Cloudflare, the global web security and CDN giant, experienced another brief service outage on December 5, 2025, marking its second downtime incident in nearly a month. The disruption caused access issues for several websites worldwide, with numerous platforms showing “500 internal server errors.”
Outage Causes Widespread but Partial Disruptions
Although the issue was not fully global, a range of websites and apps relying on Cloudflare’s infrastructure were affected. For several minutes, Cloudflare’s own website was unreachable, underscoring the scale of the disruption.
Downdetector, a service-monitoring platform that tracks online outages, also went offline, further highlighting how deeply Cloudflare’s network degradation impacted web accessibility.
The latest incident follows a major Cloudflare outage in November 2025, which temporarily took down platforms including:
- X (formerly Twitter)
- ChatGPT
- Spotify
- Canva
- Perplexity AI
Several Nigerian news outlets, PUNCH, Vanguard, The Nation, TheCable, Daily Trust, and The Guardian Nigeria, were also affected during the November incident.
500 Errors Signal Server-Side Problems
During the latest disruption, many users encountered “500 internal server errors,” a code indicating a failure on the server side rather than on users’ devices or networks. This prevented dependent platforms from processing or routing traffic normally.
Cloudflare Status Page Reveals Ongoing Maintenance
While Cloudflare has yet to release an official public statement, its System Status page indicated ongoing scheduled maintenance.
A 07:00 UTC update on Dec 05, 2025 stated “Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress… We will be performing scheduled maintenance in the ORD (Chicago) datacenter on 2025-12-05 between 07:00 and 11:00 UTC.”
Though initially limited to the Chicago data center, further status updates revealed additional maintenance activities underway in:
- Detroit
- Bogotá
This expanded work likely contributed to the broader-than-anticipated service instability.
Cloudflare Investigates New Technical Issues
At 09:53 UTC, Cloudflare reported two emerging issues linked to the outage:
- A surge in “empty pages” when accessing the list API on Workers KV namespaces.
- Elevated error rates for customers running Cloudflare Workers scripts.
The company confirmed: “Cloudflare is investigating an increased level of errors for customers running Workers scripts… More updates to follow.”
Rising Concerns Over Global Dependence on Cloudflare
Given Cloudflare’s pivotal role in internet traffic routing and security, any disruption to its network can quickly cascade across the web. Industry experts are now advising businesses to explore redundancy strategies or alternative providers to mitigate risks.
This outage comes shortly after a significant AWS global downtime in October 2025, which affected platforms like Grammarly, Snapchat, and Reddit, raising broader questions about the resilience of global digital infrastructure.
