On October 20, 2025, the internet suffered a massive jolt when Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported a wide-ranging outage that knocked thousands of websites and popular apps offline. More than 4 million users reported issues through outage tracker Downdetector, and Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos, warned that “AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset.”
These disruptions affected everything from platforms like Fortnite and Snapchat to banking sites and streaming services. Find out what’s still affected, what caused the outage, and how services are beginning to recover below.
Is Amazon AWS Still Down Today?
The outage affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) that began early on October 20, 2025 is mostly resolved. The company first reported issues at 3:11 a.m. ET and by 6:35 a.m. ET it stated that “most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now.”
AWS confirmed it was seeing “significant signs of recovery,” adding that “most requests should now be succeeding” as engineers worked through a backlog to restore full normalcy.
What Caused the Amazon AWS Outage?
The disruption was traced to major “increased error rates and latencies” in the US-EAST-1 region, centered on a DNS-resolution issue tied to AWS’s DynamoDB service endpoint.
AWS confirmed that while the root cause was infrastructure-based rather than a cyberattack, the outage exposed how reliant the internet is on a handful of cloud providers.
What Apps Are Not Working Today?
A wide range of popular apps and services relying on AWS were hit hard, causing widespread disruptions across gaming, finance, communication, and tech platforms.
Gaming and streaming services such as Fortnite, Roblox, Pokémon Go, HBO Max, and even Starbucks’ mobile payments experienced significant downtime. Social and messaging platforms like Snapchat, Signal, Reddit, and Wordle also went dark for hours, leaving millions of users unable to connect. The financial sector wasn’t spared either—Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Chime all faced temporary access issues, disrupting transactions and payments.
Tech tools and smart home systems, including Amazon Alexa, Ring, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Amazon Chime, were also hit, highlighting just how much of the global digital ecosystem depends on AWS’s cloud infrastructure. Other apps like Duolingo, Canva, Life360, and Hulu also saw interruptions before gradually returning to normal operations.
