Cloudflare Outage Impacts Major Websites Worldwide, Causes Trading Platforms to Halt Services
image: AP
A major global outage at Cloudflare briefly disrupted thousands of websites worldwide on Friday, affecting everything from stock-trading platforms and design tools to gaming services and communication apps. Users across countries reported service failures, slow loading times and complete platform outages.
Among the most heavily affected were Indian trading platforms Zerodha and Groww, along with global services such as Canva, Zoom, Shopify, Valorant, LinkedIn, and DownDetector.
Groww was one of the first to alert users, confirming that a global Cloudflare disruption was behind the sudden outage. In an update posted minutes later, the platform said its services had been restored. Zerodha issued a similar advisory, telling users that its Kite trading platform was unavailable and urging traders to use WhatsApp backup services. The company later confirmed that normal functionality had resumed.
Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest internet infrastructure providers, serves millions of websites by acting as a protective and performance-enhancing layer between servers and users. Because so many major platforms rely on Cloudflare, even a brief outage can take down large parts of the internet simultaneously.
The cause of the disruption has not yet been disclosed, though the company confirmed it “implemented a fix” and is actively investigating the incident. This marks Cloudflare’s third outage in less than a month. A previous disruption in November affected platforms such as ChatGPT and Spotify, prompting concerns about cyberattacks — concerns the company later dismissed.
Our Thoughts
The recurring outages at Cloudflare highlight the fragile backbone of global internet infrastructure. With thousands of platforms relying on a single network for security and performance, even momentary disruptions can cascade into worldwide service failures. As digital dependence grows, transparency, redundancy and stronger resilience measures will become essential to protect businesses and users from future breakdowns.