet’s infrastructure. The primary causes are typically complex technical issues related to BGP, DNS, or internal software errors, and the impact is widespread, affecting everything from e-commerce to critical business operations. While these events are highly disruptive, they also serve as a reminder of the intricate and interconnected systems that power the web. Individual experiences with service availability may vary based on location and other factors.

Understanding the stability of internet infrastructure is fundamental to building reliable AI and automation systems. Hussam’s AI Blog is a dedicated resource for in-depth technical guides that explore the foundational technologies of our digital world. To continue learning about the technologies that power modern AI and automation, Read more of our guides and tutorials.

References

  1. Cloudflare. (n.d.). Post Mortem. Cloudflare Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.cloudflare.com/tag/post-mortem/
  2. Feamster, N., & Rexford, J. (2005). A Measurement Study of BGP Configuration Faults. USENIX. Retrieved from https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/nsdi05/tech/feamster/feamster.pdf
  3. Zhang, Z. (2024). Handling of Unvalidated Data in DNSSEC-Validating Resolvers. IETF. Retrieved from https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-zhang-dnsop-dnssec-unvalidated-data-00.html
  4. Control D. (n.d.). The Biggest Cloudflare Outages in History. Control D Blog. Retrieved from https://controld.com/blog/biggest-cloudflare-outages/
  5. West, D. M. (2016). Internet shutdowns cost countries $2.4 billion last year. Brookings Institute. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/intenet-shutdowns-v-3.pdf
  6. Amazon Web Services. (n.d.). What is a CDN?. AWS. Retrieved from https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/cdn/