Trading Platforms Face Downtime as Cloudflare Outage Spreads to Zerodha, Groww and Others

Major Cloudflare Outage Ripples Across India’s Trading Platforms, Disrupting Market Activity

A sudden Cloudflare outage on Friday triggered widespread disruptions across numerous online services, hitting India’s trading ecosystem particularly hard. Platforms including Zerodha, Groww, Angel One, Upstox, and several fintech and enterprise systems experienced downtime as Cloudflare’s network infrastructure suffered a global-scale failure. The outage not only interrupted user access but also affected order execution and live market data feeds during active market hours.

Investors Face Log-In Failures and Order Placement Glitches During Peak Hours

The disruption began early in the trading session, with thousands of users reporting they were unable to log in, place orders, or view charts and market data. APIs used by trading platforms and market intermediaries struggled to establish stable connections due to Cloudflare’s network issues, triggering cascading failures across critical systems.

Zerodha users flagged repeated errors while accessing Kite, with delayed order updates and intermittent disconnections. Groww traders reported that charts were not loading, while some users on Angel One complained that their positions could not be squared off on time. Social media platforms were flooded with screenshots and complaints as the Cloudflare outage crippled trading flows.

For retail investors, especially day traders and those dealing in derivatives, even a few minutes of downtime can translate into significant financial risk. The unexpected disruption during active market hours heightened concerns around technological dependencies across India’s brokerage industry.

Also Read : IndiGo Shares Rebound After DGCA Grants Partial Relief on Pilot Duty Norms

Cloudflare Identifies Network-Level Failure, Initiates Fixes

Cloudflare acknowledged the issue shortly after reports surged globally. The company confirmed that a network-wide incident impacted connectivity across multiple regions, affecting services reliant on its CDN, DNS, and cybersecurity layers.

The company stated that engineers had isolated the cause and began rolling out patches to restore traffic flow. While services showed signs of stabilisation after an hour, platform teams cautioned that intermittent issues could persist as systems gradually resynchronised.

For trading platforms reliant on Cloudflare’s edge infrastructure for speed and security, the outage revealed the vulnerability of centralised infrastructure dependencies—an issue increasingly relevant as Indian financial platforms scale up rapidly.

Brokerages Urge Calm as Systems Stabilise; Users Continue Monitoring Performance

As Cloudflare initiated fixes, Indian brokerages began issuing advisories to users. Zerodha informed customers that the disruption stemmed from a global Cloudflare problem and assured them that internal systems were functioning normally but dependent on external connectivity. Groww and Angel One conveyed similar updates, stating that teams were actively monitoring performance and working to ensure that delayed orders and positions were handled appropriately.

Markets gradually normalised as the outage shrank, but many users continued to report delayed refresh rates and slower API responsiveness well into the session.

Industry experts noted that while platforms often have redundancy mechanisms, an outage at a global CDN level can overwhelm even robust systems due to the sheer scale of dependency across fintech and enterprise services.

Fintech, E-Commerce, and Enterprise Tools Also Impacted

The impact extended beyond trading platforms. Multiple fintech apps, e-commerce sites, enterprise dashboards, SaaS tools, and middleware applications reported disruptions. Cloudflare acts as a backbone for traffic routing, security, and load management for thousands of online products, making such outages deeply consequential.

Digital payment services, customer support systems, and automated transaction processing tools were also hit, though most resolved shortly after Cloudflare’s fixes began propagating.

Investors Question Reliability as Platforms Evaluate Contingency Measures

For investors and traders, the Cloudflare outage revived concerns around the reliability of platforms during volatile market conditions. With India witnessing rapid retail participation in equity and derivatives markets, technological resilience has become a core requirement for brokerage firms.

Industry analysts believe today’s disruption will likely prompt brokerages to evaluate multi-CDN strategies, failover systems, and diversified infrastructure dependencies to reduce risk exposure during external outages.

Brokerage executives, however, reiterated that such global-scale outages are rare and that platforms have strong internal safeguards. Still, the event reinforces the need for robust communication systems to inform customers in real time when disruptions originate from third-party services like Cloudflare.

Cloudflare Outage Highlights Growing Technology Dependence of Trading Ecosystem

The incident serves as a reminder of the increasingly intertwined relationship between global network infrastructure and India’s financial markets. As trading volumes surge and fintech adoption expands, even brief outages can lead to operational challenges and investor anxiety.

While systems began stabilising by mid-session, platforms will remain on alert throughout the day to monitor residual latency issues or data refresh delays. With Cloudflare confirming that mitigation steps are underway, a complete return to normalcy is expected shortly, though users may experience sporadic disruptions as backend systems recalibrate.

• Nifty 50
• Bank Nifty
• Sensex