Cloudflare Suffers Outage Again, Breaks ChatGPT, BookMyShow, LinkedIn, Several Other Websites in India

A widespread disruption hit major online services in India on Friday afternoon after Cloudflare, one of the internet’s key infrastructure providers, suffered another major outage. The issue briefly knocked out access to prominent platforms, including ChatGPT, LinkedIn, BookMyShow, Canva, and several corporate websites that rely on Cloudflare’s content delivery and security network.

According to Downdetector, the internet disruption watchdog, the incident began around 3 PM IST, with users across multiple cities complaining of websites failing to load, showing “502” or “service unavailable” errors. ChatGPT and OpenAI’s platform were among the first to be hit, followed by social and ticketing apps.

Cloudflare acknowledged the problem through a status update confirming “widespread connectivity issues” affecting several regions. The company said engineers were investigating the cause and gradually restoring services. By around 4 PM, most affected platforms, including LinkedIn and Canva, reported partial recovery.

This marks at least the second major Cloudflare-related disruption in India this quarter, raising questions about redundancy and load-balancing practices for major online services. Because Cloudflare underpins a large portion of global web traffic, even a brief failure can trigger a cascade of outages across diverse platforms, from AI tools and streaming services to food delivery apps and online ticketing systems.

Industry observers say the episode underscores growing dependence on third-party network intermediaries, where a single point of failure can ripple across the internet.

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