The software company Cloudflare experienced an outage on Tuesday, disabling access to several major websites for users across the globe. ChatGPT, Spotify, X, and more were affected by the technical issue.

Cloudflare said shortly before 7 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, that it was aware of and investigating the matter. The outage caused customers to have higher-than-normal error rates while viewing websites, which included the company’s own site, as well. Cloudflare told USA Today that an unusual spike in traffic contributed to the technical issues, but the company was still working to pinpoint the cause of the spike. By 10 a.m., the company said a fix had been issued and services should be back to normal.

What does Cloudflare do? The company provides websites with tools to help fend off cyberattacks and load content efficiently. Cloudflare helps manage and protect traffic for 20% of the web, according to its company website.

DownDetector, a site that tracks website disruptions, reported that other websites impacted by outages at the same time included OpenAI, the online game League of Legends, Amazon, and Spotify, among others.

This story originally appeared in WORLD. © 2025, reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.