Thousands of users worldwide reported access issues on popular websites and apps, including X, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Spotify, Canva, AWS, Letterboxd, Sage, and PayPal, amid a widespread Cloudflare outage. Many users encountered error messages such as “please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed” and other internal server errors, causing significant online disruptions.

Cloudflare, a leading web infrastructure and network services provider, confirmed the technical glitch on its status page. “Cloudflare is aware of and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers. Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard, and API are also failing. We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem. More updates to follow shortly,” the company said. It added that while services are beginning to recover, users may still experience higher-than-normal error rates during remediation.

Reports indicate that X experienced blank feeds and login issues, while OpenAI confirmed that ChatGPT and other AI services were also affected, though it has not directly linked the problem to Cloudflare. Downdetector recorded surges in complaints, with users citing internal server errors on Cloudflare’s network when attempting to access affected platforms.

Cloudflare provides security, content delivery, and traffic-management services for thousands of websites worldwide. Acting as a middle layer between users and websites, any technical issue on Cloudflare’s end can trigger cascading outages across unrelated platforms. This outage follows a recent trend of network disruptions, including major outages at Microsoft Azure and AWS last month, which similarly impacted multiple popular services.

Parts of the internet appeared to stop working on Tuesday, with users reporting notices about internal server errors on Cloudflare’s network and being advised to try again later. Platforms, including X and Letterboxd, were blocked from loading properly, highlighting the crucial role Cloudflare plays in maintaining global web infrastructure.