Amazon Web Services Outage Disrupts Major Online Platforms

On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a substantial outage, causing widespread disruptions across numerous online platforms. The incident began around 3:00 a.m. ET, affecting AWS's US-EAST-1 region, which serves as a critical hub for many internet services.

Users reported issues accessing popular services such as Snapchat, Fortnite, Roblox, and Coinbase. Amazon's own platforms, including its main website and Alexa, were also impacted. The outage led to increased error rates and latencies, with AWS acknowledging the problem and working towards a resolution.

By 5:22 a.m. ET, AWS reported early signs of recovery, stating that most requests were succeeding. However, some services continued to experience intermittent issues throughout the day. The company identified the root cause as a network connectivity issue within the EC2 internal network and implemented internal migrations to mitigate the problem.

This incident underscores the internet's heavy reliance on AWS's cloud infrastructure. AWS holds approximately 30% of the global cloud computing market, making it a backbone for many online services. The outage highlights the potential risks associated with such concentration, as a single point of failure can have cascading effects across multiple platforms.

As of late Monday, AWS reported significant signs of recovery, with most services returning to normal operations. The company continues to monitor the situation to ensure full restoration and prevent future occurrences.