Fix Cloudflare Error 522: Connection Timed Out (Host Error)

Updated: 11/29/2025

You try to visit a website, but instead of the page, you see a white screen with three circles: You, Cloudflare, and the Host. The line to the Host is red, labeled: 'Error 522: Connection timed out'. This technically means the website's server is too slow to reply to Cloudflare. However, as a visitor, you can sometimes bypass this if the issue is actually your own connection routing.

Table of Contents

Method 1: Disable VPNs (The Routing Fix)

Cloudflare's firewall often blocks or throttles VPN IP addresses, causing the handshake to time out.

Step 1: Turn Off VPN

Disable NordVPN, ExpressVPN, or any browser proxy extensions.

Step 2: Force Refresh

Press Ctrl + F5 (Hard Refresh) on the error page. This forces your browser to skip the cache and try a fresh connection without the VPN tunnel.

Method 2: Flush DNS Cache

If the website moved servers recently, your computer might be trying to connect to the old IP address.

ipconfig /flushdns

Run this in Command Prompt. It forces your computer to ask Cloudflare for the new correct IP address of the website.

Method 3: Are you the Website Owner?

If you own the site showing Error 522, the issue is your server firewall blocking Cloudflare's IPs.

Fix for Admins: Whitelist all Cloudflare IP ranges (IPv4 and IPv6) in your server's iptables or .htaccess file. Also, check if your server CPU usage is hitting 100%.