Is Cloudflare Down? How to Check Status and Troubleshoot
Published
•2 min readCloudflare sits in front of roughly 20 percent of all websites. When Cloudflare goes down, millions of sites become unreachable.
Quick Check
- API Status Check for real-time monitoring
- cloudflarestatus.com for official status
- Try a non-Cloudflare site to rule out your internet
Cloudflare Error Codes
| Code | Meaning | Whose Fault |
| 520 | Unknown error | Origin server |
| 521 | Server down | Origin server |
| 522 | Connection timeout | Origin server |
| 523 | Origin unreachable | DNS or network |
| 524 | Timeout | Origin too slow |
| 525 | SSL handshake failed | SSL mismatch |
Errors 520-526 usually mean YOUR origin server has a problem. True Cloudflare outages show completely unreachable pages.
What Can Break
- CDN: Sites load slowly or not at all
- DNS (1.1.1.1): Domains will not resolve
- Workers: Serverless functions fail
- Pages: Hosted sites go offline
- R2: Object storage inaccessible
Troubleshooting
- Determine if it is Cloudflare or your origin (520-526 = your server)
- Check regional status - outages are often regional
- Switch DNS to 8.8.8.8 instead of 1.1.1.1
- Site owners: check dashboard, enable Always Online
- Developers: test API connectivity
Why So Many Sites Go Down Together
Cloudflare proxies about 20 percent of web traffic. When it fails, thousands of unrelated websites fail simultaneously.
Get free alerts when Cloudflare or any infrastructure goes down.