ChatGPT users left in distress as Cloudflare outage hits AI chatbot. How to resolve issue?

As the outage affected several websites, including ChatGPT, users were left worried as they were unable to access one of the most popular chatbots in the world.

Published on: Nov 18, 2025, 21:20:00 IST

By HT News Desk

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Millions of users across the world were left stressed after the popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, went down on Tuesday due to a massive technical outage at Cloudflare, “one of the world’s largest networks” that supports millions of internet properties. Cloudflare said that it was working to resolve the issue while continuing to monitor for errors.

Many users across the world faced issues as the outage impacted ChatGPT. (AFP)

As the outage affected several websites, including ChatGPT, users were left worried as they were unable to access one of the most popular chatbots in the world. “ChatGPT is down the period before my test, bro,” one user wrote on X.

Catch latest updates related to Cloudflare outage here.

ChatGPT down in India

Many users in India also faced issues as the outage impacted ChatGPT. Notably, India is OpenAI’s second-largest market in the world, in terms of the number of users. These numbers have also tripled in the past year, as the firm’s CEO, Sam Altman, said earlier.

ChatGPT down: How to resolve the issue?

While many users were able to see ChatGPT load up again as Cloudflare worked to fix the technical issue, some users still faced problems trying to access the chatbot.

It’s important to note that users cannot manually resolve the issue on their own since it is directly connected to the Cloudflare outage.

If the information you are trying to access is urgent, you may want to use other chatbots, after verifying if they are accessible. Here are some alternatives you could try while ChatGPT is being fixed:

Microsoft Copilot
Google’s Gemini assistant
DeepSeek AI
Grok

Cloudflare CTO provides update

In a long post on X, Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht admitted that the company had “failed our customers and the broader internet” due to the outage. “The sites, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cloudflare depend on us being available, and I apologize for the impact we caused,” he said.

He also explained the issue at Cloudflare that took several websites down: “In short, a latent bug in a service underpinning our bot mitigation capability started to crash after a routine configuration change we made. That cascaded into a broad degradation of our network and other services. This was not an attack,” he said.

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HT News Desk
Follow the latest breaking news, major developments and agenda-setting stories from India and around the world with the newsdesk at Hindustan Times. Operating round the clock, the desk brings together experienced editors, reporters and correspondents to deliver fast, accurate and contextual reporting across subjects that influence public policy, governance, business, society and international affairs. The HT News Desk covers politics, elections, government policies, the economy, business and markets, science and technology, the environment, law and order, infrastructure, education, climate issues and geopolitics, while closely tracking developments across states, institutions and global capitals. The team also leads coverage of major breaking news events, policy announcements, court proceedings, natural disasters, public emergencies and significant international developments. Reports published by the newsdesk are based on information gathered from reporters on the ground, official statements, government agencies, court records, regulatory filings, recognised institutions and other authoritative sources. Stories undergo editorial scrutiny and verification processes to ensure accuracy, fairness and relevance, and are updated as events evolve and additional information becomes available. Whether covering a key political decision in New Delhi, an economic policy shift affecting millions, a landmark court ruling or a major global event, the HT News Desk aims to provide readers with reliable, fact-based journalism that delivers not only the latest developments but also the context and analysis needed to understand their wider implications.Read More

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