Cloudflare outage on November 18 not only disrupted hundreds of tech websites but also finance sector that rely on the IT company’s services, a report has said, noting that the three-hour disruption potentially cost forex and Contracts for Difference (CFD) brokers an estimated $1.58 billion in lost trading volume.
The unavailability of services left the websites of many brokers displaying the “Internal server error” message, effectively pausing trading operations.
The loss translates to roughly 1% of their typical monthly trading revenue, according to a report by Cyprus-based financial publication Finance Magnates. Citing market data compiled by Finance Magnates Intelligence, the publication claims that the three peak hours of the outage typically account for approximately 20% of the daily trading volume handled by these brokers. it said that volume loss was calculated by analysing the trading activity of all but the top ten CFD brokers, who are presumed not to rely on Cloudflare While explaining how they reached the $1.58 billion figure. The average monthly trading volume for this group in Q3 2025 was estimated at $174 billion. This translates to an average daily volume of $7.91 billion (based on 22 trading days). Considering the three-hour outage hit during peak activity, the calculated average loss per affected broker stands at $1.58 billion in trading volume. the larger ones could have seen losses exceeding $3 billion While the smallest affected brokers may have lost around $364 million. The estimated figure of $1.58 billion represents a loss of 0.91% of their monthly trading volume, which correlates directly to a roughly 1% loss in monthly trading revenue.
It said that firms including Monaxa, Skilling, Xtrade, and FXPro were among those confirmed to be impacted. Cloudflare also confirmed the incident was not the result of malicious activity.
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Financial firms utilise the service not only as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) but crucially for protection against cyberattacks, making it an almost non-optional tool for platforms lacking vast internal security teams.
“The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services,” Dutton added.
In addition to the major AI and social media platforms, other online services such as Uber, Canva, Spotify, Grindr, NJ Transit, and League of Legends also experienced connectivity issues. Even the outage-tracking site DownDetector was affected for a short duration of time. Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht later apologised for the impact.