Is Cloudflare Down? How to Check Cloudflare Status & Outage History

Website returning 502 errors?
DNS lookups failing?
Cloudflare Workers timing out?

Before assuming it's your infrastructure, verify if Cloudflare itself is down. When Cloudflare experiences an outage, millions of websites go offline simultaneously. Here's your complete guide to checking Cloudflare status and responding to outages.

Quick Check: Is Cloudflare Actually Down Right Now?

Real-time Cloudflare status:

🔗 API Status Check: Cloudflare
Live status updated every 60 seconds with real endpoint testing.

🔗 Official Cloudflare Status
Cloudflare's official status page (note: can be slow to update during major incidents).

🔗 Twitter Search: "Cloudflare down"
Real-time reports from developers and users worldwide.

2. API Status Check (Independent Monitoring)

🔗 apistatuscheck.com/is-cloudflare-down

Why use it:

  • Real endpoint testing every 60 seconds (not just status page scraping)
  • Independent verification — we're not reliant on Cloudflare's own infrastructure
  • Faster detection — often catches issues before official status page updates
  • Historical data — see uptime patterns over time
  • Instant alerts — get notified via Slack, Discord, email, or RSS

What we test:

  • Cloudflare DNS resolution (1.1.1.1)
  • CDN edge servers globally
  • Workers runtime availability
  • API endpoints
  • Dashboard accessibility

3. Social Media (Fastest Real-Time Intel)

Twitter/X:

Why it works:

  • Developers report issues instantly
  • Cloudflare support team responds here
  • See geographic distribution of issues
  • Identify which services are affected

4. Is It Down Checker Tools

Use these to test from multiple locations:

Common Cloudflare Issues (And How to Identify Them)

1. DNS Resolution Failures

Symptoms:

  • Websites not loading ("DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN")
  • Slow DNS lookups
  • Intermittent connectivity

How to test:

# Test Cloudflare DNS
nslookup example.com 1.1.1.1

# Compare with Google DNS
nslookup example.com 8.8.8.8

What it means: If Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) fails but Google DNS (8.8.8.8) works, Cloudflare DNS is down.

2. 502 Bad Gateway / 504 Gateway Timeout

Error codes you'll see:

  • 502 Bad Gateway — Cloudflare can't reach your origin server
  • 504 Gateway Timeout — Origin server not responding in time
  • Error 520 — Unknown connection issue
  • Error 521 — Origin server down
  • Error 522 — Connection timed out
  • Error 523 — Origin unreachable
  • Error 524 — Timeout occurred

How to tell if it's Cloudflare:

  • Error page has Cloudflare branding
  • Happens across multiple sites using Cloudflare
  • Check cloudflarestatus.com for CDN issues

Troubleshooting:

# Test origin server directly (bypass Cloudflare)
curl -I https://your-origin-ip-address

# Check if it's just your site
curl -I https://another-cloudflare-site.com

3. SSL/TLS Certificate Errors

Symptoms:

  • "Your connection is not private" warnings
  • SSL handshake failures
  • NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

Cloudflare-specific causes:

  • Cloudflare Universal SSL provisioning delays
  • Certificate renewal failures
  • Edge server SSL issues

How to check:

# Test SSL certificate
openssl s_client -connect yourdomain.com:443 -servername yourdomain.com

# Check certificate issuer
# Should show "Cloudflare" if using their SSL

4. Cloudflare Workers Not Responding

Symptoms:

  • Workers scripts returning errors
  • Timeout errors (CPU limit exceeded)
  • KV namespace access failures

How to test:

# Test a Worker directly
curl -I https://your-worker.your-subdomain.workers.dev

Check:

5. CDN Cache Problems

Symptoms:

  • Static assets not loading
  • Old content served despite cache purge
  • Cache HIT/MISS inconsistencies

How to check cache status:

# Check Cloudflare cache headers
curl -I https://yoursite.com/image.jpg | grep -i "cf-cache-status"

# Possible values:
# HIT     = Served from Cloudflare cache
# MISS    = Not in cache, fetched from origin
# EXPIRED = Cache expired, revalidating
# BYPASS  = Not cacheable
# DYNAMIC = Dynamic content

What Happens When Cloudflare Goes Down?

The Cascade Effect

Cloudflare powers over 20% of all web traffic. When it goes down, the internet feels it.

Affected platforms (when Cloudflare has major outages):

  • Discord
  • Shopify stores
  • Medium blogs
  • Coinbase
  • Canva
  • League of Legends login
  • Feedly
  • Thousands of corporate websites
  • Millions of WordPress sites

Why it's so impactful:

  1. DNS reliance — Sites using Cloudflare DNS become completely unreachable
  2. CDN dependency — Static assets (images, CSS, JS) fail to load
  3. Workers runtime — Server-side logic breaks
  4. DDoS protection — Removing protection exposes origin servers
  5. API proxying — API calls fail or bypass security

Recent Cloudflare Outages (Historical Pattern)

November 2025: Massive Traffic Spike

"Is Cloudflare down" searches: Spiked to 165,000 in one day

What happened:

  • Major routing issue affected global CDN
  • Duration: ~30 minutes
  • Impact: Widespread 502/504 errors
  • Services affected: CDN, Workers, DNS

July 2020: BGP Route Leak

Duration: 27 minutes

Cause: Misconfigured BGP route advertisement

Impact:

  • Discord offline
  • Shopify checkout failures
  • Banking apps down
  • Gaming platforms unreachable

Lessons learned:

  • Cloudflare outages are brief but devastating
  • BGP misconfigurations propagate instantly
  • Status page updates lag real-time by 10+ minutes

June 2019: The Regex Incident

Duration: ~30 minutes

Cause: A single bad regular expression in Cloudflare's WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Impact:

  • CPU exhaustion on edge servers
  • Millions of sites returned errors
  • Cloudflare's own status page struggled to load (irony!)

Cost: Estimated hundreds of millions in lost commerce

October 2023: Configuration Change

Duration: 37 minutes

Cause: Routine configuration update triggered cascading failures

Impact: Global network affected

Pattern Recognition

What the data shows:

  • Most outages: 20-40 minutes duration
  • Cause: Configuration changes (80%+ of major incidents)
  • Impact: Global, not regional
  • Detection: Twitter reports faster than official status
  • Recovery: Fast (Cloudflare's engineering is excellent)

What to Do When Cloudflare Is Down

Immediate Actions

1. Confirm It's Cloudflare (Not Your Config)

# Test multiple Cloudflare-protected sites
curl -I https://discord.com
curl -I https://medium.com

# If multiple sites fail = Cloudflare issue
# If only yours fails = check your origin server

2. Check Origin Server Health

# Bypass Cloudflare, test origin directly
curl -I https://YOUR_ORIGIN_IP

# If origin responds = it's Cloudflare
# If origin fails = fix your infrastructure first

3. Notify Your Team/Customers

Internal:

  • Alert engineering team via Slack/Discord
  • Don't waste time debugging your code
  • Document incident start time

External (if appropriate):

  • Post to status page: "We're aware of issues with our CDN provider"
  • Social media update
  • Support ticket holding message

Mitigation Strategies

1. Temporary DNS Failover

If you have backup DNS:

# Update DNS records to bypass Cloudflare temporarily
# Point A/AAAA records directly to origin
# TTL should be low (300s) for quick propagation

Caution: This exposes your origin IP (DDoS risk).

2. Direct Origin Access (If Exposed)

If you know your origin IP:

# Add to /etc/hosts (for testing)
123.456.789.012 yoursite.com

Only works if:

  • Origin IP is publicly accessible
  • Origin accepts direct connections
  • SSL certificate is valid for direct access

3. Multi-CDN Strategy (Prevention)

For mission-critical sites, consider:

  • Primary: Cloudflare
  • Failover: Fastly, CloudFront, or Bunny CDN
  • DNS failover automation
  • Health check monitoring

Cost: Higher complexity and expense
Benefit: True redundancy

4. Cloudflare Argo (Smart Routing)

For Cloudflare customers:

  • Argo Smart Routing finds fastest paths
  • Reduces impact of single-datacenter issues
  • $5/month + $0.10/GB

Not a silver bullet: Won't help with global outages.

Monitor Cloudflare Status with API Status Check

Why You Need Independent Monitoring

Cloudflare's status page limitations:

  • Updates lag by 10-15 minutes during major incidents
  • Runs on Cloudflare infrastructure (can go down too)
  • Manual human updates required
  • No proactive alerts

API Status Check advantages:

  • Real endpoint testing every 60 seconds
  • Independent infrastructure (not reliant on Cloudflare)
  • Instant alerts via Slack, Discord, email, RSS
  • Historical tracking — see patterns over time
  • Multi-service monitoring — track all your dependencies in one place

Get Instant Cloudflare Alerts

🔗 apistatuscheck.com/is-cloudflare-down

Free tier:

  • Browse real-time status
  • RSS feed notifications
  • Status badges for README/dashboards

Paid plans ($9/month):

  • Slack/Discord push alerts
  • Email notifications
  • API access for automation
  • Unlimited history

Add Cloudflare Status Badge to Your Dashboard

![Cloudflare Status](https://apistatuscheck.com/badge/cloudflare)

Embeds as:
Cloudflare Status

Updates in real-time:

  • 🟢 Green = Operational
  • 🟡 Yellow = Degraded
  • 🔴 Red = Outage

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cloudflare down right now?

Check apistatuscheck.com/is-cloudflare-down for real-time status updated every 60 seconds.

How often does Cloudflare go down?

Major outages: 2-4 per year
Duration: Typically 20-40 minutes
Minor issues: Monthly (degraded performance, specific services)

Cloudflare has excellent uptime (~99.99%), but when they go down, impact is massive.

What causes most Cloudflare outages?

Top causes:

  1. Configuration changes (80%+)
  2. BGP routing issues
  3. Edge server software bugs
  4. Hardware failures (rare)

Not typically: DDoS attacks (Cloudflare is very good at defense)

How long do Cloudflare outages usually last?

Historical data:

  • Median duration: 30 minutes
  • Range: 15 minutes - 4 hours
  • Most resolved within 45 minutes

Cloudflare's engineering response is fast. Extended outages are rare.

Can I prevent Cloudflare downtime from affecting my site?

Short answer: Only with significant complexity.

Options:

  1. Multi-CDN setup — Primary + failover CDN (expensive, complex)
  2. Origin fallback — Direct origin access (loses DDoS protection)
  3. Graceful degradation — Serve cached static version during outages

Most practical: Accept rare downtime, monitor closely, respond quickly.

Should I switch away from Cloudflare?

Probably not. Cloudflare's uptime is industry-leading. Alternatives (Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront) have their own outages.

When to consider switching:

  • You've experienced multiple Cloudflare issues affecting revenue
  • Your compliance requires multi-vendor redundancy
  • Specific features better elsewhere

Better approach: Multi-CDN strategy if uptime is absolutely critical.

What's the difference between Cloudflare DNS and Cloudflare CDN?

Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1):

  • Free public DNS resolver
  • Separate from CDN infrastructure
  • Can be used without Cloudflare account

Cloudflare CDN:

  • Content delivery network for websites
  • Requires domain setup with Cloudflare
  • Includes DDoS protection, caching, Workers

Both can fail independently. DNS issues ≠ CDN issues.

Why does Cloudflare's status page sometimes go down during outages?

The irony: Cloudflare's status page (cloudflarestatus.com) runs on Cloudflare infrastructure.

During major outages:

  • Status page can be slow or inaccessible
  • Creates circular dependency problem
  • Third-party monitoring (like API Status Check) becomes critical

Cloudflare knows this and is working on external redundancy.

The Bottom Line

When Cloudflare goes down, you need to know fast.

Official status pages lag. Twitter is chaotic. Your origin logs are ambiguous.

Independent monitoring gives you:

  • ✅ Instant detection (60-second checks)
  • ✅ Clear signal (it's them, not you)
  • ✅ Historical context (is this normal?)
  • ✅ Proactive alerts (know before customers complain)

For $9/month, you get peace of mind.

Because when Cloudflare has a 30-minute outage and you spent 20 minutes debugging your own code, you've wasted $1,000+ in engineering time (at typical loaded costs).

Monitoring pays for itself the first time it saves you 10 minutes of confusion.

🔗 Start monitoring Cloudflare: apistatuscheck.com/is-cloudflare-down

🔔 Get instant alerts when Cloudflare (or 100+ other services) experience issues.

📊 Track uptime history and see patterns over time.

Free RSS feed: apistatuscheck.com/rss

Last updated: February 2026

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